Polish people

Polish people, or Poles, are a West Slavic ethnic group and nation who share a common history, culture, the Polish language and are identified with the country of Poland in Central Europe. The preamble to the Constitution of the Republic of Poland defines the Polish nation as comprising all the citizens of Poland, regardless of heritage or ethnicity. The majority of Poles adhere to Roman Catholicism.

The population of self-declared Poles in Poland is estimated at 37,394,000 out of an overall population of 38,512,000 (based on the 2011 census), of whom 36,522,000 declared Polish alone. A wide-ranging Polish diaspora (the Polonia) exists throughout Eurasia, the Americas, and Australasia. Today, the largest urban concentrations of Poles are within the Warsaw metropolitan area and the Katowice urban area.

Ethnic Poles are considered to be the descendants of the ancient West Slavic Lechites and other tribes that inhabited the Polish territories during the late antiquity period. Poland's recorded history dates back over a thousand years to c. 930–960 AD, when the Western Polans – an influential tribe in the Greater Poland region – united various Lechitic clans under what became the Piast dynasty, thus creating the first Polish state. The subsequent Christianization of Poland by the Catholic Church, in 966 CE, marked Poland's advent to the community of Western Christendom. However, throughout its existence, the Polish state followed a tolerant policy towards minorities resulting in numerous ethnic and religious identities of the Poles, such as Polish Jews.

The Polish endonym Polacy is derived from the Western Polans, a Lechitic tribe which inhabited lands around the River Warta in Greater Poland region from the mid-6th century onward. The tribe's name stems from the Proto-Indo European *pleh₂-, which means flat or flatland and corresponds to the topography of a region that the Western Polans initially settled. The prefix pol- is used in most world languages when referring to Poles (Spanish polaco, Italian polacche, French polonais, German Pole).

Among other foreign exonyms for the Polish people are Lithuanian Lenkai; Hungarian Lengyelek; Turkish Leh; Armenian: Լեհաստան Lehastan; and Persian: لهستان (Lahestān). These stem from Lechia, the ancient name for Poland, or from the tribal Lendians. Their names are equally derived from the Old Polish term lęda, meaning plain or field.

The Polish people are descended from a blend of various ancient ethnic groups that inhabited the territory of modern-day Poland before and during late antiquity. The area was settled by numerous tribes and cultures, including Baltic, Celtic, Germanic, Slavic, Thracian, and possibly remnants of earlier Proto-Indo-Europeans and non-Indo-European peoples. Archaeological evidence from the Lusatian culture (c. 1300–500 BCE), as well as the successive Pomeranian, Przeworsk and Wielbark cultures, points to a diverse demographic landscape in prehistoric Poland. These cultures were associated with different ethnic groups, such as the Celts (notably in southern Poland), Germanic tribes like the Vandals and Goths, and the Balts in the northeast.

During the Migration Period, the region was becoming increasingly settled by the early Slavs (c. 500–700 AD). The Slavic settlers organised into tribal units and assimilated the remnants of earlier populations, thus contributing to the West Slavic ethnogenesis and identity of the numerous Polish tribes and Lechites. The names of many tribes are found on the list compiled by the anonymous Bavarian Geographer in the 9th century. In the 9th and 10th centuries the tribes gave rise to developed regions along the upper Vistula (the Vistulans), the Baltic Sea coast and in Greater Poland. The ultimate tribal undertaking (10th century) resulted in a lasting political structure and the creation of a Polish state.

Polish is the native language of most Poles. It is a West Slavic language of the Lechitic group and the sole official language in the Republic of Poland. Its written form uses the Polish alphabet, which is the basic Latin alphabet with the addition of six diacritic marks, totalling 32 letters. Bearing relation to Czech and Slovak, it has been profoundly influenced by Latin, German and other languages over the course of history. Poland is linguistically homogeneous – nearly 97% of Poland's citizens declare Polish as their mother tongue.