Moldavian

Member of the majority ethnic group living in Moldova, comprising almost two-thirds of the population; also, inhabitant of the Romanian province of Moldavia. The Moldavian language is a dialect of Romanian, and belongs to the Romance group of the Indo-European family. They are mostly Orthodox Christians.

They are probably descended from the Romanized original Thracian inhabitants of the area and the Slavs. They came under Slav and Byzantine cultural influences, and until the 17th century Church Slavonic was their literary and official language; the first works in Moldavian (using the Cyrillic alphabet) date from the 16th century.