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    Bulgarians

    Author: www.NiNa.Az
    Mar 12, 2025 / 13:44

    Bulgarians Bulgarian българи romanized bŭlgari IPA ˈbɤɫɡɐri are a nation and South Slavicethnic group native to Bulgaria

    Bulgarians
    Bulgarians
    Bulgarians
    www.NiNa.Azhttps://www.english.nina.az/author.html

    Bulgarians (Bulgarian: българи, romanized: bŭlgari, IPA: [ˈbɤɫɡɐri]) are a nation and South Slavicethnic group native to Bulgaria and its neighbouring region, who share a common Bulgarian ancestry, culture, history and language. They form the majority of the population in Bulgaria, while in North Macedonia, Ukraine, Moldova, Serbia, Albania, Romania, Hungary and Greece they exist as historical communities.

    Bulgarians
    българи
    bŭlgari
    Total population
    c. 9 million
    image
    Regions with significant populations
    image Bulgaria 5,118,494 (2021)
    image Germany436,860[n] (2023)
    image Ukraine204,574[e]–500,000 (2001)
    image Argentina300,000 (2020)
    image Spain300,000 (2017)
    image United States300,000 (2016)
    image United Kingdom86,000[n] (July 2020 to June 2021)
    image Moldova (incl. Transnistria)79,520[e] (2004)
    image Brazil74,000[h] (2016)
    image Greece72,893[n]–300,000 (2015)[b]
    image Italy58,620[n]–120,000 (2016)
    image Netherlands50,305[m] (2022)
    image Canada30,485[h]–70,000 (2011)
    image Belgium46,876[f] (2020)
    image France30,000–80,000
    image Austria25,686[n] (2017)
    image Russia (2010 area)24,038[e]–330,000 (2010)
    image Cyprus (excl. TRNC)19,197[n] (2011)
    image Serbia12,918[e] (2022)
    image Czech Republic12,250[n] (2016)
    image Denmark9,955 (2018)
    image Sweden6,257[d]–9,105[f] (2016)
    image Norway6,752[n]–8,180[m] (2017)
    image  Switzerland8,588[n] (2017)
    image Portugal7,019[n]–12,000 (2016)
    image Romania5,975[e] (2021)
    image Australia5,436[h] (2011)
    image Kazakhstan5,788[e] (2023)[self-published source]
    image South Africa4,224[n]–20,000 (2015)
    image Hungary4,022 (2016)
    image North Macedonia3,504 (2021)
    image Finland2,840 (2018)
    image Slovakia1,552 (2021)
    image Slovenia1,500 (2011)
    image Albania7,057 (2023 census)
    Languages
    Bulgarian
    Religion
    Predominantly Eastern Orthodox Christianity
    (Bulgarian Orthodox Church), minority Islam (Bulgarian Muslims), Irreligion
    Related ethnic groups
    Other South Slavs, especially Macedonians,Slavic speakers of Greek Macedonia and Torlak speakers in Serbia.
    ^ a: The 2011 census figure was 5,664,624. The question on ethnicity was voluntary and 10% of the population did not declare any ethnicity, thus the figure is considered an underestimation. Ethnic Bulgarians are estimated at around 6 million, 85% of the population.
    ^ b: Estimates of the number of Pomaks whom most scholars categorize as Bulgarians
    ^ c: According to the 2002 census there were 1,417 Bulgarians in North Macedonia. Between 2003 and 2017, according to the data provided by Bulgarian authorities some 87,483-200,000 permanent residents of North Macedonia declared Bulgarian origin in their applications for Bulgarian citizenship, of which 67,355 requests were granted. A minor part of them are among the total of 2,934 North Macedonia-born residents, who are residing in Bulgaria by 2016.
    ^ d: by citizenship excluding dual citizens
    ^ e: by single ethnic group per person
    ^ f: by foreign-born
    ^ h: by heritage
    ^ n: by legal nationality
    ^ m: by nationality, naturalisation and descendant background

    Etymology

    Bulgarians derive their ethnonym from the Bulgars. Their name is not completely understood and difficult to trace back earlier than the 4th century AD, but it is possibly derived from the Proto-Turkic word *bulģha ("to mix", "shake", "stir") and its derivative *bulgak ("revolt", "disorder"). Alternative etymologies include derivation from a compound of Proto-Turkic (Oghuric) *bel ("five") and *gur ("arrow" in the sense of "tribe"), a proposed division within the Utigurs or Onogurs ("ten tribes").

    Citizenship

    According to art. 25(1) of Constitution of Bulgaria, a Bulgarian citizen shall be anyone born to at least one parent holding a Bulgarian citizenship, or born on the territory of the Republic of Bulgaria, should they not be entitled to any other citizenship by virtue of origin. Bulgarian citizenship shall further be acquirable through naturalization. About 85% of Bulgaria's population identified themselves as ethnic Bulgarians in 2021 Bulgarian census, the rest being mostly Turks (8%) and Roma (4%).

    Ethnogenesis

    Modern-day Bulgarians descend from peoples of vastly different origins and numbers, and are thus the result of a "melting pot" effect. The main ethnic elements which blended to produce the modern Bulgarian ethnicity are:

    • Thracians – a native ancient Balkan Indo-European people who left a cultural and genetic legacy. Approximately 55% of Bulgarian autosomal genetic legacy is of Paleo-Balkan and Mediterranean origin and can be attributed to Thracian and other indigenous Balkan populations predating Slavs and Bulgars;
    • Early Slavs – an Indo-European group of tribes that migrated from Eastern Europe into the Balkans in the 6th–7th century CE and imposed their language and culture on the local Thracian, Roman and Greek communities. Approximately 40% of Bulgarian autosomal make-up comes from a northeastern European population that admixed with the native population in the period between 400 and 1000 CE;
    • Bulgars – a semi-nomadic tribal federation, possibly from Central Asia, which settled in the northeast of the Balkans in the 7th century CE, federated with the local Slavic and Slavicized population, organised early-medieval Bulgarian statehood and bequeathed their ethnonym to the modern Bulgarian ethnicity, while eventually assimilating into the Slavic population. Approximately 2.3% of Bulgarian genes originate in Central Asia, corresponding to Asian tribes such as the Bulgars, with admixture peaking in the 9th century CE;

    The indigenous Thracians left a cultural and genetic legacy.[full citation needed] Other pre-Slavic Indo-European peoples, including Dacians (if distinct from Thracians), Celts, Goths, Romans, ancient Greeks, Sarmatians, Paeonians and Illyrians also settled in what later became the Bulgarian lands. The Thracian language was still spoken in the 6th century, probably becoming extinct afterwards,[full citation needed][full citation needed] In a later period the Bulgarians replaced long-established Greek/Latin toponyms with Thracian ones, which might suggest that Thracian had not been completely obliterated then. Some pre-Slavic linguistic and cultural traces might have been preserved among modern Bulgarians (and Macedonians).Scythia Minor and Moesia Inferior appear to have been Romanized, although the region became a focus of barbarian re-settlements (various Goths and Huns) during the 4th and early 5th centuries AD, before a further "Romanization" episode during the early 6th century. According to archeological evidence from the late periods of Roman rule, the Romans did not decrease the number of Thracians significantly in major cities. By the 4th century the major city of Serdica had predominantly Thracian populace based on epigraphic evidence, which shows prevailing Latino-Thracian given names, but thereafter the names were completely replaced by Christian ones.[full citation needed]

    The early Slavs emerged from their original homeland in the early 6th century, and spread to most of the eastern Central Europe, Eastern Europe and the Balkans, thus forming three main branches: the West Slavs in eastern Central Europe, the East Slavs in Eastern Europe, and the South Slavs in Southeastern Europe (Balkans). The latter gradually inflicted total linguistic replacement of Thracian, if the Thracians had not already been Romanized or Hellenized. Most scholars accept that they began large-scale settling of the Balkans in the 580s based on the statement of the 6th century historian Menander speaking of 100,000 Slavs in Thrace and consecutive attacks of Greece in 582. They continued coming to the Balkans in many waves, but also leaving, most notably Justinian II (685–695) settled as many as 30,000 Slavs from Thrace in Asia Minor. The Byzantines grouped the numerous Slavic tribes into two groups: the Sclaveni and Antes. Some Bulgarian scholars suggest that the Antes became one of the ancestors of the modern Bulgarians.

    The Bulgars are first mentioned in the 4th century in the vicinity of the North Caucasian steppe. Scholars often suggest that the ultimate origins of the Bulgar is Turkic and can be traced to the Central Asian nomadic confederations,[verification needed] specifically as part of loosely related Oghuric tribes which spanned from the Pontic steppe to central Asia. However, any direct connection between the Bulgars and postulated Asian counterparts rest on little more than speculative and "contorted etymologies". Some Bulgarian historians question the identification of the Bulgars as a Turkic tribe and suggest an Iranian origin. Other Bulgarian scholars actively oppose the "Iranian hypothesis". According to Raymond Detrez, the Iranian theory is rooted in the periods of anti-Turkish sentiment in Bulgaria and is ideologically motivated. Since 1989, anti-Turkish rhetoric is now reflected in the theories that challenge the thesis of the Bulgars' Turkic origin. Alongside the Iranian or Aryan theory, there appeared arguments favoring an autochthonous origin.

    In the 670s, some Bulgar tribes, the Danube Bulgars led by Asparuh and the Bulgars, led by Kuber, crossed the Danube river and settled in the Balkans with a single migration wave, the former of which Michael the Syrian described as numbering 10,000. The Bulgars are often not thought to have been numerous, becoming a ruling elite in the areas they controlled. However, according to Steven Runciman a tribe that was able to defeat an Emperor-lead Byzantine army, must have been of considerable dimensions.[full citation needed] Asparuh's Bulgars made a tribal union with the Severians and the "Seven clans", who were re-settled to protect the flanks of the Bulgar settlements in Scythia Minor, as the capital Pliska was built on the site of a former Slavic settlement.

    During the Early Byzantine Era, the Roman provincials in Scythia Minor and Moesia Secunda were already engaged in economic and social exchange with the 'barbarians' north of the Danube. This might have facilitated their eventual Slavonization, although the majority of the population appears to have been withdrawn to the hinterland of Constantinople or Asia Minor prior to any permanent Slavic and Bulgar settlement south of the Danube.[full citation needed] The major port towns in Pontic Bulgaria remained Byzantine Greek in their outlook. The large scale population transfers and territorial expansions during the 8th and 9th century, additionally increased the number of the Slavs and Byzantine Christians within the state, making the Bulgars quite obviously a minority. The establishment of a new state molded the various Slav, Bulgar and earlier or later populations into the "Bulgarian people" of the First Bulgarian Empire speaking a South Slavic language. In different periods to the ethnogenesis of the local population contributed also different Indo-European and Turkic people, who settled or lived on the Balkans.

    Bulgarian ethnogenetic conception

    The Bulgarians are usually regarded as part of the Slavic ethnolinguistic group. However the controversial issue of their ethnogenesis is a popular subject in the works of the nationalist scientists. The fierce debates started in the 19th century and the questionable proportions of the presumed Thracian, Bulgar, and Slavic ancestry, have depended on the geopolitical situation of the country and on ideological and political predilections. These supposed proportions have been changed several times during the 20th century, emphasizing usually the Slavic part of Bulgarian ancestry, related to the traditionally strong Russophilia in the country. However, during the 1970s Thracology was especially supported by the communist authority, as an attempt to underline the indigenous influence into the Bulgarian ethnogenesis. After the fall of Communism, the spiritualized image of the Thracians began to fade. Following the cooling of relations with Russia and the country's EU accession, the opinion on significant Bulgar genetic impact was launched among nationalist circles that lately have downplayed the country's Slavic ancestry. From a limited group of Turkic equestrian nomads, the Danubian Bulgars were reinterpreted by them as a numerous Aryan people, with a unique culture.[publisher missing]

    Genetic origins

    image
    Historical contribution of donor source groups in European peoples according to Hellenthal et al., (2014). Polish is selected to represent Slavic-speaking donor groups from the Middle Ages that are estimated to make up 97% of the ancestry in Belarusians, 80% in Russians, 55% in Bulgarians, 54% in Hungarians, 48% in Romanians, 46% in Chuvash and 30% in Greeks.

    According to a triple analysis – autosomal, mitochondrial and paternal — of available data from large-scale studies on Balto-Slavs and their proximal populations, the whole genome SNP data situates Bulgarians in a cluster with Romanians, Macedonians and Gagauzes, and they are at similar proximity to Serbs and Montenegrins.

    Bulgarians, like most Europeans, largely descend from three distinct lineages: Mesolithic hunter-gatherers, descended from populations associated with the Paleolithic Epigravettian culture; Neolithic Early European Farmers who migrated from Anatolia during the Neolithic Revolution 9,000 years ago; and Yamnaya Steppe herders who expanded into Europe from the Pontic steppe in the context of Indo-European migrations 5,000 years ago.

    History

    image
    Officers from Bulgarian hussar regiment in Russia (1776–1783)

    The First Bulgarian Empire was founded in 681. After the adoption of Orthodox Christianity in 864 it became one of the cultural centres of Slavic Europe. Its leading cultural position was consolidated with the invention of the Cyrillic script in its capital Preslav at the eve of the 10th century. The development of Old Church Slavonic literacy in the country had the effect of preventing the assimilation of the South Slavs into neighbouring cultures and it also stimulated the development of a distinct ethnic identity. A symbiosis was carried out between the numerically weak Bulgars and the numerous Slavic tribes in that broad area from the Danube to the north, to the Aegean Sea to the south, and from the Adriatic Sea to the west, to the Black Sea to the east, who accepted the common ethnonym "Bulgarians". During the 10th century, the Bulgarians established a form of national identity that was far from modern nationalism but helped them to survive as a distinct entity through the centuries.

    In 1018, Bulgaria lost its independence and remained a Byzantine subject until 1185, when the Second Bulgarian Empire was created. Nevertheless, at the end of the 14th century, the Ottomans conquered the whole of Bulgaria. Under the Ottoman system, Christians were considered an inferior class of people. Thus, Bulgarians, like other Christians, were subjected to heavy taxes and a small portion of the Bulgarian populace experienced partial or complete Islamisation. Orthodox Christians were included in a specific ethno-religious community called Rum Millet. To the common people, belonging to this Orthodox commonwealth became more important than their ethnic origins. This community became both, basic form of social organization and source of identity for all the ethnic groups inside it. In this way, ethnonyms were rarely used and between the 15th and 19th centuries, most of the local people gradually began to identify themselves simply as Christians. However, the public-spirited clergy in some isolated monasteries still kept the distinct Bulgarian identity alive, and this helped it to survive predominantly in rural, remote areas. Despite the process of ethno-religious fusion among the Orthodox Christians, strong nationalist sentiments persisted into the Catholic community in the northwestern part of the country. At that time, a process of partial Hellenization occurred among the intelligentsia and the urban population, as a result of the higher status of the Greek culture and the Greek Orthodox Church among the Balkan Christians. During the second half of the 18th century, the Enlightenment in Western Europe provided influence for the initiation of the National awakening of Bulgaria in 1762.

    Some Bulgarians supported the Russian Army when they crossed the Danube in the middle of the 18th century. Russia worked to convince them to settle in areas recently conquered by it, especially in Bessarabia. As a consequence, many Bulgarian refugees settled there, and later they formed two military regiments, as part of the Russian military colonization of the area in 1759–1763.

    Bulgarian national movement

    During the Russo-Turkish Wars of 1806–1812 and 1828–1829 Bulgarian emigrants formed the Bulgarian Countrymen's Army and joined the Russian Army, hoping Russia would bring Bulgarian liberation, but its imperial interests were focused then on Greece and Wallachia. The rise of nationalism under the Ottoman Empire led to a struggle for cultural and religious autonomy of the Bulgarian people. The Bulgarians wanted to have their own schools and liturgy in Bulgarian, and they needed an independent ecclesiastical organisation. Discontent with the supremacy of the Greek Orthodox clergy, the struggle started to flare up in several Bulgarian dioceses in the 1820s.

    It was not until the 1850s when the Bulgarians initiated a purposeful struggle against the Patriarchate of Constantinople. The struggle between the Bulgarians and the Greek Phanariotes intensified throughout the 1860s. In 1861 the Vatican and the Ottoman government recognized a separate Bulgarian Uniat Church. As the Greek clerics were ousted from most Bulgarian bishoprics at the end of the decade, significant areas had been seceded from the Patriarchate's control. This movement restored the distinct Bulgarian national consciousness among the common people and led to the recognition of the Bulgarian millet in 1870 by the Ottomans. As result, two armed struggle movements started to develop as late as the beginning of the 1870s: the Internal Revolutionary Organisation and the Bulgarian Revolutionary Central Committee. Their armed struggle reached its peak with the April Uprising which broke out in 1876. It resulted in the Russo-Turkish War (1877–1878), and led to the foundation of the third Bulgarian state after the Treaty of San Stefano. The issue of Bulgarian nationalism gained greater significance, following the Congress of Berlin which took back the Macedonia and Adrianople regions, returning them under the control of the Ottoman Empire. Also an autonomous Ottoman province, called Eastern Rumelia was created in Northern Thrace. As a consequence, the Bulgarian national movement proclaimed as its aim the inclusion of most of Macedonia, Thrace and Moesia under Greater Bulgaria.

    Eastern Rumelia was annexed to Bulgaria in 1885 through bloodless revolution. During the early 1890s, two pro-Bulgarian revolutionary organizations were founded: the Internal Macedonian-Adrianople Revolutionary Organization and the Supreme Macedonian-Adrianople Committee. In 1903 they participated in the unsuccessful Ilinden-Preobrazhenie Uprising against the Ottomans in Macedonia and the Adrianople Vilayet. Macedonian Slavs were identified then predominantly as Bulgarians, and significant Bulgarophile sentiments endured up among them until the end of the Second World War.

    In the early 20th century the control over Macedonia became a key point of contention between Bulgaria, Greece, and Serbia, who fought the First Balkan War of (1912–1913) and the Second Balkan War of (1913). The area was further fought over during the World War I (1915–1918) and the World War II (1941–1944).

    Demographics

    image
    Map of the Bulgarian diaspora in the world (includes people with Bulgarian ancestry or citizenship).
      Bulgaria
      + 100,000
      + 10,000
      + 1,000

    Most Bulgarians live in Bulgaria, where they number around 6 million, constituting 85% of the population. Bulgarian minorities exist in Serbia, Romania (Banat Bulgarians), Hungary, Albania, as well as in Ukraine and Moldova (see Bessarabian Bulgarians). Many Bulgarians also live in the diaspora, which is formed by representatives and descendants of the old (before 1989) and new (after 1989) emigration. The old emigration was made up of some 2,470,000 [citation needed] economic and several tens of thousands of political emigrants, and was directed for the most part to the U.S., Canada, Argentina, Brazil and Germany. The new emigration is estimated at some 970,000 people and can be divided into two major subcategories: permanent emigration at the beginning of the 1990s, directed mostly to the U.S., Canada, Austria, and Germany and labour emigration at the end of the 1990s, directed for the most part to Greece, Italy, the UK and Spain. Migrations to the West have been quite steady even in the late 1990s and early 21st century, as people continue moving to countries like the US, Canada and Australia. Most Bulgarians living in Canada can be found in Toronto, Ontario, and the provinces with the most Bulgarians in Canada are Ontario and Quebec. According to the 2001 census there were 1,124,240 Bulgarian citizens in the city of Sofia, 302,858 in Plovdiv, 300,000 in Varna and about 200,000 in Burgas. The total number of Bulgarians stood at over 9 million.

    Associated ethnic groups

    Bulgarians are considered most closely related to the Macedonians. The Slavic speakers of Greek Macedonia and the Torlak speakers in Serbia are also closely related to Bulgarians.

    Culture

    Language

    Bulgarians speak a South Slavic language which is mutually intelligible with Macedonian and to a lesser degree with Serbo-Croatian, especially the eastern dialects. The lexical similarities between Bulgarian and Macedonian are 86%, between Bulgarian and other Slavic languages between 71% and 80%, but with the Baltic languages they are 40–46%, while with English are about 20%. Less than a dozen Bulgarian words are derived from Turkic Bulgar.

    Bulgarian demonstrates some linguistic developments that set it apart from other Slavic languages shared with Romanian, Albanian and Greek (see Balkan language area). Bulgarian was influenced lexically by medieval and modern Greek, and Turkish. Medieval Bulgarian influenced the other South Slavic languages and Romanian. With Bulgarian and Russian there was a mutual influence in both directions. Both languages were official or a lingua franca of each other during the Middle Ages and the Cold War. Recently, Bulgarian has borrowed many words from German, French and English.

    The Bulgarian language is spoken by the majority of the Bulgarian diaspora, but less so by the descendants of earlier emigrants to the U.S., Canada, Argentina and Brazil.

    Bulgarian linguists consider the officialized Macedonian language (since 1944) to be a local codified variation of Bulgarian, just as most ethnographers and linguists until the early 20th century considered the local Slavic speech in the Macedonian region as Bulgarian dialects.[citation needed] The president of Bulgaria, Zhelyu Zhelev, declined to recognize Macedonian as a separate language when North Macedonia became a new independent state. The Bulgarian language is written in the Cyrillic script.

    Cyrillic alphabet

    image
    Cyrillic alphabet of the medieval Old Bulgarian language

    In the first half of the 10th century, the Cyrillic script was devised in the Preslav Literary School, Bulgaria, based on the Glagolitic, the Greek and Latin alphabets. Modern versions of the alphabet are now used to write five more Slavic languages such as Belarusian, Macedonian, Russian, Serbian and Ukrainian as well as Mongolian and some other 60 languages spoken in the former Soviet Union. Medieval Bulgaria was the most important cultural centre of the Slavic peoples at the end of the 9th and throughout the 10th century. The two literary schools of Preslav and Ohrid developed a rich literary and cultural activity with authors of the rank of Constantine of Preslav, John Exarch, Chernorizets Hrabar, Clement and Naum of Ohrid. Bulgaria exerted similar influence on its neighbouring countries in the mid- to late 14th century, at the time of the Tarnovo Literary School, with the work of Patriarch Evtimiy, Gregory Tsamblak, Constantine of Kostenets (Konstantin Kostenechki). Bulgarian cultural influence was especially strong in Wallachia and Moldova where the Cyrillic script was used until 1860, while Church Slavonic was the official language of the princely chancellery and of the church until the end of the 17th century.

    Name system

    There are several different layers of Bulgarian names. The vast majority of them have either Christian (names like Lazar, Ivan, Anna, Maria, Ekaterina) or Slavic origin (Vladimir, Svetoslav, Velislava). After the Liberation in 1878, the names of historical Bulgar rulers like Asparuh, Krum, Kubrat and Tervel were resurrected. The Bulgar name Boris has spread from Bulgaria to a number of countries in the world.

    Most Bulgarian male surnames have an -ov surname suffix (Cyrillic: -ов), a tradition used mostly by Eastern Slavic nations such as Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. This is sometimes transcribed as -off or -of (John Atanasov—John Atanasoff), but more often as -ov (e.g. Boyko Borisov). The -ov suffix is the Slavic gender-agreeing suffix, thus Ivanov (Bulgarian: Иванов) literally means "Ivan's". Bulgarian middle names are patronymic and use the gender-agreeing suffix as well, thus the middle name of Nikola's son becomes Nikolov, and the middle name of Ivan's son becomes Ivanov. Since names in Bulgarian are gender-based, Bulgarian women have the -ova surname suffix (Cyrillic: -овa), for example, Maria Ivanova. The plural form of Bulgarian names ends in -ovi (Cyrillic: -ови), for example the Ivanovi family (Иванови).

    Other common Bulgarian male surnames have the -ev surname suffix (Cyrillic: -ев), for example Stoev, Ganchev, Peev, and so on. The female surname in this case would have the -eva surname suffix (Cyrillic: -ева), for example: Galina Stoeva. The last name of the entire family then would have the plural form of -evi (Cyrillic: -еви), for example: the Stoevi family (Стоеви).

    Another typical Bulgarian surname suffix, though less common, is -ski. This surname ending also gets an –a when the bearer of the name is female (Smirnenski becomes Smirnenska). The plural form of the surname suffix -ski is still -ski, e.g. the Smirnenski family (Смирненски).

    The ending –in (female -ina) also appears rarely. It used to be given to the child of an unmarried woman (for example the son of Kuna will get the surname Kunin and the son of Gana – Ganin). The surname suffix -ich can be found only occasionally, primarily among the Roman Catholic Bulgarians. The surname ending –ich does not get an additional –a if the bearer of the name is female.

    Religion

    image
    Map of the Bulgarian Exarchate (1870–1913). The Ottomans required a threshold of two thirds of positive votes of the Orthodox population to include a region into this jurisdiction.

    Most Bulgarians are at least nominally members of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church founded in 870 AD (autocephalous since 927 AD). The Bulgarian Orthodox Church is the independent national church of Bulgaria like the other national branches of the Eastern Orthodox communion and is considered a dominating element of Bulgarian national consciousness. The church was abolished once, during the period of Ottoman rule (1396—1878), in 1873 it was revived as Bulgarian Exarchate and soon after raised again to Bulgarian Patriarchate. In 2021, the Orthodox Church at least nominally had a total of 4,219,270 members in Bulgaria (71.5% of the population), down from 6,552,000 (83%) at the 2001 census. 3,980,131 of these pointed out the Bulgarian ethnic group (79% of the total Bulgarian ethnic group). The Orthodox Bulgarian minorities in Romania, Serbia, Greece, Albania, Ukraine and Moldova nowadays hold allegiance to the respective national Orthodox churches.

    Despite the position of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church as a unifying symbol for all Bulgarians, small groups of Bulgarians have converted to other faiths through the course of time. During Ottoman rule, a substantial number of Bulgarians converted to Islam, forming the community of the Pomaks or Muslim Bulgarians. In the 16th and the 17th centuries Roman Catholic missionaries converted a small number of Bulgarian Paulicians in the districts of Plovdiv and Svishtov to Roman Catholicism. Nowadays there are some 40,000 Roman Catholic Bulgarians in Bulgaria, additional 10,000 in the Banat in Romania and up to 100,000 people of Bulgarian ancestry in South America. The Roman Catholic Bulgarians of the Banat are also descendants of Paulicians who fled there at the end of the 17th century after an unsuccessful uprising against the Ottomans. Protestantism was introduced in Bulgaria by missionaries from the United States in 1857. Missionary work continued throughout the second half of the 19th and the first half of the 20th century. Nowadays there are some 25,000 Protestant Bulgarians in Bulgaria.

    Art and science

    image
    image
    Assen Jordanoff (left), Bulgarian American inventor considered by prominent aviation specialists the main contributor to the American knowledge of aviation, likewise the Boeing, airbag and tape recorder.
    John Vincent Atanasoff (right), Bulgarian American inventor of the Atanasoff-Berry computer, legally the inventor of the electronic digital computer in the U.S. and considered the "father of the computer".

    Boris Christoff, Nicolai Ghiaurov, Raina Kabaivanska and Ghena Dimitrova made a precious contribution to opera singing with Ghiaurov and Christoff being two of the greatest bassos in the post-war period. Similarly, Anna-Maria Ravnopolska-Dean is one of the best-known harpists today. Bulgarians have made valuable contributions to world culture in modern times as well. Julia Kristeva and Tzvetan Todorov were among the most influential European philosophers in the second half of the 20th century. The artist Christo is among the most famous representatives of environmental art, with projects such as the Wrapped Reichstag.

    Bulgarians in the diaspora have also been active. American scientists and inventors of Bulgarian descent include John Atanasoff, Peter Petroff, and Assen Jordanoff. Bulgarian-American Stephane Groueff wrote the celebrated book Manhattan Project, about the making of the first atomic bomb and also penned Crown of Thorns, a biography of Tsar Boris III of Bulgaria.

    Cuisine

    image
    Bulgarian peach kompot – non alcoholic clear juice obtained by cooking fruit

    Famous for its rich salads required at every meal, Bulgarian cuisine is also noted for the diversity and quality of dairy products and the variety of local wines and alcoholic beverages such as rakia, mastika and menta. Bulgarian cuisine features also a variety of hot and cold soups, an example of a cold soup being tarator. There are many different Bulgarian pastries as well such as banitsa.

    Most Bulgarian dishes are oven baked, steamed, or in the form of stew. Deep-frying is not very typical, but grilling—especially different kinds of meats—is very common. Pork meat is the most common meat in the Bulgarian cuisine. Oriental dishes do exist in Bulgarian cuisine with most common being moussaka, gyuvetch, and baklava. A very popular ingredient in Bulgarian cuisine is the Bulgarian white brine cheese called "sirene" (сирене). It is the main ingredient in many salads, as well as in a variety of pastries. Fish and chicken are widely eaten and while beef is less common as most cattle are bred for milk production rather than meat, veal is a natural byproduct of this process and it is found in many popular recipes. Bulgaria is a net exporter of lamb and its own consumption of the meat is prevalent during its production time in spring. The bread and salt tradition, which is widespread among Balto-Slavs, is the usual welcome given to strangers and politicians.

    Folk beliefs and customs

    image
    Kukeri from the area of Burgas
    image
    Girls celebrating Lazaruvane from Gabrа, Sofia Province

    Bulgarians may celebrate with horse racings. At Christmas Eve a Pogača with fortunes is cooked, which are afterwards put under the pillow. At Easter the first egg is painted red and is kept for a whole year. On the Baptism of Jesus a competition to catch the cross in the river is held and is believed the sky is "opened" and any wish will be fulfilled.

    Bulgarians as well as Albanians nod the head up and down to indicates "no" and shake to indicate "yes". They may wear the martenitsa (мартеница)—an adornment made of white and red yarn and worn on the wrist or pinned on the clothes—from 1 March until the end of the month. Alternatively, one can take off the martenitsa earlier if one sees a stork (considered a harbinger of spring). One can then tie the martenitsa to the blossoming branch of a tree. Family-members and friends in Bulgaria customarily exchange martenitsas, which they regard as symbols of health and longevity. When a stork is seen, the martenitsa should be left on a tree. The white thread represents peace and tranquility, while the red one stands for the cycles of life. Bulgarians may also refer to the holiday of 1 March as Baba Marta (Баба Марта), meaning Grandmother March. It preserves an ancient pagan tradition, possibly celebrating the old Roman new Year, beginning on 1 March, identical with Romanian Mărțișor. Pagan customs found their way to the Christian holidays. The ancient ritual of kukeri (кукери), similar to Slovenian Kurentovanje, Busójárás and Halloween, is performed by costumed men in different times of the year and after Easter. This seeks to scare away evil spirits and bring good harvest and health to the community. Goat is symbolized, that was left from the Thracian cult of Dionysian Mysteries. The ritual consists of dancing, jumping, shouting and collect gifts from the houses in an attempt to banish all evil from the village. The adornments on the costumes vary from one region to another. The Thracian Heros remains in the image of Saint George, at whose feast the agriculture is celebrated, a lamb is traditionally eaten, accomplished with ritual bathing. Saint Tryphon's fertility and wine is attributed a Thracian origin, considered to preserve the cult to Sabazius as the Kukeri. This is followed in February by Pokladi, a tradition of setting massively large fire and jump over as at the Kupala Night and a competition between couples to eat an egg on a thread is held. Another characteristic custom called nestinarstvo (нестинарство), or firedancing, distinguishes the Strandzha region, as well as Dog spinning. The authentic nestinarstvo with states of trance is only preserved in the village Balgari. This ancient custom involves dancing into fire or over live embers. Women dance into the fire with their bare feet without suffering any injury or pain.

    Slavic pagan customs are preserved in Bulgarian Christian holidays. The Miladinov brothers and foreign authors noticed that even pagan prayers are preserved quoting plenty of Slavic pagan rite songs and tales remained in Bulgarians, including Macedonians and Pomaks, mainly dedicated to the divine nymphs samovili and peperuna for the feasts surva, Saint George's Day, Koleda, etc. with evidence of toponymy throughout the regional groups linking directly to the deities Svarog, Perun, Hors and Veles, while the regional group Hartsoi derive their name from god Hors. Songs dedicated to the Thracian divinity Orpheus were found in Pomaks, who is said to marry the samovili. The old Bulgarian name of the Presentation of Jesus at the Temple was Gromnitsa and Perunov den dedicated to the supreme Slavic thunder god Perun. In the mix of Christian and pagan patrons of thunder, at Saint Elijah's feast day Ognyena Maria is worshiped, the Slavic goddesses assisting Perun that took a substitutional dual position of the Christian Mother of God. The custom for rain begging Peperuna is derived from the wife of Perun and the god of the rain Dodola, this was described by a 1792 Bulgarian book as a continued worship of Perun at times of absence of rain with a ritual performed by a boy or a girl dressed like Perun. Similar rain begging is called German. In case of continuous lack of rain, a custom of driving out the zmey from the area is performed. In the dualistic Slavic belief the zmey may be both good tutelary spirit and evil, in which case is considered not local and good, but evil and trying to inflict harm and drought. Saint Jeremiah's feast is of the snakes and the reptiles, there is a tradition of jumping over fire. At the Rusalka week the girls don't go outside to prevent themselves from diseases and harm that the dead forces Rusalii can cause. This remained the holiday of the samovili. The men performing the custom are also called Rusalii, they don't let anybody pass through between them, don't talk with each other except for the evening, avoid water, if someone lacks behind a member swoops the sword over the lacker's head to prevent him from evil spirits. If the group encounter on their way a well, dry tree, old cemeteries, crossroads, they go round them three times. Before leaving rusalii say goodbye to their relatives as if they went to war, which is not surprising because some of them are killed. When two rusalii groups met there was a fight to the death in which the dead were buried in special "rusaliyski cemetery." Each year there are holidays in honour of wolves and mouses. A relief for the scared believers is celebrated at the Beheading of St. John the Baptist, when according to Bulgarian belief all the mythical figures go back to their caves in a mythical village in the middle of nowhere Zmeykovo of the zmey king, along with the rusalki, samodivi, and return at Annunciation. According to other beliefs the danger peaks at the so-called few days around the New Year Eve "Dirty Days", this time starts at Koleda, which merged with Christmas, when groups of kids koledari visit houses, singing carols and receiving a gift at parting. It is believed that no man can go in Zmeyovo and only the magpie knows the location of this place. At many of the holidays a sexual taboo is said to be practiced to prevent conceiving a vampire or werewolf and not to work, not to go to Sedenki or go out. Live-fire is set in case of epidemics.Babinden for example is rooted in the mother-goddess. On the day of St. Vlas, the tradition of a "wooly" god Veles established itself, a god who is considered to be a protector of shepherds, and bread is given to the livestock on that day. The ancient Slavic custom to marry died people occurred in Bulgarian society.Survakane is performed each new year with a decorated stick by children, who hit adults on the back for health at the New Year Eve, usually in exchange of money. In the Chech region there is a custom forbidding "touching the land", i.e. construction and agriculture, at the equinox on 25 March and the same custom is found in Belarusian Volhynia and Polesia.

    Bulgarian mythology and fairy tales are mainly about forest figures, such as the dragon zmey, the nymphs samovili (samodivi), the witch veshtitsa. They are usually harmful and devastating, but can also help the people. The samovili are said to live in beeches and sycamores the, which are therefore considered holy and not permitted burning. Samovili, although believed to be masters of everything between the sky and the earth, "run away" from fraxinus, garlic, dew and walnut. Walnut remained in Christianity to be used in prayers to "see" the dead in Spirits Day.Dictamnus is believed to be their favourite herb, which is intoxicating. The samovili are spirits in Bulgarian beliefs are the diseases themselves and punish people, kidnap shepherds, make blind the people or drown them and are in white colored dress, they are in odd numbers, which suggest they are ones of the "dead". Epic heroes as Prince Marko are believed to be descended from the samodivi. The elm is believed to scare the evil forces. Sacral trees in Bulgarian beliefs are beeches and oaks. Hawthorn is believed to expel all evil forces and is applied to cure suspected vampires. The tradition forbids killing of sacred animals – deer, while it is hold a belief the samodivi runaway from horse. The alleged as "unclean" animals resembling the devil such as the goat are, however, exempted from being eaten as the holy ones. The zmey is transhuman and can turn "into" animals, plants and items, he is also "responsible" for diseases, madness and missing women. The female version of the Slavic zmey is Lamia and Ala is another version. The girls who practiced Lazaruvane and other rituals "could not" be kidnapped by the zmey. The main enemy of the Sun is the zmey, which tries to eat the Sun, which scene is preserved in church art. The sun is painted one eyed as recorded by beliefs Perun stabbed one of the sun's eyes to save the world from overheating. The born on Saturday are thought as having supernatural powers, those born at the wolves' holidays and a number of people are alleged as varkolaks and vampires. The most spread Bulgarian view of the vampire was that of a rolling bulbous balloon of blood derived from the Slavic term pir "drink". Rusalka is believed to be a variety of the samodivi and Nav, but the latter are considered little fairies. The Thursdays remained feasts of Perun in Bulgarian beliefs. The wind and the hot steam of the bread is believed to be the souls of the dead. From Easter to Feast of the Ascension it is believed that the death are in the flowers and the animals. Mora in Bulgarian beliefs is a black hairy evil spirit with four firing eyes associated with nightmares when causing someone to scream, similarly to Kikimora. Polunoshtnitsa and Poludnica are believed to be evil spirits causing death, while to Lesnik, Domovnik and Vodnik a dualistic nature is attributed. Thanks to the Vlshebnik, a man of the community, a magician and a priest, communication with the "other" world was held. Torbalan is the Sack Man used to scare children, along with Baba Yaga, who is a witch in her Bulgarian version.

    Kuma Lisa and Hitar Petar are the tricky fox and villager from the fairy tales, the tricked antagonist is often Nasreddin Hoca, whereas Bay Ganyo is a ridiculed Bulgarian villager. Ivancho and Mariika are the protagonists of the jokes.

    Despite eastern Ottoman influence is obvious in areas such as cuisine and music, Bulgarian folk beliefs and mythology seem to lack analogies with Turkic mythology, paganism and any non-European folk beliefs, sо in pre-Christian times the ancient Bulgars were much inferior to the Slavs in the ethnogenesis and culture that resulted in modern Bulgarians. The Slavic language was officialized at the same time with Christianity, so Slavic paganism has never been a state religion of Bulgaria or more influential than Tengriism. Most of Bulgarian land lack any pagan archeology left from the Bulgars, despite early Christianization and that during most of the pagan period medieval Bulgarian borders spread significantly only in today's northern Bulgaria. Although legacy indicating ancient Bulgar culture is at most virtually absent in modern Bulgarian culture, some authors claim there is a similarity between the dress and customs of the Chuvashes, who descend from the Volga Bulgars, and the Bulgarian ethnographic group Kapantsi from Targovishte Province and Razgrad Province, among whom the claim that they are direct descendants of Asparuh's Bulgars is popular, but Slavic elements are found among them.

    Folk dress and music

    image
    Bulgarian folk dancers in a national costume with embroidery on the penultimate row of the aprons showing the most spread Slavic cryptogram Bur with a cross inside the rhombus representing the sun and spirals indicating rain, which is similarly represented as the Rising Sundecorative pattern of the Flag of Belarus. Similar carpet patterns appear on the Flag of Turkmenistan ultimately derived from ancient Persia.

    Bulgarian folk costumes feature long white robes, usually with red embrdoiery and ornaments derived from the Slavic Rachenik. The costume is considered to be mainly derived from the dress of the ancient Slavs, the female dress with the overgarments joined at the shoulders that evolved from Sarafan and all the types of sukman, saya and aprons fasten at the waist are said to be directly descended from the ancient Slavs only with negligible mutation. The women's head-dress, which turned to be a must for the Bulgarian costume is a decoration with flowers optionally on a headband, that distinguishes all the Balto-Slavic peoples and is not found in western cultures. The male dress is of likewise origin, usually Riza "robe", poyas "belt", poturi "full-bottomed breeches" typical for the Slavs and often a tsarvul and kalpak for shoes and jacket. Among the most similar relatives of the latter for example is Ukrainian hutsul, but the kalpak is attributed to Ottoman influence. The male skirt fustanella appears on the dress only of the Macedonian Bulgarians and is of indigenous Balkan origin or influence. In some dress of Thrace the symbol of the snake as in medieval tombs is found and is considered a Thracian cultural legacy and belief.

    Folk songs are most often about the nymphs from Bulgarian and West Slavic mythology (samovili) and the epic heroes (yunaks). Instruments Gadulka, Gusla, Duduk, gaida Dvoyanka are analogous to other Slavic gudok, dudka and Dvodentsivka. Kaval is common in the Balkans and Turkey and is akin to Arab Kawala, as well as Tapan, Goblet Drum, Zurna. The most spread dance is a circle dance called horo and khorovod. Songs are generally loud. Recent eastern influences from the genre music chalga and turbo-folk even brought a prestige for the masculine voices of females.

    Valya Balkanska is a folk singer thanks to whom the Bulgarian speech in her song "Izlel ye Delyo Haydutin" will be played in the Outer space for at least 60,000 years more as part of the Voyager Golden Record selection of music included in the two Voyager spacecraft launched in 1977.

    Sport

    image
    Hristo Stoichkov, awarded the Ballon d'Or and regarded as one of the best footballers by Barcelona.
    image
    Veselin Topalov, the 21st World Chess Champion.

    As for most European peoples, football became by far the most popular sport for the Bulgarians. Hristo Stoichkov was one of the best football (soccer) players in the second half of the 20th century, having played with the national team and FC Barcelona. He received a number of awards and was the joint top scorer at the 1994 World Cup. Dimitar Berbatov, formerly in Manchester United, Tottenham Hotspur, Bayer Leverkusen and others, the national team and two domestic clubs, is still the most popular Bulgarian football player of the 21st century.

    In the beginning of the 20th century Bulgaria was famous for two of the best wrestlers in the world – Dan Kolov and Nikola Petroff. Stefka Kostadinova is the best female high jumper, still holding the world record from 1987, one of the oldest unbroken world records for all kind of athletics. Ivet Lalova along with Irina Privalova is currently the fastest white woman at 100 metres. Kaloyan Mahlyanov has been the first European sumo wrestler to win the Emperor's Cup in Japan. Veselin Topalov won the 2005 World Chess Championship. He was ranked No. 1 in the world from April 2006 to January 2007, and had the second highest Elo rating of all time (2813). He regained the world No. 1 ranking again in October 2008.

    Symbols

    The national symbols of the Bulgarians are the Flag, the Coat of Arms, the National anthem and the National Guard, as well other unofficial symbols such as the Samara flag.

    The national flag of Bulgaria is a rectangle with three colours: white, green, and red, positioned horizontally top to bottom. The colour fields are of same form and equal size. It is generally known that the white represents – the purity, the green – the forest and nature and the red – the blood of the people, referencing the strong bond of the nation through all the wars and revolutions that have shaken the country in the past. The Coat of arms of Bulgaria is a state symbol of the sovereignty and independence of the Bulgarian people and state. It represents a crowned rampant golden lion on a dark red background with the shape of a shield. Above the shield there is a crown modeled after the crowns of the emperors of the Second Bulgarian Empire, with five crosses and an additional cross on top. Two crowned rampant golden lions hold the shield from both sides, facing it. They stand upon two crossed oak branches with acorns, which symbolize the power and the longevity of the Bulgarian state. Under the shield, there is a white band lined with the three national colours. The band is placed across the ends of the branches and the phrase "Unity Makes Strength" is inscribed on it.

    Both the Bulgarian flag and the Coat of Arms are also used as symbols of various Bulgarian organisations, political parties and institutions.

    The horse of the Madara Rider is preserved on the back of the Bulgarian stotinka.

    Maps

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      Map of A. Scobel, Andrees Allgemeiner Handatlas, 1908
    • image
      Distribution of the Balkan peoples in 1911, Encyclopædia Britannica
    • image
      Ethnic groups in the Balkans and Asia Minor by William R. Shepherd, 1911
    • image
      Distribution of European peoples in 1914 according to L. Ravenstein
    • image
      Swiss ethnographic map of Europe published in 1918 by Juozas Gabrys
    • image
      Percentage of Pomaks by first language according to the 1965 Census excluding Bulgarian
    • image
      Distribution of Bulgarians in Odesa Oblast, Ukraine according to the 2001 census
    • image
      Distribution of Bulgarians by first language in Zaporizhzhia Oblast, Ukraine according to the 2001 census
    • image
      Distribution of predominant ethnic groups in Bulgaria according to the 2011 census
    • image
      Distribution of Bulgarians in Romania according to the 2002 census
    • image
      Distribution of Bulgarians in Moldova according to the 2004 census

    Historiography

    With the formation of the Bulgarian ethnicity in the mid-10th century, the Byzantines usually called the Bulgarians Moesi, and their lands, Moesia.

    See also

    • imageBulgaria portal
    • Balkan–Danubian culture
    • Macedonian Bulgarians
    • Macedonians (ethnic group)
    • Thracian Bulgarians

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    Sources

    • Komatina, Predrag (2010). "The Slavs of the mid-Danube basin and the Bulgarian expansion in the first half of the 9th century" (PDF). Зборник радова Византолошког института. 47: 55–82.
    • Obolensky, Dimitri (1974) [1971]. The Byzantine Commonwealth: Eastern Europe, 500–1453. London: Cardinal. ISBN 9780351176449.
    • Ostrogorsky, George (1956). History of the Byzantine State. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

    External links

    • image Media related to Bulgarians at Wikimedia Commons

    Bulgarians Bulgarian blgari romanized bŭlgari IPA ˈbɤɫɡɐri are a nation and South Slavicethnic group native to Bulgaria and its neighbouring region who share a common Bulgarian ancestry culture history and language They form the majority of the population in Bulgaria while in North Macedonia Ukraine Moldova Serbia Albania Romania Hungary and Greece they exist as historical communities Bulgariansblgari bŭlgariTotal populationc 9 millionRegions with significant populations Bulgaria 5 118 494 2021 Germany436 860 n 2023 Ukraine204 574 e 500 000 2001 Argentina300 000 2020 Spain300 000 2017 United States300 000 2016 United Kingdom86 000 n July 2020 to June 2021 Moldova incl Transnistria 79 520 e 2004 Brazil74 000 h 2016 Greece72 893 n 300 000 2015 b Italy58 620 n 120 000 2016 Netherlands50 305 m 2022 Canada30 485 h 70 000 2011 Belgium46 876 f 2020 France30 000 80 000 Austria25 686 n 2017 Russia 2010 area 24 038 e 330 000 2010 Cyprus excl TRNC 19 197 n 2011 Serbia12 918 e 2022 Czech Republic12 250 n 2016 Denmark9 955 2018 Sweden6 257 d 9 105 f 2016 Norway6 752 n 8 180 m 2017 Switzerland8 588 n 2017 Portugal7 019 n 12 000 2016 Romania5 975 e 2021 Australia5 436 h 2011 Kazakhstan5 788 e 2023 self published source South Africa4 224 n 20 000 2015 Hungary4 022 2016 North Macedonia3 504 2021 Finland2 840 2018 Slovakia1 552 2021 Slovenia1 500 2011 Albania7 057 2023 census LanguagesBulgarianReligionPredominantly Eastern Orthodox Christianity Bulgarian Orthodox Church minority Islam Bulgarian Muslims IrreligionRelated ethnic groupsOther South Slavs especially Macedonians Slavic speakers of Greek Macedonia and Torlak speakers in Serbia a The 2011 census figure was 5 664 624 The question on ethnicity was voluntary and 10 of the population did not declare any ethnicity thus the figure is considered an underestimation Ethnic Bulgarians are estimated at around 6 million 85 of the population b Estimates of the number of Pomaks whom most scholars categorize as Bulgarians c According to the 2002 census there were 1 417 Bulgarians in North Macedonia Between 2003 and 2017 according to the data provided by Bulgarian authorities some 87 483 200 000 permanent residents of North Macedonia declared Bulgarian origin in their applications for Bulgarian citizenship of which 67 355 requests were granted A minor part of them are among the total of 2 934 North Macedonia born residents who are residing in Bulgaria by 2016 d by citizenship excluding dual citizens e by single ethnic group per person f by foreign born h by heritage n by legal nationality m by nationality naturalisation and descendant backgroundEtymologyBulgarians derive their ethnonym from the Bulgars Their name is not completely understood and difficult to trace back earlier than the 4th century AD but it is possibly derived from the Proto Turkic word bulgha to mix shake stir and its derivative bulgak revolt disorder Alternative etymologies include derivation from a compound of Proto Turkic Oghuric bel five and gur arrow in the sense of tribe a proposed division within the Utigurs or Onogurs ten tribes CitizenshipAccording to art 25 1 of Constitution of Bulgaria a Bulgarian citizen shall be anyone born to at least one parent holding a Bulgarian citizenship or born on the territory of the Republic of Bulgaria should they not be entitled to any other citizenship by virtue of origin Bulgarian citizenship shall further be acquirable through naturalization About 85 of Bulgaria s population identified themselves as ethnic Bulgarians in 2021 Bulgarian census the rest being mostly Turks 8 and Roma 4 EthnogenesisModern day Bulgarians descend from peoples of vastly different origins and numbers and are thus the result of a melting pot effect The main ethnic elements which blended to produce the modern Bulgarian ethnicity are Thracians a native ancient Balkan Indo European people who left a cultural and genetic legacy Approximately 55 of Bulgarian autosomal genetic legacy is of Paleo Balkan and Mediterranean origin and can be attributed to Thracian and other indigenous Balkan populations predating Slavs and Bulgars Early Slavs an Indo European group of tribes that migrated from Eastern Europe into the Balkans in the 6th 7th century CE and imposed their language and culture on the local Thracian Roman and Greek communities Approximately 40 of Bulgarian autosomal make up comes from a northeastern European population that admixed with the native population in the period between 400 and 1000 CE Bulgars a semi nomadic tribal federation possibly from Central Asia which settled in the northeast of the Balkans in the 7th century CE federated with the local Slavic and Slavicized population organised early medieval Bulgarian statehood and bequeathed their ethnonym to the modern Bulgarian ethnicity while eventually assimilating into the Slavic population Approximately 2 3 of Bulgarian genes originate in Central Asia corresponding to Asian tribes such as the Bulgars with admixture peaking in the 9th century CE The indigenous Thracians left a cultural and genetic legacy full citation needed Other pre Slavic Indo European peoples including Dacians if distinct from Thracians Celts Goths Romans ancient Greeks Sarmatians Paeonians and Illyrians also settled in what later became the Bulgarian lands The Thracian language was still spoken in the 6th century probably becoming extinct afterwards full citation needed full citation needed In a later period the Bulgarians replaced long established Greek Latin toponyms with Thracian ones which might suggest that Thracian had not been completely obliterated then Some pre Slavic linguistic and cultural traces might have been preserved among modern Bulgarians and Macedonians Scythia Minor and Moesia Inferior appear to have been Romanized although the region became a focus of barbarian re settlements various Goths and Huns during the 4th and early 5th centuries AD before a further Romanization episode during the early 6th century According to archeological evidence from the late periods of Roman rule the Romans did not decrease the number of Thracians significantly in major cities By the 4th century the major city of Serdica had predominantly Thracian populace based on epigraphic evidence which shows prevailing Latino Thracian given names but thereafter the names were completely replaced by Christian ones full citation needed The early Slavs emerged from their original homeland in the early 6th century and spread to most of the eastern Central Europe Eastern Europe and the Balkans thus forming three main branches the West Slavs in eastern Central Europe the East Slavs in Eastern Europe and the South Slavs in Southeastern Europe Balkans The latter gradually inflicted total linguistic replacement of Thracian if the Thracians had not already been Romanized or Hellenized Most scholars accept that they began large scale settling of the Balkans in the 580s based on the statement of the 6th century historian Menander speaking of 100 000 Slavs in Thrace and consecutive attacks of Greece in 582 They continued coming to the Balkans in many waves but also leaving most notably Justinian II 685 695 settled as many as 30 000 Slavs from Thrace in Asia Minor The Byzantines grouped the numerous Slavic tribes into two groups the Sclaveni and Antes Some Bulgarian scholars suggest that the Antes became one of the ancestors of the modern Bulgarians The Bulgars are first mentioned in the 4th century in the vicinity of the North Caucasian steppe Scholars often suggest that the ultimate origins of the Bulgar is Turkic and can be traced to the Central Asian nomadic confederations verification needed specifically as part of loosely related Oghuric tribes which spanned from the Pontic steppe to central Asia However any direct connection between the Bulgars and postulated Asian counterparts rest on little more than speculative and contorted etymologies Some Bulgarian historians question the identification of the Bulgars as a Turkic tribe and suggest an Iranian origin Other Bulgarian scholars actively oppose the Iranian hypothesis According to Raymond Detrez the Iranian theory is rooted in the periods of anti Turkish sentiment in Bulgaria and is ideologically motivated Since 1989 anti Turkish rhetoric is now reflected in the theories that challenge the thesis of the Bulgars Turkic origin Alongside the Iranian or Aryan theory there appeared arguments favoring an autochthonous origin In the 670s some Bulgar tribes the Danube Bulgars led by Asparuh and the Bulgars led by Kuber crossed the Danube river and settled in the Balkans with a single migration wave the former of which Michael the Syrian described as numbering 10 000 The Bulgars are often not thought to have been numerous becoming a ruling elite in the areas they controlled However according to Steven Runciman a tribe that was able to defeat an Emperor lead Byzantine army must have been of considerable dimensions full citation needed Asparuh s Bulgars made a tribal union with the Severians and the Seven clans who were re settled to protect the flanks of the Bulgar settlements in Scythia Minor as the capital Pliska was built on the site of a former Slavic settlement During the Early Byzantine Era the Roman provincials in Scythia Minor and Moesia Secunda were already engaged in economic and social exchange with the barbarians north of the Danube This might have facilitated their eventual Slavonization although the majority of the population appears to have been withdrawn to the hinterland of Constantinople or Asia Minor prior to any permanent Slavic and Bulgar settlement south of the Danube full citation needed The major port towns in Pontic Bulgaria remained Byzantine Greek in their outlook The large scale population transfers and territorial expansions during the 8th and 9th century additionally increased the number of the Slavs and Byzantine Christians within the state making the Bulgars quite obviously a minority The establishment of a new state molded the various Slav Bulgar and earlier or later populations into the Bulgarian people of the First Bulgarian Empire speaking a South Slavic language In different periods to the ethnogenesis of the local population contributed also different Indo European and Turkic people who settled or lived on the Balkans Bulgarian ethnogenetic conception The Bulgarians are usually regarded as part of the Slavic ethnolinguistic group However the controversial issue of their ethnogenesis is a popular subject in the works of the nationalist scientists The fierce debates started in the 19th century and the questionable proportions of the presumed Thracian Bulgar and Slavic ancestry have depended on the geopolitical situation of the country and on ideological and political predilections These supposed proportions have been changed several times during the 20th century emphasizing usually the Slavic part of Bulgarian ancestry related to the traditionally strong Russophilia in the country However during the 1970s Thracology was especially supported by the communist authority as an attempt to underline the indigenous influence into the Bulgarian ethnogenesis After the fall of Communism the spiritualized image of the Thracians began to fade Following the cooling of relations with Russia and the country s EU accession the opinion on significant Bulgar genetic impact was launched among nationalist circles that lately have downplayed the country s Slavic ancestry From a limited group of Turkic equestrian nomads the Danubian Bulgars were reinterpreted by them as a numerous Aryan people with a unique culture publisher missing Genetic originsHistorical contribution of donor source groups in European peoples according to Hellenthal et al 2014 Polish is selected to represent Slavic speaking donor groups from the Middle Ages that are estimated to make up 97 of the ancestry in Belarusians 80 in Russians 55 in Bulgarians 54 in Hungarians 48 in Romanians 46 in Chuvash and 30 in Greeks According to a triple analysis autosomal mitochondrial and paternal of available data from large scale studies on Balto Slavs and their proximal populations the whole genome SNP data situates Bulgarians in a cluster with Romanians Macedonians and Gagauzes and they are at similar proximity to Serbs and Montenegrins Bulgarians like most Europeans largely descend from three distinct lineages Mesolithic hunter gatherers descended from populations associated with the Paleolithic Epigravettian culture Neolithic Early European Farmers who migrated from Anatolia during the Neolithic Revolution 9 000 years ago and Yamnaya Steppe herders who expanded into Europe from the Pontic steppe in the context of Indo European migrations 5 000 years ago HistoryOfficers from Bulgarian hussar regiment in Russia 1776 1783 The First Bulgarian Empire was founded in 681 After the adoption of Orthodox Christianity in 864 it became one of the cultural centres of Slavic Europe Its leading cultural position was consolidated with the invention of the Cyrillic script in its capital Preslav at the eve of the 10th century The development of Old Church Slavonic literacy in the country had the effect of preventing the assimilation of the South Slavs into neighbouring cultures and it also stimulated the development of a distinct ethnic identity A symbiosis was carried out between the numerically weak Bulgars and the numerous Slavic tribes in that broad area from the Danube to the north to the Aegean Sea to the south and from the Adriatic Sea to the west to the Black Sea to the east who accepted the common ethnonym Bulgarians During the 10th century the Bulgarians established a form of national identity that was far from modern nationalism but helped them to survive as a distinct entity through the centuries In 1018 Bulgaria lost its independence and remained a Byzantine subject until 1185 when the Second Bulgarian Empire was created Nevertheless at the end of the 14th century the Ottomans conquered the whole of Bulgaria Under the Ottoman system Christians were considered an inferior class of people Thus Bulgarians like other Christians were subjected to heavy taxes and a small portion of the Bulgarian populace experienced partial or complete Islamisation Orthodox Christians were included in a specific ethno religious community called Rum Millet To the common people belonging to this Orthodox commonwealth became more important than their ethnic origins This community became both basic form of social organization and source of identity for all the ethnic groups inside it In this way ethnonyms were rarely used and between the 15th and 19th centuries most of the local people gradually began to identify themselves simply as Christians However the public spirited clergy in some isolated monasteries still kept the distinct Bulgarian identity alive and this helped it to survive predominantly in rural remote areas Despite the process of ethno religious fusion among the Orthodox Christians strong nationalist sentiments persisted into the Catholic community in the northwestern part of the country At that time a process of partial Hellenization occurred among the intelligentsia and the urban population as a result of the higher status of the Greek culture and the Greek Orthodox Church among the Balkan Christians During the second half of the 18th century the Enlightenment in Western Europe provided influence for the initiation of the National awakening of Bulgaria in 1762 Some Bulgarians supported the Russian Army when they crossed the Danube in the middle of the 18th century Russia worked to convince them to settle in areas recently conquered by it especially in Bessarabia As a consequence many Bulgarian refugees settled there and later they formed two military regiments as part of the Russian military colonization of the area in 1759 1763 Bulgarian national movement During the Russo Turkish Wars of 1806 1812 and 1828 1829 Bulgarian emigrants formed the Bulgarian Countrymen s Army and joined the Russian Army hoping Russia would bring Bulgarian liberation but its imperial interests were focused then on Greece and Wallachia The rise of nationalism under the Ottoman Empire led to a struggle for cultural and religious autonomy of the Bulgarian people The Bulgarians wanted to have their own schools and liturgy in Bulgarian and they needed an independent ecclesiastical organisation Discontent with the supremacy of the Greek Orthodox clergy the struggle started to flare up in several Bulgarian dioceses in the 1820s It was not until the 1850s when the Bulgarians initiated a purposeful struggle against the Patriarchate of Constantinople The struggle between the Bulgarians and the Greek Phanariotes intensified throughout the 1860s In 1861 the Vatican and the Ottoman government recognized a separate Bulgarian Uniat Church As the Greek clerics were ousted from most Bulgarian bishoprics at the end of the decade significant areas had been seceded from the Patriarchate s control This movement restored the distinct Bulgarian national consciousness among the common people and led to the recognition of the Bulgarian millet in 1870 by the Ottomans As result two armed struggle movements started to develop as late as the beginning of the 1870s the Internal Revolutionary Organisation and the Bulgarian Revolutionary Central Committee Their armed struggle reached its peak with the April Uprising which broke out in 1876 It resulted in the Russo Turkish War 1877 1878 and led to the foundation of the third Bulgarian state after the Treaty of San Stefano The issue of Bulgarian nationalism gained greater significance following the Congress of Berlin which took back the Macedonia and Adrianople regions returning them under the control of the Ottoman Empire Also an autonomous Ottoman province called Eastern Rumelia was created in Northern Thrace As a consequence the Bulgarian national movement proclaimed as its aim the inclusion of most of Macedonia Thrace and Moesia under Greater Bulgaria Eastern Rumelia was annexed to Bulgaria in 1885 through bloodless revolution During the early 1890s two pro Bulgarian revolutionary organizations were founded the Internal Macedonian Adrianople Revolutionary Organization and the Supreme Macedonian Adrianople Committee In 1903 they participated in the unsuccessful Ilinden Preobrazhenie Uprising against the Ottomans in Macedonia and the Adrianople Vilayet Macedonian Slavs were identified then predominantly as Bulgarians and significant Bulgarophile sentiments endured up among them until the end of the Second World War In the early 20th century the control over Macedonia became a key point of contention between Bulgaria Greece and Serbia who fought the First Balkan War of 1912 1913 and the Second Balkan War of 1913 The area was further fought over during the World War I 1915 1918 and the World War II 1941 1944 DemographicsMap of the Bulgarian diaspora in the world includes people with Bulgarian ancestry or citizenship Bulgaria 100 000 10 000 1 000 Most Bulgarians live in Bulgaria where they number around 6 million constituting 85 of the population Bulgarian minorities exist in Serbia Romania Banat Bulgarians Hungary Albania as well as in Ukraine and Moldova see Bessarabian Bulgarians Many Bulgarians also live in the diaspora which is formed by representatives and descendants of the old before 1989 and new after 1989 emigration The old emigration was made up of some 2 470 000 citation needed economic and several tens of thousands of political emigrants and was directed for the most part to the U S Canada Argentina Brazil and Germany The new emigration is estimated at some 970 000 people and can be divided into two major subcategories permanent emigration at the beginning of the 1990s directed mostly to the U S Canada Austria and Germany and labour emigration at the end of the 1990s directed for the most part to Greece Italy the UK and Spain Migrations to the West have been quite steady even in the late 1990s and early 21st century as people continue moving to countries like the US Canada and Australia Most Bulgarians living in Canada can be found in Toronto Ontario and the provinces with the most Bulgarians in Canada are Ontario and Quebec According to the 2001 census there were 1 124 240 Bulgarian citizens in the city of Sofia 302 858 in Plovdiv 300 000 in Varna and about 200 000 in Burgas The total number of Bulgarians stood at over 9 million Associated ethnic groupsBulgarians are considered most closely related to the Macedonians The Slavic speakers of Greek Macedonia and the Torlak speakers in Serbia are also closely related to Bulgarians CultureLanguage Bulgarians speak a South Slavic language which is mutually intelligible with Macedonian and to a lesser degree with Serbo Croatian especially the eastern dialects The lexical similarities between Bulgarian and Macedonian are 86 between Bulgarian and other Slavic languages between 71 and 80 but with the Baltic languages they are 40 46 while with English are about 20 Less than a dozen Bulgarian words are derived from Turkic Bulgar Bulgarian demonstrates some linguistic developments that set it apart from other Slavic languages shared with Romanian Albanian and Greek see Balkan language area Bulgarian was influenced lexically by medieval and modern Greek and Turkish Medieval Bulgarian influenced the other South Slavic languages and Romanian With Bulgarian and Russian there was a mutual influence in both directions Both languages were official or a lingua franca of each other during the Middle Ages and the Cold War Recently Bulgarian has borrowed many words from German French and English The Bulgarian language is spoken by the majority of the Bulgarian diaspora but less so by the descendants of earlier emigrants to the U S Canada Argentina and Brazil Bulgarian linguists consider the officialized Macedonian language since 1944 to be a local codified variation of Bulgarian just as most ethnographers and linguists until the early 20th century considered the local Slavic speech in the Macedonian region as Bulgarian dialects citation needed The president of Bulgaria Zhelyu Zhelev declined to recognize Macedonian as a separate language when North Macedonia became a new independent state The Bulgarian language is written in the Cyrillic script Cyrillic alphabet Cyrillic alphabet of the medieval Old Bulgarian language In the first half of the 10th century the Cyrillic script was devised in the Preslav Literary School Bulgaria based on the Glagolitic the Greek and Latin alphabets Modern versions of the alphabet are now used to write five more Slavic languages such as Belarusian Macedonian Russian Serbian and Ukrainian as well as Mongolian and some other 60 languages spoken in the former Soviet Union Medieval Bulgaria was the most important cultural centre of the Slavic peoples at the end of the 9th and throughout the 10th century The two literary schools of Preslav and Ohrid developed a rich literary and cultural activity with authors of the rank of Constantine of Preslav John Exarch Chernorizets Hrabar Clement and Naum of Ohrid Bulgaria exerted similar influence on its neighbouring countries in the mid to late 14th century at the time of the Tarnovo Literary School with the work of Patriarch Evtimiy Gregory Tsamblak Constantine of Kostenets Konstantin Kostenechki Bulgarian cultural influence was especially strong in Wallachia and Moldova where the Cyrillic script was used until 1860 while Church Slavonic was the official language of the princely chancellery and of the church until the end of the 17th century Name system There are several different layers of Bulgarian names The vast majority of them have either Christian names like Lazar Ivan Anna Maria Ekaterina or Slavic origin Vladimir Svetoslav Velislava After the Liberation in 1878 the names of historical Bulgar rulers like Asparuh Krum Kubrat and Tervel were resurrected The Bulgar name Boris has spread from Bulgaria to a number of countries in the world Most Bulgarian male surnames have an ov surname suffix Cyrillic ov a tradition used mostly by Eastern Slavic nations such as Russia Ukraine and Belarus This is sometimes transcribed as off or of John Atanasov John Atanasoff but more often as ov e g Boyko Borisov The ov suffix is the Slavic gender agreeing suffix thus Ivanov Bulgarian Ivanov literally means Ivan s Bulgarian middle names are patronymic and use the gender agreeing suffix as well thus the middle name of Nikola s son becomes Nikolov and the middle name of Ivan s son becomes Ivanov Since names in Bulgarian are gender based Bulgarian women have the ova surname suffix Cyrillic ova for example Maria Ivanova The plural form of Bulgarian names ends in ovi Cyrillic ovi for example the Ivanovi family Ivanovi Other common Bulgarian male surnames have the ev surname suffix Cyrillic ev for example Stoev Ganchev Peev and so on The female surname in this case would have the eva surname suffix Cyrillic eva for example Galina Stoeva The last name of the entire family then would have the plural form of evi Cyrillic evi for example the Stoevi family Stoevi Another typical Bulgarian surname suffix though less common is ski This surname ending also gets an a when the bearer of the name is female Smirnenski becomes Smirnenska The plural form of the surname suffix ski is still ski e g the Smirnenski family Smirnenski The ending in female ina also appears rarely It used to be given to the child of an unmarried woman for example the son of Kuna will get the surname Kunin and the son of Gana Ganin The surname suffix ich can be found only occasionally primarily among the Roman Catholic Bulgarians The surname ending ich does not get an additional a if the bearer of the name is female Religion Map of the Bulgarian Exarchate 1870 1913 The Ottomans required a threshold of two thirds of positive votes of the Orthodox population to include a region into this jurisdiction Most Bulgarians are at least nominally members of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church founded in 870 AD autocephalous since 927 AD The Bulgarian Orthodox Church is the independent national church of Bulgaria like the other national branches of the Eastern Orthodox communion and is considered a dominating element of Bulgarian national consciousness The church was abolished once during the period of Ottoman rule 1396 1878 in 1873 it was revived as Bulgarian Exarchate and soon after raised again to Bulgarian Patriarchate In 2021 the Orthodox Church at least nominally had a total of 4 219 270 members in Bulgaria 71 5 of the population down from 6 552 000 83 at the 2001 census 3 980 131 of these pointed out the Bulgarian ethnic group 79 of the total Bulgarian ethnic group The Orthodox Bulgarian minorities in Romania Serbia Greece Albania Ukraine and Moldova nowadays hold allegiance to the respective national Orthodox churches Despite the position of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church as a unifying symbol for all Bulgarians small groups of Bulgarians have converted to other faiths through the course of time During Ottoman rule a substantial number of Bulgarians converted to Islam forming the community of the Pomaks or Muslim Bulgarians In the 16th and the 17th centuries Roman Catholic missionaries converted a small number of Bulgarian Paulicians in the districts of Plovdiv and Svishtov to Roman Catholicism Nowadays there are some 40 000 Roman Catholic Bulgarians in Bulgaria additional 10 000 in the Banat in Romania and up to 100 000 people of Bulgarian ancestry in South America The Roman Catholic Bulgarians of the Banat are also descendants of Paulicians who fled there at the end of the 17th century after an unsuccessful uprising against the Ottomans Protestantism was introduced in Bulgaria by missionaries from the United States in 1857 Missionary work continued throughout the second half of the 19th and the first half of the 20th century Nowadays there are some 25 000 Protestant Bulgarians in Bulgaria Art and science Assen Jordanoff left Bulgarian American inventor considered by prominent aviation specialists the main contributor to the American knowledge of aviation likewise the Boeing airbag and tape recorder John Vincent Atanasoff right Bulgarian American inventor of the Atanasoff Berry computer legally the inventor of the electronic digital computer in the U S and considered the father of the computer Boris Christoff Nicolai Ghiaurov Raina Kabaivanska and Ghena Dimitrova made a precious contribution to opera singing with Ghiaurov and Christoff being two of the greatest bassos in the post war period Similarly Anna Maria Ravnopolska Dean is one of the best known harpists today Bulgarians have made valuable contributions to world culture in modern times as well Julia Kristeva and Tzvetan Todorov were among the most influential European philosophers in the second half of the 20th century The artist Christo is among the most famous representatives of environmental art with projects such as the Wrapped Reichstag Bulgarians in the diaspora have also been active American scientists and inventors of Bulgarian descent include John Atanasoff Peter Petroff and Assen Jordanoff Bulgarian American Stephane Groueff wrote the celebrated book Manhattan Project about the making of the first atomic bomb and also penned Crown of Thorns a biography of Tsar Boris III of Bulgaria Cuisine Bulgarian peach kompot non alcoholic clear juice obtained by cooking fruit Famous for its rich salads required at every meal Bulgarian cuisine is also noted for the diversity and quality of dairy products and the variety of local wines and alcoholic beverages such as rakia mastika and menta Bulgarian cuisine features also a variety of hot and cold soups an example of a cold soup being tarator There are many different Bulgarian pastries as well such as banitsa Most Bulgarian dishes are oven baked steamed or in the form of stew Deep frying is not very typical but grilling especially different kinds of meats is very common Pork meat is the most common meat in the Bulgarian cuisine Oriental dishes do exist in Bulgarian cuisine with most common being moussaka gyuvetch and baklava A very popular ingredient in Bulgarian cuisine is the Bulgarian white brine cheese called sirene sirene It is the main ingredient in many salads as well as in a variety of pastries Fish and chicken are widely eaten and while beef is less common as most cattle are bred for milk production rather than meat veal is a natural byproduct of this process and it is found in many popular recipes Bulgaria is a net exporter of lamb and its own consumption of the meat is prevalent during its production time in spring The bread and salt tradition which is widespread among Balto Slavs is the usual welcome given to strangers and politicians Folk beliefs and customs Kukeri from the area of BurgasGirls celebrating Lazaruvane from Gabra Sofia Province Bulgarians may celebrate with horse racings At Christmas Eve a Pogaca with fortunes is cooked which are afterwards put under the pillow At Easter the first egg is painted red and is kept for a whole year On the Baptism of Jesus a competition to catch the cross in the river is held and is believed the sky is opened and any wish will be fulfilled Bulgarians as well as Albanians nod the head up and down to indicates no and shake to indicate yes They may wear the martenitsa martenica an adornment made of white and red yarn and worn on the wrist or pinned on the clothes from 1 March until the end of the month Alternatively one can take off the martenitsa earlier if one sees a stork considered a harbinger of spring One can then tie the martenitsa to the blossoming branch of a tree Family members and friends in Bulgaria customarily exchange martenitsas which they regard as symbols of health and longevity When a stork is seen the martenitsa should be left on a tree The white thread represents peace and tranquility while the red one stands for the cycles of life Bulgarians may also refer to the holiday of 1 March as Baba Marta Baba Marta meaning Grandmother March It preserves an ancient pagan tradition possibly celebrating the old Roman new Year beginning on 1 March identical with Romanian Mărțișor Pagan customs found their way to the Christian holidays The ancient ritual of kukeri kukeri similar to Slovenian Kurentovanje Busojaras and Halloween is performed by costumed men in different times of the year and after Easter This seeks to scare away evil spirits and bring good harvest and health to the community Goat is symbolized that was left from the Thracian cult of Dionysian Mysteries The ritual consists of dancing jumping shouting and collect gifts from the houses in an attempt to banish all evil from the village The adornments on the costumes vary from one region to another The Thracian Heros remains in the image of Saint George at whose feast the agriculture is celebrated a lamb is traditionally eaten accomplished with ritual bathing Saint Tryphon s fertility and wine is attributed a Thracian origin considered to preserve the cult to Sabazius as the Kukeri This is followed in February by Pokladi a tradition of setting massively large fire and jump over as at the Kupala Night and a competition between couples to eat an egg on a thread is held Another characteristic custom called nestinarstvo nestinarstvo or firedancing distinguishes the Strandzha region as well as Dog spinning The authentic nestinarstvo with states of trance is only preserved in the village Balgari This ancient custom involves dancing into fire or over live embers Women dance into the fire with their bare feet without suffering any injury or pain Slavic pagan customs are preserved in Bulgarian Christian holidays The Miladinov brothers and foreign authors noticed that even pagan prayers are preserved quoting plenty of Slavic pagan rite songs and tales remained in Bulgarians including Macedonians and Pomaks mainly dedicated to the divine nymphs samovili and peperuna for the feasts surva Saint George s Day Koleda etc with evidence of toponymy throughout the regional groups linking directly to the deities Svarog Perun Hors and Veles while the regional group Hartsoi derive their name from god Hors Songs dedicated to the Thracian divinity Orpheus were found in Pomaks who is said to marry the samovili The old Bulgarian name of the Presentation of Jesus at the Temple was Gromnitsa and Perunov den dedicated to the supreme Slavic thunder god Perun In the mix of Christian and pagan patrons of thunder at Saint Elijah s feast day Ognyena Maria is worshiped the Slavic goddesses assisting Perun that took a substitutional dual position of the Christian Mother of God The custom for rain begging Peperuna is derived from the wife of Perun and the god of the rain Dodola this was described by a 1792 Bulgarian book as a continued worship of Perun at times of absence of rain with a ritual performed by a boy or a girl dressed like Perun Similar rain begging is called German In case of continuous lack of rain a custom of driving out the zmey from the area is performed In the dualistic Slavic belief the zmey may be both good tutelary spirit and evil in which case is considered not local and good but evil and trying to inflict harm and drought Saint Jeremiah s feast is of the snakes and the reptiles there is a tradition of jumping over fire At the Rusalka week the girls don t go outside to prevent themselves from diseases and harm that the dead forces Rusalii can cause This remained the holiday of the samovili The men performing the custom are also called Rusalii they don t let anybody pass through between them don t talk with each other except for the evening avoid water if someone lacks behind a member swoops the sword over the lacker s head to prevent him from evil spirits If the group encounter on their way a well dry tree old cemeteries crossroads they go round them three times Before leaving rusalii say goodbye to their relatives as if they went to war which is not surprising because some of them are killed When two rusalii groups met there was a fight to the death in which the dead were buried in special rusaliyski cemetery Each year there are holidays in honour of wolves and mouses A relief for the scared believers is celebrated at the Beheading of St John the Baptist when according to Bulgarian belief all the mythical figures go back to their caves in a mythical village in the middle of nowhere Zmeykovo of the zmey king along with the rusalki samodivi and return at Annunciation According to other beliefs the danger peaks at the so called few days around the New Year Eve Dirty Days this time starts at Koleda which merged with Christmas when groups of kids koledari visit houses singing carols and receiving a gift at parting It is believed that no man can go in Zmeyovo and only the magpie knows the location of this place At many of the holidays a sexual taboo is said to be practiced to prevent conceiving a vampire or werewolf and not to work not to go to Sedenki or go out Live fire is set in case of epidemics Babinden for example is rooted in the mother goddess On the day of St Vlas the tradition of a wooly god Veles established itself a god who is considered to be a protector of shepherds and bread is given to the livestock on that day The ancient Slavic custom to marry died people occurred in Bulgarian society Survakane is performed each new year with a decorated stick by children who hit adults on the back for health at the New Year Eve usually in exchange of money In the Chech region there is a custom forbidding touching the land i e construction and agriculture at the equinox on 25 March and the same custom is found in Belarusian Volhynia and Polesia Bulgarian mythology and fairy tales are mainly about forest figures such as the dragon zmey the nymphs samovili samodivi the witch veshtitsa They are usually harmful and devastating but can also help the people The samovili are said to live in beeches and sycamores the which are therefore considered holy and not permitted burning Samovili although believed to be masters of everything between the sky and the earth run away from fraxinus garlic dew and walnut Walnut remained in Christianity to be used in prayers to see the dead in Spirits Day Dictamnus is believed to be their favourite herb which is intoxicating The samovili are spirits in Bulgarian beliefs are the diseases themselves and punish people kidnap shepherds make blind the people or drown them and are in white colored dress they are in odd numbers which suggest they are ones of the dead Epic heroes as Prince Marko are believed to be descended from the samodivi The elm is believed to scare the evil forces Sacral trees in Bulgarian beliefs are beeches and oaks Hawthorn is believed to expel all evil forces and is applied to cure suspected vampires The tradition forbids killing of sacred animals deer while it is hold a belief the samodivi runaway from horse The alleged as unclean animals resembling the devil such as the goat are however exempted from being eaten as the holy ones The zmey is transhuman and can turn into animals plants and items he is also responsible for diseases madness and missing women The female version of the Slavic zmey is Lamia and Ala is another version The girls who practiced Lazaruvane and other rituals could not be kidnapped by the zmey The main enemy of the Sun is the zmey which tries to eat the Sun which scene is preserved in church art The sun is painted one eyed as recorded by beliefs Perun stabbed one of the sun s eyes to save the world from overheating The born on Saturday are thought as having supernatural powers those born at the wolves holidays and a number of people are alleged as varkolaks and vampires The most spread Bulgarian view of the vampire was that of a rolling bulbous balloon of blood derived from the Slavic term pir drink Rusalka is believed to be a variety of the samodivi and Nav but the latter are considered little fairies The Thursdays remained feasts of Perun in Bulgarian beliefs The wind and the hot steam of the bread is believed to be the souls of the dead From Easter to Feast of the Ascension it is believed that the death are in the flowers and the animals Mora in Bulgarian beliefs is a black hairy evil spirit with four firing eyes associated with nightmares when causing someone to scream similarly to Kikimora Polunoshtnitsa and Poludnica are believed to be evil spirits causing death while to Lesnik Domovnik and Vodnik a dualistic nature is attributed Thanks to the Vlshebnik a man of the community a magician and a priest communication with the other world was held Torbalan is the Sack Man used to scare children along with Baba Yaga who is a witch in her Bulgarian version Kuma Lisa and Hitar Petar are the tricky fox and villager from the fairy tales the tricked antagonist is often Nasreddin Hoca whereas Bay Ganyo is a ridiculed Bulgarian villager Ivancho and Mariika are the protagonists of the jokes Despite eastern Ottoman influence is obvious in areas such as cuisine and music Bulgarian folk beliefs and mythology seem to lack analogies with Turkic mythology paganism and any non European folk beliefs so in pre Christian times the ancient Bulgars were much inferior to the Slavs in the ethnogenesis and culture that resulted in modern Bulgarians The Slavic language was officialized at the same time with Christianity so Slavic paganism has never been a state religion of Bulgaria or more influential than Tengriism Most of Bulgarian land lack any pagan archeology left from the Bulgars despite early Christianization and that during most of the pagan period medieval Bulgarian borders spread significantly only in today s northern Bulgaria Although legacy indicating ancient Bulgar culture is at most virtually absent in modern Bulgarian culture some authors claim there is a similarity between the dress and customs of the Chuvashes who descend from the Volga Bulgars and the Bulgarian ethnographic group Kapantsi from Targovishte Province and Razgrad Province among whom the claim that they are direct descendants of Asparuh s Bulgars is popular but Slavic elements are found among them Folk dress and music Bulgarian folk dancers in a national costume with embroidery on the penultimate row of the aprons showing the most spread Slavic cryptogram Bur with a cross inside the rhombus representing the sun and spirals indicating rain which is similarly represented as the Rising Sundecorative pattern of the Flag of Belarus Similar carpet patterns appear on the Flag of Turkmenistan ultimately derived from ancient Persia Bulgarian folk costumes feature long white robes usually with red embrdoiery and ornaments derived from the Slavic Rachenik The costume is considered to be mainly derived from the dress of the ancient Slavs the female dress with the overgarments joined at the shoulders that evolved from Sarafan and all the types of sukman saya and aprons fasten at the waist are said to be directly descended from the ancient Slavs only with negligible mutation The women s head dress which turned to be a must for the Bulgarian costume is a decoration with flowers optionally on a headband that distinguishes all the Balto Slavic peoples and is not found in western cultures The male dress is of likewise origin usually Riza robe poyas belt poturi full bottomed breeches typical for the Slavs and often a tsarvul and kalpak for shoes and jacket Among the most similar relatives of the latter for example is Ukrainian hutsul but the kalpak is attributed to Ottoman influence The male skirt fustanella appears on the dress only of the Macedonian Bulgarians and is of indigenous Balkan origin or influence In some dress of Thrace the symbol of the snake as in medieval tombs is found and is considered a Thracian cultural legacy and belief Folk songs are most often about the nymphs from Bulgarian and West Slavic mythology samovili and the epic heroes yunaks Instruments Gadulka Gusla Duduk gaida Dvoyanka are analogous to other Slavic gudok dudka and Dvodentsivka Kaval is common in the Balkans and Turkey and is akin to Arab Kawala as well as Tapan Goblet Drum Zurna The most spread dance is a circle dance called horo and khorovod Songs are generally loud Recent eastern influences from the genre music chalga and turbo folk even brought a prestige for the masculine voices of females Valya Balkanska is a folk singer thanks to whom the Bulgarian speech in her song Izlel ye Delyo Haydutin will be played in the Outer space for at least 60 000 years more as part of the Voyager Golden Record selection of music included in the two Voyager spacecraft launched in 1977 Sport Hristo Stoichkov awarded the Ballon d Or and regarded as one of the best footballers by Barcelona Veselin Topalov the 21st World Chess Champion As for most European peoples football became by far the most popular sport for the Bulgarians Hristo Stoichkov was one of the best football soccer players in the second half of the 20th century having played with the national team and FC Barcelona He received a number of awards and was the joint top scorer at the 1994 World Cup Dimitar Berbatov formerly in Manchester United Tottenham Hotspur Bayer Leverkusen and others the national team and two domestic clubs is still the most popular Bulgarian football player of the 21st century In the beginning of the 20th century Bulgaria was famous for two of the best wrestlers in the world Dan Kolov and Nikola Petroff Stefka Kostadinova is the best female high jumper still holding the world record from 1987 one of the oldest unbroken world records for all kind of athletics Ivet Lalova along with Irina Privalova is currently the fastest white woman at 100 metres Kaloyan Mahlyanov has been the first European sumo wrestler to win the Emperor s Cup in Japan Veselin Topalov won the 2005 World Chess Championship He was ranked No 1 in the world from April 2006 to January 2007 and had the second highest Elo rating of all time 2813 He regained the world No 1 ranking again in October 2008 Symbols The national symbols of the Bulgarians are the Flag the Coat of Arms the National anthem and the National Guard as well other unofficial symbols such as the Samara flag The national flag of Bulgaria is a rectangle with three colours white green and red positioned horizontally top to bottom The colour fields are of same form and equal size It is generally known that the white represents the purity the green the forest and nature and the red the blood of the people referencing the strong bond of the nation through all the wars and revolutions that have shaken the country in the past The Coat of arms of Bulgaria is a state symbol of the sovereignty and independence of the Bulgarian people and state It represents a crowned rampant golden lion on a dark red background with the shape of a shield Above the shield there is a crown modeled after the crowns of the emperors of the Second Bulgarian Empire with five crosses and an additional cross on top Two crowned rampant golden lions hold the shield from both sides facing it They stand upon two crossed oak branches with acorns which symbolize the power and the longevity of the Bulgarian state Under the shield there is a white band lined with the three national colours The band is placed across the ends of the branches and the phrase Unity Makes Strength is inscribed on it Both the Bulgarian flag and the Coat of Arms are also used as symbols of various Bulgarian organisations political parties and institutions The horse of the Madara Rider is preserved on the back of the Bulgarian stotinka MapsMap of A Scobel Andrees Allgemeiner Handatlas 1908 Distribution of the Balkan peoples in 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica Ethnic groups in the Balkans and Asia Minor by William R Shepherd 1911 Distribution of European peoples in 1914 according to L Ravenstein Swiss ethnographic map of Europe published in 1918 by Juozas Gabrys Percentage of Pomaks by first language according to the 1965 Census excluding Bulgarian Distribution of Bulgarians in Odesa Oblast Ukraine according to the 2001 census Distribution of Bulgarians by first language in Zaporizhzhia Oblast Ukraine according to the 2001 census Distribution of predominant ethnic groups in Bulgaria according to the 2011 census Distribution of Bulgarians in Romania according to the 2002 census Distribution of Bulgarians in Moldova according to the 2004 censusHistoriographyWith the formation of the Bulgarian ethnicity in the mid 10th century the Byzantines usually called the Bulgarians Moesi and their lands Moesia See alsoBulgaria portalBalkan Danubian culture Macedonian Bulgarians Macedonians ethnic group Thracian BulgariansReferencesDanver Steven L 10 March 2015 Native Bulgarian people s of the World Routledge ISBN 9781317464006 Archived from the original on 28 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language religious beliefs material culture etc which should be extensively studied in all their aspects in the future Dimitŭr Angelov 1971 Obrazuvane na blgarskata narodnost Formation of the Bulgarian nation Sofia Izdatelstvo Nauka i izkustvo Vekove pp 409 410 Summary in English Archived 28 May 2013 at the Wayback Machine Hellenthal Garrett Busby George B J Band Gavin Wilson James F Capelli Cristian Falush Daniel Myers Simon 14 February 2014 A Genetic Atlas of Human Admixture History Science 343 6172 747 751 Bibcode 2014Sci 343 747H doi 10 1126 science 1243518 ISSN 0036 8075 PMC 4209567 PMID 24531965 Axel Kristinsson 2010 Expansions Competition and Conquest in Europe Since the Bronze Age Reykjavikur Akademian ISBN 9979992212 p 194 Archived 27 September 2023 at the Wayback Machine Companion website for A genetic atlas of human admixture history Hellenthal et al Science 2014 A genetic atlas of human admixture history Archived from the original on 2 September 2019 Retrieved 28 April 2023 Hellenthal G Busby G B Band G Wilson J F Capelli C Falush D Myers S 14 February 2014 A Genetic Atlas of Human Admixture History Science 343 6172 747 751 Bibcode 2014Sci 343 747H doi 10 1126 science 1243518 PMC 4209567 PMID 24531965 Bulgar people Encyclopaedia Britannica Archived from the original on 26 June 2015 Retrieved 20 December 2017 Fine John V A 1991 The Early Medieval Balkans A Critical Survey from the Sixth to the Late Twelfth Century University of Michigan Press p 68 ISBN 978 0472081493 Archived from the original on 15 January 2023 Retrieved 3 September 2020 Garrett Hellenthal et al 14 February 2014 A Genetic Atlas of Human Admixture History Science Vol 343 no 6172 p 751 CIs for the admixture time s overlap but predate the Mongol empire with estimates from 440 to 1080 CE Fig 3 Archived 27 September 2023 at the Wayback Machine The so called Bulgar inscriptions are with few exceptions written in Greek rather than in Turkic runes they mention officials with late antique titles and use late Antique terminology and indictional dating Contemporary Byzantine inscriptions are not obviously similar implying that this Bulgar epigraphic habit was not imported from Constantinople but was a local Bulgar development or rather it was an indigenous Roman inheritance M Whittow Nicopolis ad Istrium Backward and Balkan Bulgarian historical review Publishing House of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences pp 53 The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Greece and Rome 7th edition p 57 Elemer Illyes Ethnic Continuity in the Carpatho Danubian Area Mallory J P Adams D Q eds 1997 Encyclopedia of Indo European culture Taylor amp Francis p 576 ISBN 9781884964985 Mercia MacDermott 1998 Bulgarian Folk Customs Jessica Kingsley ISBN 1853024856 pp 18 19 Archived 22 May 2023 at the Wayback Machine Radoslav Katicic 1976 Ancient Languages of the Balkans Walter de Gruyter ISBN 3111568873 pp 9 10 71 Archived 22 May 2023 at the Wayback Machine Petculescu Liviu The Roman Army as a Factor of Romanisation in the North Eastern Part of Moesia Inferior PDF Pontos Archived PDF from the original on 26 March 2017 Retrieved 30 August 2015 Christie Neil 2004 Chapter 8 Landscapes of Change Ashgate ISBN 9781840146172 Archived from the original on 28 September 2023 Retrieved 16 October 2020 War and Warfare in Late Antiquity Brill 23 August 2013 p 781 ISBN 9789004252585 Archived from the original on 28 September 2023 Retrieved 16 October 2020 Sofia 127 years capital Sofia Municipality Douglas Q Adams Encyclopedia of Indo European Culture p 576 Fine John Van Antwerp Jr 1983 The Early Medieval Balkans University of Michigan Press ISBN 0 472 08149 7 p 31 Hupchick Dennis P The Balkans From Constantinople to Communism Palgrave Macmillan 2004 ISBN 1 4039 6417 3 Petar Petrov 1981 Obrazuvane na blgarskata drzhava Formation of the Bulgarian State Sofia Izdatelstvo Nauka i izkustvo Angelov Dimitar 1971 Obrazuvane na blgarskata narodnost Sofia Izdatelstvo Nauka i izkustvo Vekove Archived from the original on 28 May 2013 Retrieved 13 November 2011 via Kroraina Runciman Steven 1930 A history of the First Bulgarian Empire Archived 11 June 2011 at the Wayback Machine London G Bell amp Sons I 1 Karloukovski Vassil Zlatarski Vasil N 1970 1st ed 1918 Petrov Petar H ed Istoriya na blgarskata drzhava prez srednite vekove History of the Bulgarian state in the Middle Ages 2nd ed Nauka i izkustvo Archived from the original on 26 July 2013 Retrieved 13 November 2011 via Kroraina Rasho Rashev Die Protobulgaren im 5 7 Jahrhundert Sofia Orbel 2005 in Bulgarian German summary Sinor Denis 2005 Reflections on the History and Historiography of the Nomad Empires of Central Eurasia Acta Orientalia Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 58 1 3 14 doi 10 1556 AOrient 58 2005 1 1 JSTOR 23658601 permanent dead link Dobrev Petar 1995 Ezikt na Asparuhovite i Kuberovite blgari 1995 in Bulgarian Bakalov Georgi Malko izvestni fakti ot istoriyata na drevnite blgari Part 1 Archived 24 September 2015 at the Wayback Machine amp Part 2 Archived 1 December 2007 at the Wayback Machine in Bulgarian Yordanov Stefan 2002 Slavyani tyurki i indo iranci v rannoto srednovekovie ezikovi problemi na blgarskiya etnogenezis Slavs Turks and Indo Iranians in the Early Middle Ages Linguistic Problems of Bulgarian Ethnogenesis In Blgaristichni prouchvaniya 8 Aktualni problemi na blgaristikata i slavistikata Sedma mezhdunarodna nauchna sesiya Bulgarian Studies 8 Current Problems of Bulgarian and Slavic Studies Seventh International Scientific Session Veliko Tarnovo 22 23 August 2001 pp 275 295 Ivan Kalchev Dobrev 2005 Nadpis No 21 ot blgarskoto zlatno skrovishe Nagi Sent Miklosh Inscription No 21 from the Bulgarian gold treasure Nagy Saint Miklos Sbornik s materiali ot Nauchna konferenciya na VA G S Rakovski Collection of materials from the Scientific Conference of the Academy of Sciences G S Rakovski Sofia Detrez Raymond 2005 Developing Cultural Identity in the Balkans Convergence vs Divergence Peter Lang p 29 ISBN 9789052012971 Archived from the original on 28 September 2023 Retrieved 11 February 2022 Ghita Cristian Emilian Dobre Claudia Florentina 2016 Quest for a Suitable Past Myths and Memory in Central and Eastern Europe p 142 Hupchick D 11 January 2002 The Balkans From Constantinople to Communism Springer p 35 ISBN 9780312299132 Komatina 2010 p 55 82 Steven Runciman A history of the First Bulgarian Empire page 28 Goetz Hans Werner Jarnut Jorg Pohl Walter 2003 Regna and gentes the relationship between late antique and early medieval peoples and kingdoms in the transformation of the Roman world Brill pp 582 583 ISBN 978 9004125247 Archived from the original on 28 September 2023 Retrieved 11 February 2015 Florin Curta 2013 Horsemen in forts or peasants in villages Remarks on the archaeology of warfare in the 6th to 7th century Balkansmore R J Crampton 2005 A Concise History of Bulgaria Cambridge University Press ISBN 0521616379 p 13 Archived 22 May 2023 at the Wayback Machine John Norman 1977 An historical geography of Europe 450 B C A D 1330 Cambridge University Press p 179 ISBN 9780521291262 Archived from the original on 28 September 2023 Retrieved 13 November 2011 Angelov Dimitŭr Simeonov 1978 Summary The Formation of the Bulgarian Nation Sofia Press Archived from the original on 28 May 2013 Retrieved 13 November 2011 via Kroraina com L Ivanov 2007 Essential History of Bulgaria in Seven Pages In Bulgaria Bezmer and Adjacent Regions Guide for American Military Sofia Multiprint Minahan James 2000 One Europe many nations a historical dictionary of European national groups Greenwood pp 134 135 ISBN 9780313309847 Archived from the original on 28 September 2023 Retrieved 13 November 2011 Fine John Van Antwerp 1991 The early medieval Balkans a critical survey from the sixth to the late twelfth century University of Michigan Press p 308 ISBN 978 0 472 08149 3 Archived from the original on 28 September 2023 Retrieved 29 June 2020 Kopecek Michal 2007 Balazs Trencsenyi ed Discourses of collective identity in Central and Southeast Europe 1770 1945 texts and commentaries Central European University Press p 240 ISBN 978 963 7326 60 8 Archived from the original on 15 September 2020 Retrieved 29 June 2020 Axel Kristinsson 2010 Expansions Competition and Conquest in Europe Since the Bronze Age Reykjavikur Akademian ISBN 9979992212 p 194 Nikolova L Gergova D 2017 Contemporary Bulgarian Archaeology as a Social Practice in the Later Twentieth to Early Twenty first Century In Lozny L ed Archaeology of the Communist Era Springer ISBN 978 3 319 45108 4 Diana Mishkova 2011 Differentiation in Entanglement Debates on Antiquity Ethnogenesis and Identity in Nineteenth Century Bulgaria In Klaniczay Gabor and Werner Michael eds Multiple Antiquities Multiple Modernities Ancient Histories in Nineteenth Century European Cultures Frankfurt Chicago University of Chicago Press pp 213 246 Stefan Detchev 2009 Who are the Bulgarians Race Science and Politics in Fin de siecle Bulgaria In Diana Mishkova ed We the People Politics of National Peculiarity in Southeastern Europe Central European University Press ISBN 9639776289 pp 237 269 T Kamusella Peter Burke 2008 The Politics of Language and Nationalism in Modern Central Europe Springer ISBN 0230583474 p 285 Raymond Detrez Historical Dictionary of Bulgaria Rowman amp Littlefield 2014 ISBN 1442241802 pp 189 190 Tchavdar Marinov 2015 Ancient Thrace in the Modern Imagination Ideological Aspects of the Construction of Thracian Studies in Southeast Europe Romania Greece Bulgaria In Entangled Histories of the Balkans Vol 3 ISBN 9789004290365 pp 10 117 Rumen Daskalov 2011 Chudniyat svyat na drevnite blgari The Wonderful World of the Ancient Bulgarians Gutenberg ISBN 9546171212 pp 7 11 Aleksandar Nikolov 2013 Paraistoriyata kato fenomen na prehoda preotkrivaneto na drevnite blgari Parahistory as a Phenomenon of Transition The Rediscovery of the Ancient Bulgarians In Y Todorov and A Lunin eds Istoricheskiyat habitus opredmetenata istoriya The Historical Habitus Objectified History pp 24 63 Companion website for A genetic atlas of human admixture history Hellenthal et al Science 2014 A genetic atlas of human admixture history Hellenthal Garrett Busby George B J Band Gavin Wilson James F Capelli Cristian Falush Daniel Myers Simon 14 February 2014 A Genetic Atlas of Human Admixture History Science 343 6172 747 751 Bibcode 2014Sci 343 747H doi 10 1126 science 1243518 ISSN 0036 8075 PMC 4209567 PMID 24531965 Hellenthal G Busby G B Band G Wilson J F Capelli C Falush D Myers S 2014 Supplementary Material for A genetic atlas of human admixture history Science 343 6172 747 751 Bibcode 2014Sci 343 747H doi 10 1126 science 1243518 PMC 4209567 PMID 24531965 S7 6 East Europe The difference between the East Europe I and East Europe II analyses is that the latter analysis included the Polish as a potential donor population The Polish were included in this analysis to reflect a Slavic language speaking source group We speculate that the second event seen in our six Eastern Europe populations between northern European and southern European ancestral sources may correspond to the expansion of Slavic language speaking groups commonly referred to as the Slavic expansion across this region at a similar time perhaps related to displacement caused by the Eurasian steppe invaders 38 58 Under this scenario the northerly source in the second event might represent DNA from Slavic speaking migrants sampled Slavic speaking groups are excluded from being donors in the EastEurope I analysis To test consistency with this we repainted these populations adding the Polish as a single Slavic speaking donor group East Europe II analysis see Note S7 6 and in doing so they largely replaced the original North European component Figure S21 although we note that two nearby populations Belarus and Lithuania are equally often inferred as sources in our original analysis Table S12 Outside these six populations an admixture event at the same time 910CE 95 CI 720 1140CE is seen in the southerly neighboring Greeks between sources represented by multiple neighboring Mediterranean peoples 63 and the Polish 37 suggesting a strong and early impact of the Slavic expansions in Greece a subject of recent debate 37 These shared signals we find across East European groups could explain a recent observation of an excess of IBD sharing among similar groups including Greece that was dated to a wide range between 1 000 and 2 000 years ago 37 Haak Wolfgang Lazaridis Iosif Patterson Nick Rohland Nadin Mallick Swapan Llamas Bastien Brandt Guido Nordenfelt Susanne Harney Eadaoin Stewardson Kristin Fu Qiaomei 11 June 2015 Massive migration from the steppe was a source for Indo European languages in Europe Nature 522 7555 207 211 arXiv 1502 02783 Bibcode 2015Natur 522 207H doi 10 1038 nature14317 ISSN 0028 0836 PMC 5048219 PMID 25731166 Posth C Yu H Ghalichi A 2023 Palaeogenomics of Upper Palaeolithic to Neolithic European hunter gatherers Nature 615 2 March 2023 117 126 Bibcode 2023Natur 615 117P doi 10 1038 s41586 023 05726 0 PMC 9977688 PMID 36859578 Gibbons Ann 21 February 2017 Thousands of horsemen may have swept into Bronze Age Europe transforming the local population Science Archived from the original on 25 September 2022 Retrieved 22 April 2023 Curta Florin 2006 Southeastern Europe in the Middle Ages 500 1250 Cambridge Medieval Textbooks Cambridge University Press pp 221 222 ISBN 9780521815390 Retrieved 11 February 2015 Poulton Hugh 2000 Who are the Macedonians 2nd ed C Hurst amp Co Publishers pp 19 20 ISBN 978 1 85065 534 3 Vassil Karloukovski 1996 Srednovekovni gradovi i tvrdini vo Makedoniјa Ivan Mikulchiќ Skopјe Makedonska civilizaciјa 1996 Kroraina com p 72 ISBN 978 9989756078 Archived from the original on 15 September 2020 Retrieved 11 February 2015 Giatzidis Emil 2002 An Introduction to Post Communist Bulgaria Political Economic and Social Transformations Manchester University Press ISBN 9780719060953 Archived from the original on 15 January 2023 Retrieved 11 February 2015 Fine John V A Jr 1991 The Early Medieval Balkans A Critical Survey from the Sixth to the Late Twelfth Century University of Michigan p 165 ISBN 978 0472081493 Archived from the original on 28 September 2023 Retrieved 11 February 2015 via Books google bg Sedlar Jean W 1994 East Central Europe in the Middle Ages 1000 1500 University of Washington Press p 364 ISBN 9780295800646 Archived from the original on 28 September 2023 Retrieved 11 February 2015 Bulgaria Ottoman rule Encyclopaedia Britannica Online Archived from the original on 2 January 2012 Retrieved 21 December 2011 With the capture of a rump Bulgarian kingdom centred at Bdin Vidin in 1396 the last remnant of Bulgarian independence disappeared The Bulgarian nobility was destroyed its members either perished fled or accepted Islam and Turkicization and the peasantry was enserfed to Turkish masters Minkov Anton 2004 Conversion to Islam in the Balkans Kisve Bahasi Petitions and Ottoman Social Life 1670 1730 BRILL p 193 ISBN 978 9004135765 Archived from the original on 28 September 2023 Retrieved 11 February 2015 Detrez Raymond Segaert Barbara Lang Peter 2008 Europe and the Historical Legacies in the Balkans Peter Lang p 36 ISBN 9789052013749 Archived from the original on 28 September 2023 Retrieved 11 February 2015 Karpat Kemal H 2002 Studies on Ottoman Social and Political History Selected Articles and Essays Brill p 17 ISBN 978 9004121010 Archived from the original on 28 September 2023 Retrieved 11 February 2015 Handbook of Language and Ethnic Identity Disciplinary and Regional Perspectives Joshua A Fishman Ofelia Garcia Oxford University Press 2010 ISBN 0195374924 p 276 There were almost no remnants of a Bulgarian ethnic identity the population defined itself as Christians according to the Ottoman system of millets that is communities of religious beliefs The first attempts to define a Bulgarian ethnicity started at the beginning of the 19th century Roudometof Victor Robertson Roland 2001 Nationalism globalization and orthodoxy the social origins of ethnic conflict in the Balkans Greenwood Publishing Group pp 68 71 ISBN 978 0313319495 Archived from the original on 28 September 2023 Retrieved 16 October 2020 Nikolova Houston Tatiana Nikolaeva 2008 Margins and Marginality Marginalia and Colophons in South Slavic Manuscripts During the Ottoman Period 1393 1878 pp 202 206 ISBN 9780549650751 Retrieved 11 February 2015 permanent dead link Crampton R J 1987 Modern Bulgaria Cambridge University Press p 8 ISBN 9780521273237 Retrieved 11 February 2015 Carvalho Joaquim 2007 Religion and Power in Europe Conflict and Convergence Edizioni Plus p 261 ISBN 9788884924643 Archived from the original on 28 September 2023 Retrieved 11 February 2015 Stith Spencer S 2008 A Comparative Study of Post Ottoman Political Influences on Bulgarian National Identity Construction and Conflict pp 22 23 ISBN 9780549683957 Retrieved 11 February 2015 permanent dead link Milchev Vladimir 2002 Dva husarski polka s blgarsko uchastie v sistemata na drzhavnata voenna kolonizaciya v Yuzhna Ukrajna 1759 1762 63 g Two Hussar Regiments with Bulgarian Participation in the System of the State Military Colonization in Southern Ukraine 1759 1762 63 Istoricheski pregled in Bulgarian 5 6 154 65 Archived from the original on 31 December 2020 Retrieved 22 November 2016 Jelavich Charles Jelavich Barbara 1977 Establishment of the Balkan National States 1804 1918 University of Washington Press p 128 ISBN 9780295803609 Archived from the original on 28 September 2023 Retrieved 11 February 2015 During the 20th century Slavo Macedonian national feeling has shifted At the beginning of the 20th century Slavic patriots in Macedonia felt a strong attachment to Macedonia as a multi ethnic homeland They imagined a Macedonian community uniting themselves with non Slavic Macedonians Most of these Macedonian Slavs also saw themselves as Bulgarians By the middle of the 20th century however Macedonian patriots began to see Macedonian and Bulgarian loyalties as mutually exclusive Regional Macedonian nationalism had become ethnic Macedonian nationalism This transformation shows that the content of collective loyalties can shift Roth Klaus Brunnbauer Ulf 2010 Region Regional Identity and Regionalism in Southeastern Europe Ethnologia Balkanica Series LIT Verlag Munster p 127 ISBN 978 3825813871 Up until the early 20th century and beyond the international community viewed Macedonians as regional variety of Bulgarians i e Western Bulgarians Nationalism and Territory Constructing Group Identity in Southeastern Europe Geographical perspectives on the human past Europe Current Events Archived 7 May 2023 at the Wayback Machine George W White Rowman amp Littlefield 2000 ISBN 0847698092 p 236 Most of the Slavophone inhabitants in all parts of divided Macedonia perhaps a million and a half in all had a Bulgarian national consciousness at the beginning of the Occupation and most Bulgarians whether they supported the Communists VMRO or the collaborating government assumed that all Macedonia would fall to Bulgaria after the WWII Tito was determined that this should not happen Woodhouse Christopher Montague 2002 The struggle for Greece 1941 1949 C Hurst amp Co Publishers p 67 ISBN 978 1 85065 492 6 Archived from the original on 28 September 2023 Retrieved 14 November 2015 At the end of the WWI there were very few historians or ethnographers who claimed that a separate Macedonian nation existed Of those Slavs who had developed some sense of national identity the majority probably considered themselves to be Bulgarians although they were aware of differences between themselves and the inhabitants of Bulgaria The question as of whether a Macedonian nation actually existed in the 1940s when a Communist Yugoslavia decided to recognize one is difficult to answer Some observers argue that even at this time it was doubtful whether the Slavs from Macedonia considered themselves to be a nationality separate from the Bulgarians Danforth Loring M 1997 The Macedonian conflict ethnic nationalism in a transnational world Princeton University Press pp 65 66 ISBN 978 0 691 04356 2 Archived from the original on 28 September 2023 Retrieved 14 November 2015 Kaufman Stuart J 2001 Modern hatreds the symbolic politics of ethnic war New York Cornell University Press p 193 ISBN 978 0 8014 8736 1 The key fact about Macedonian nationalism is that it is new in the early twentieth century Macedonian villagers defined their identity religiously they were either Bulgarian Serbian or Greek depending on the affiliation of the village priest While Bulgarian was most common affiliation then mistreatment by occupying Bulgarian troops during WWII cured most Macedonians from their pro Bulgarian sympathies leaving them embracing the new Macedonian identity promoted by the Tito regime after the war Experts for Census 2011 in Bulgarian Archived from the original on 10 January 2021 Retrieved 14 August 2011 Bulgarian 2001 census in Bulgarian nsi bg Archived from the original on 7 January 2019 Retrieved 21 July 2011 Chairman of Bulgaria s State Agency for Bulgarians Abroad 3 4 million Bulgarians abroad in 2009 in Bulgarian 2009 Archived from the original on 24 December 2019 Retrieved 7 March 2011 Bozhidar Dimitrov prebroi 4 mln blgari zad granica in Bulgarian 2010 Archived from the original on 14 July 2011 Retrieved 7 March 2011 Stojkov Stojko Blgarska dialektologiya Akad izd Prof Marin Drinov 2006 Girdenis A Maziulis V Baltu kalbu divercencine chronologija Baltistica T XXVII 2 Vilnius 1994 P 9 Toporov V N Prusskij yazyk Slovar A D M 1975 S 5 S7 hostingkartinok com Archived from the original on 22 December 2017 Retrieved 20 December 2017 Hupchick D The Palgrave Concise Historical Atlas of Eastern Europe p 67 Springer 2016 ISBN 9781137048172 Prebroyavane 2021 Etnokulturna harakteristika na naselenieto 2021 Census Ethnocultural characteristics of the population PDF Archived PDF from the original on 24 November 2022 staff The Sofia Globe 24 November 2022 Census 2021 Close to 72 of Bulgarians say they are Christians The Sofia Globe Retrieved 27 November 2023 71 5 are the Christians in Bulgaria Novinite com Sofia News Agency www novinite com Retrieved 27 November 2023 Social Construction of Identities Pomaks in Bulgaria Ali Eminov JEMIE 6 2007 2 c 2007 by European Centre for Minority Issues PDF Archived from the original PDF on 26 March 2017 Retrieved 11 February 2015 Ot Trud onlajn Arhivt e v proces na prehvrlyane Trud Trud bg Archived from the original on 4 March 2016 Retrieved 22 November 2016 1 dead link Harry Henderson 14 May 2014 A to Z of Computer Scientists Infobase p 8 ISBN 9781438109183 Retrieved 22 November 2016 Clark R Mollenhoff 28 February 1999 Atanasoff Forgotten Father of the Computer Iowa State University Press ISBN 9780813800325 Archived from the original on 28 September 2023 Retrieved 22 November 2016 Bulgaria Poultry and Products Meat Market Update The Poultry Site 8 May 2006 Archived from the original on 14 February 2019 Retrieved 30 August 2015 Koleva T A Bolgary Kalendarnye obychai i obryady v stranah zarubezhnoj Evropy Konec XIX nachalo XX v Vesennie prazdniki M Nauka 1977 S 274 295 360 s PDF Tangrabg files wordpress com Archived PDF from the original on 26 March 2017 Retrieved 22 November 2016 PDF Bkks org Archived PDF from the original on 2 July 2017 Retrieved 22 November 2016 Ancho Kaloyanov STAROBLGARSKOTO EZIChESTVO LiterNet 06 11 2002 ISBN 954 304 009 5 Istoriya vo kratce o bolgarskom narode slovenskom PDF Mling ru Archived PDF from the original on 26 March 2017 Retrieved 22 November 2016 Rusalii drevnite blgarski obichai po Koleda Bgnow eu Archived from the original on 2 July 2018 Retrieved 22 November 2016 Sledi ot bita i ezika na prablgarite v nashata narodna kultura Ivan Koev Sofiya 1971 MacDermott Mercia 1 January 1998 Bulgarian Folk Customs Jessica Kingsley Publishers pp 41 44 ISBN 9781853024856 The so called Kapantsi an ethnographic group living mainly in the Razgrad and Turgovishte area of north east Bulgaria are believed to be descendants of Asparuh s Bulgars who have maintained at least something of their original heritage the traditional costumes of Bulgaria are derived mainly from the ancient Slav costumes Women s costumes fall into four main categories one apron two apron sukman and saya Like men s costumes these are not intrinsically separate types but have evolved from the original chemise and apron worn by the early Slavs Directly descended with little mutation from the dress of the ancient Slavs the one apron D Angelov Obrazuvane na blgarskata narodnost 4 3 Promacedonia org Archived from the original on 19 February 2020 Retrieved 22 November 2016 Ekip7 Razgrad Korennite zhiteli na Razgrad i rajona blgari ama ne kakvi da e a kapanci Ekip7 bg 14 September 2015 Archived from the original on 12 October 2017 Retrieved 22 November 2016 Znachenie uzorov i ornamentov Russkie ornamenty i uzory The meaning of patterns and ornaments Russian ornaments and patterns 21 November 2013 Archived from the original on 21 November 2013 Retrieved 20 December 2017 Simvoly v ornamentah drevnih slavyan Etnoxata com ua 25 January 2015 Archived from the original on 26 March 2017 Retrieved 22 November 2016 V V Yakzhik Gosudarstvennyj flag Respubliki Belarus w Rekomendacii po ispolzovaniyu gosudarstvennoj simvoliki v uchrezhdeniyah obrazovaniya page 3 Mellish Liz 2010 Berg Encyclopedia of World Dress and Fashion Vol 9 East Europe Russia and the Caucasus Bloomsbury p PART 5 Southeast Europe Bulgaria Ethnic Dress ISBN 9781847883988 Bulgarian women s dress include overgarments that are joined at the shoulders and are considered to have evolved from the sarafan the pinafore dress typically worn by women of various Slav nations This type of garment includes the soukman and the saya and aprons that fasten at the waist that are also attributed to a Slavic origin HRISTO STOICHKOV FCBarcelona cat Fcbarcelona com Archived from the original on 3 January 2013 Retrieved 11 February 2015 Dave Meltzer Bret Hart 1 January 2004 Tributes II Remembering More of the World s Greatest Professional Wrestlers Sports Publishing LLC ISBN 9781582618173 Retrieved 22 November 2016 Crampton R J A 2005 Concise History of Bulgaria 2nd ed Cambridge University Press p 15 ISBN 978 0 521 61637 9 Fine John Van Antwerp 1991 The Early Medieval Balkans A Critical Survey from the Sixth to the Late Twelfth Century University of Michigan Press p 68 ISBN 978 0472081493 Tsvetelin Stepanov 2019 Waiting for the End of the World European Dimensions 950 1200 BRILL p 222 ISBN 9004409939 SourcesKomatina Predrag 2010 The Slavs of the mid Danube basin and the Bulgarian expansion in the first half of the 9th century PDF Zbornik radova Vizantoloshkog instituta 47 55 82 Obolensky Dimitri 1974 1971 The Byzantine Commonwealth Eastern Europe 500 1453 London Cardinal ISBN 9780351176449 Ostrogorsky George 1956 History of the Byzantine State Oxford Basil Blackwell External linksMedia related to Bulgarians at Wikimedia Commons

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