The Collaborative International Dictionary
Quirites \Qui*ri"tes\ (kw[i^]*r[imac]"t[=e]z), n. pl. [L., fr. Cures, a Sabine town.] (Rom. Antiq.) Roman citizens.
Note: After the Sabines and Romans had united themselves into
one community, under Romulus, the name of Quirites was
taken in addition to that of Romani, the Romans calling
themselves in a civil capacity Quirites, while in a
political and military capacity they retained the name
of Romani.
--Andrews.
Wikipedia
Quirites was the earliest name of the citizens of Ancient Rome. The singular is quiris (meaning "spear"). Sources derive the term from Cures, the capital of the Sabines, who were assimilated by the Romans early on in their traditional ethnogenesis.
Combined in the phrase populus Romanus quirites (or quiritium) it denoted the individual citizen as contrasted with the community. Hence ius quiritium in Roman law is full Roman citizenship. Subsequently the term lost the military associations due to the original conception of the people as a body of warriors, and was applied (sometimes in a deprecatory sense, cf. Tac. Ann. ~. 42) to the Romans in domestic affairs, Romani being reserved for foreign affairs.
In identifying this name as the possible source of the word cry, the Oxford English Dictionary cites Varro.
Usage examples of "quirites".
The three tribes, Ramnes, Quirites, and Luceres, into which the Roman people were divided before the rise of the plebs, may have been, as Niebuhr contends, local, not genealogical, in their origin, but they were not strictly territorial distinctions, and the division of each tribe into a hundred houses or gentes was not local, but personal, if not, as the name implies, genealogical.
It was customary for the Fetial to carry to the enemies' frontiers a blood-smeared spear tipped with iron or burnt at the end, and, in the presence of at least three adults, to say, "Inasmuch as the peoples of the Prisci Latini have been guilty of wrong against the People of Rome and the Quirites, and inasmuch as the People of Rome and the Quirites have ordered that there be war with the Prisci Latini, and the Senate of the People of Rome and the Quirites have determined and decreed that there shall be war with the Prisci Latini, therefore I and the People of Rome, declare and make war upon the peoples of the Prisci Latini.