What is "ruthenians"

Ruthenians (Cyrillic transliteration: Rusyns; ; , Rusiny; , Rusyny/Rus'ki; , Rusin: Русины, Rusiny) is a historic name, applied to peoples speaking the eastern Slavic languages in the broad cultural and ethnic region of Rus' (Русь), especially the medieval kingdom of Kievan Rus' and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. These people gave rise to modern Belarusians, Russians, Ukrainians and Rusyns.

In its narrower sense, Ruthenian can identify ethnic Ukrainians. Today the term is perceived as one related to inhabitants of a cross-border region around the northern Carpathian Mountains, including western Ukraine (especially Zakarpattia Oblast, part of historic Carpathian Ruthenia), eastern Slovakia, and southern Poland. This area coincides, to a large degree, with a region sometimes known in English as Galicia (Ukrainian: Галичина, Halychyna; Polish: Galicja and; Slovak: Halič). The name Ruthenian is also used by the Pannonian Rusyn minority in Serbia and Croatia, as well as by Rusin émigrés outside Europe (especially members of the Ruthenian Catholic Church). In contrast, the Rusyns of Romania are more likely to identify as "Ukrainian".

During the early modern era, the term primarily referred to members of East Slavic minorities in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, namely Ukrainians and Rusyns, who today live in Ukraine, Poland, Slovakia, Romania, Serbia, Croatia, Hungary and the Czech Republic. In 1995 the government of Slovakia announced Rusyn language as a new Slavic language. In addition, the ethnonym "Belarusians" was sometimes translated as White Ruthenians.