Latins referred originally to an Italic tribe in ancient central Italy from Latium. As Roman power and colonization[1]spread Latin culture, Latins came to mean mostly unified Italic people and Romanized Iberians, Celts, Dacians, and some Illyrians whose land was conquered by Latin colonists and who have abandoned their languages and identity for Latin and were assimilated by Rome in to common Roman identity with Latinized culture and speaking Latin or a Romance language (see Latin peoples).[2]

The original Latins were an Italic tribe inhabiting central Italy, in present-day Lazio. Through the conquests of their most populous city-state, Rome, the Latins united all Italic tribes in to one group and then with "Romanization" or "Latinization" spread their influence across their empire. As the Roman Empire spread to include areas that are now Spain, Portugal, France, and Romania, these joined Italy in becoming "Latin," as the languages spoken in these countries derive primarily from the Latin Language. In the late 15th–16th centuries, a millennium after the fall of the Western Roman Empire, Portugal, Spain, and France began to create world empires. In consequence, by the mid-19th century, the former American colonies of these nations became known as Latin America and this region's inhabitants as Latin Americans.