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Concept
Basques
Summary
The Basques (bɑːsks or bæsks ; euskaldunak eus̺kaldunak; vascos ˈbaskos; basques bask) are a Southwestern European ethnic group, characterised by the Basque language, a common culture and shared genetic ancestry to the ancient Vascones and Aquitanians. Basques are indigenous to, and primarily inhabit, an area traditionally known as the Basque Country (Euskal Herria)—a region that is located around the western end of the Pyrenees on the coast of the Bay of Biscay and straddles parts of north-central Spain and south-western France.
The English word Basque may be pronounced bɑːsk or bæsk and derives from the French Basque (bask), itself derived from Gascon Basco (pronounced ˈbasku), cognate with Spanish Vasco (pronounced ˈbasko). Those, in turn, come from Latin Vascō (pronounced ˈwaskoː; plural Vascōnes—see history section below). The Latin w generally evolved into the bilabials b and β̞ in Gascon and Spanish, probably under the influence of Basque and the related Aquitanian (the Latin /w/ instead evolved into v in French, Italian and other Romance languages).
Several coins from the 2nd and the 1st centuries BC found in the Basque Country bear the inscription barscunes. The place in which they were minted is not certain but is thought to be somewhere near Pamplona, in the heartland of the area that historians believe was inhabited by the Vascones. Some scholars have suggested a Celtic etymology based on bhar-s-, meaning "summit", "point" or "leaves", according to which barscunes may have meant "the mountain people", "the tall ones" or "the proud ones", and others have posited a relationship to a Proto-Indo-European root *bar- meaning "border", "frontier", "march".
In Basque, people call themselves the euskaldunak, singular euskaldun, formed from euskal- (i.e. "Basque (language)") and -dun (i.e. "one who has"); euskaldun literally means a Basque-speaker. Not all Basques are Basque-speakers. Therefore, the neologism euskotar, plural euskotarrak, was coined in the 19th century to mean a Basque person, whether Basque-speaking or not.
Official source
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