Darnussians

The Darnussian people are a pan-ethnic group who constitute the majority of the modern day inhabitants of Darnussia. The most common definition of Darnussian people is that they exclusively constitute the Nariki and Kozer people, two ethnic sub-groups who are ancestrally descended from proto-Dundorfic migrations to the area that now constitutes Darnussia in the fifth century.

However, some definitions also include Darnussian Yeudis, who make-up around 10% of the overall Darnussian population and who mostly migrated to Darnussia in the seventh century. Darnussian Yeudis do not have their own distinct language - unlike Narikis and Kozers - and thus their exclusion from the definition of Darnussian can be controversial.

Nariki people are the inhabitants of the Darnussian islands of Narikaton and Shirmania, while Kozer people are the inhabitants of the Darnussian Artanian mainland provinces of Alkavon and Kozaria. Darnussian Yeudis are primarily settled on the islands, but the mainland still retains a large Yeudi minority.

Darnussian people primarily speak two related, but distinct, languages. Nariki people and the island-dwelling Yeudi's speak the Narik language as their first language, while Kozer people and Yeudi's from the mainland speak Darnus. Both languages are derived from a common proto-Dundorfic ancestor, but since diverging around the early fourth century have developed into two unique, mutually unintelligible languages.

The centralisation of the Darnussian state in the early nineteenth century resulted in much greater intermixing of Narikis and Kozers, while the distinct languages began to converge slightly. Both languages now share a substantial number of words and characteristics that did not exist in the nineteenth century.

The Darnussian census does not allow the option of choosing a mixed ethnicity, and thus it is difficult to judge numbers accurately. The vast majority of the Darnussian population now speak both languages, and there are no racial or religious characteristics to distinguish the ethnicities. People will often self-identify as one-or-the-other simply based on either what their first language spoken at home is, or their place of birth or current residence. Another common indicator of ethnicity is surnames, although there are also many pan-ethnic Darnussian names and so this is not always useful.

Both languages are now mandatory learning in Darnussian schools, meaning around 90% of the Darnussian population is fluent in both tongues. Only in some rural areas and among some immigrant communities is their a lack of understanding of both languages. This has further broken down the distinction between Narikis and Kozers.