Concept
The Lao people are a Tai ethnic group native to Southeast Asia, who speak the Lao language of the Kra–Dai languages. They are the majority ethnic group of Laos, making up 53.2% of the total population. The majority of Lao people adhere to Theravada Buddhism. They are closely related to other Tai people, especially (or synonymous) with the Isan people, who are also speakers of Lao language, native to neighboring Thailand. In Western historiography, terms Lao people and Laotian have had a loose meaning. Both terms have been irregularly applied both to all natives of Laos in general, aside from or alongside ethnic Lao during different periods in history. Since the end of French rule in Laos in 1953, Lao has been applied solely to the ethnic group while Laotian refers to any citizen of Laos regardless of their ethnic identity. Certain countries still conflate the terms in their statistics. The etymology of the word Lao is uncertain, although it may be related to tribes known as the Ai Lao (Lao: ອ້າຍລາວ, Thai: อ้ายลาว, , Vietnamese: Ai Lao) who appear in Han Dynasty records in China and Vietnam as a people of what is now Yunnan Province. Tribes descended from the Ai Lao included the Tai tribes that migrated to Southeast Asia. According to Michel Ferlus (2009), ethnonym and autonym of the Lao people (ລາວ); nationality of the inhabitants of Laos is formed by the monosyllabization of the Austroasiatic etymon for 'human being' *k.raw. The peoples named Lao (lǎo 獠), supposed to be the ancestors of Lao and some other Tai-Kadai populations, settled in the upper Tonkin and in parts of Yúnnán and Guìzhōu during the Táng times: This reconstruction of the pronunciation for the phonogram 獠 confirms that 'Lao' originates in the etymon *k.raːw. The English word Laotian, used interchangeably with Lao in most contexts, comes from French laotien/laotienne. The dominant ethnicity of Northeastern Thailand who descend from the Lao are differentiated from the Lao of Laos and by the Thais by the term Isan people or Thai Isan (Lao: ໄທ ອີສານ, Isan: ไทยอีสาน, iː sǎ:n), a Sanskrit-derived term meaning northeast, but 'Lao' is still used.
