Bulgarian

Bulgarians are a South Slavic people of the eastern Balkans whose language, with Macedonian, forms the eastern branch of South Slavic and was the first Slavic literary language (Old Church Slavonic, 9th century). Their name comes from the Turkic Bulgars who founded the First Bulgarian Empire in 681 and merged with the Slavs of the region. After nearly five centuries of Ottoman rule, a national revival centred on schools, books and a church of their own led to the Bulgarian Exarchate (1870), whose seat was in Istanbul, and to an independent state from 1878. Bulgaria has about 6.5 million people (2021 census), 5.1 million of them ethnic Bulgarians; Bulgarian-speaking Muslims (Pomaks) form a separate people, and large Bulgarian communities live in Ukraine and Moldova (Bessarabia), Germany, Spain, the United Kingdom and the United States.

Bulgarian culture blends Slavic, Thracian and Byzantine roots. Food centres on bread, yoghurt (kiselo mlyako), white brine cheese, shopska salad, banitsa pastry, beans and grilled meats, with rakia brandy. Customs include martenitsa red-and-white threads given on 1 March, kukeri masked dances to drive off evil in winter, fire-walking (nestinarstvo) in the Strandzha, name days and village saints' fairs (sabor). Folk music with odd rhythms, the gaida bagpipe and horo line dances are widespread. Families are close and multigenerational, though emigration and low birth rates have shrunk villages.

The Bulgarian Orthodox Church, autocephalous since 1870 (patriarchate restored 1953), shapes national identity more than daily practice: churches fill at Easter, Christmas and on name days, and icons, candles for the dead, memorial meals and saints' fairs remain common, while weekly attendance is low after decades of communist atheism. Folk customs (kukeri, survakane at New Year, fire-walking) blend pre-Christian and Orthodox elements. Evangelical churches grew after 1989, especially among Roma.

Bulgarians have the full Bible in their language since the 1871 Tsarigrad (Istanbul) Bible, produced by American missionaries and Bulgarian scholars, and several modern translations, the JESUS film and audio recordings. Protestant work dates to the 1850s American Board and Methodist missions. The main barriers are nominal Orthodoxy, secularism and suspicion of evangelicals as a sect.