page_title: Laz people
section_title: Etymology
hierarchical_section_title: Laz people / Etymology
caption_attribution_description: English: Central and southern parts of Colchis and part of Iberia. From "Reditus Decem Millium Graecorum", 1815
context_page_description: The Laz people, or Lazi, are an indigenous Kartvelian-speaking ethnic group inhabiting the Black Sea coastal regions of Turkey and Georgia.
  Estimates of the total population of the Laz people today vary drastically, with numbers as low as 150,000 to as high as 1 million people, with the majority living in northeast Turkey. The Laz speak the Laz language, a member of the same Kartvelian language family as Georgian, Svan and Mingrelian. The Laz language is classified as endangered by UNESCO, with an estimated 130,000 to 150,000 speakers in 2001.
context_section_description: The ancestors of the Laz people are cited by many classical authors from Scylax to Procopius and Agathias, but the Laz (Greek: Λαζοί, romanized: Lazoí) themselves are cited by Pliny around the 2nd century BC, The ethnonym "Laz" is linked to a Svan toponym Lazan (i.e. the territorial prefix la- + Zan, "land of the Zan"). The Pontic Lazi, which were incorporated within the Byzantine Empire, and differed from the Caucasian Lazi, or Megrelians, have retained the old name "Lazi" till today.
caption: Boundaries of southern part of Colchis, from Reditus Decem Millium Graecorum, 1815
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