Terms for Syriac Christians in the context of "Ethnic groups in the Middle East"

Aramaic (Jewish Babylonian Aramaic: ארמית, romanized: ˀərāmiṯ; Classical Syriac: ܐܪܡܐܝܬ, romanized: arāmāˀiṯ) is a Northwest Semitic language that originated in the ancient region of Syria and quickly spread to Mesopotamia, the southern Levant, Sinai, southeastern Anatolia, the Caucasus, and Eastern Arabia, where it has been continually written and spoken in different varieties for over 3,000 years.

Aramaic served as a language of public life and administration of ancient kingdoms and empires—particularly the Neo-Assyrian Empire, Neo-Babylonian Empire, and Achaemenid Empire—and as a language of divine worship and religious study within Judaism, Christianity, and Gnosticism. Several modern varieties of Aramaic are still spoken. The modern eastern branch is spoken by Assyrians, Mandeans, and Mizrahi Jews. Western Aramaic is still spoken by the Muslim and Christian Arameans (Syriacs) in the towns of Maaloula, Bakh'a and Jubb'adin in Syria. Classical varieties are used as liturgical and literary languages in several West Asian churches, as well as in Judaism, Samaritanism, and Mandaeism. The Aramaic language is considered endangered, with several varieties used mainly by the older generations. Researchers are working to record and analyze all of the remaining varieties of Neo-Aramaic languages in case they become extinct.

Western Aramaic is a group of Aramaic dialects once spoken widely throughout the ancient Levant, predominantly in the south, and Sinai, including ancient Damascus, Nabataea, across the Palestine region with Judea, Transjordan and Samaria, as well as today's Lebanon and the basins of the Orontes as far as Aleppo in the north. The group was divided into several regional variants, spoken mainly by the Palmyrenes in the east and the Aramaeans who settled on Mount Lebanon - ancestors of the early Maronites. In the south, it was spoken by Judeans (early Jews), Galileans, Samaritans, Pagans, Melkites (descendants of the aforementioned peoples who followed Chalcedonian Christianity), Nabataeans and possibly the Itureans. All of the Western Aramaic dialects are considered extinct today, except for the modern variety known as Western Neo-Aramaic. This dialect, which descends from Damascene Aramaic, is still spoken by the Arameans (Syriacs) in the towns of Maaloula, Bakh'a and Jubb'adin near Damascus, Syria.

Assyrians (Syriac: ܣܘܪ̈ܝܐ, Sūrāyē / Sūrōyē) are an ethnic group indigenous to Mesopotamia, a geographical region in West Asia. Modern Assyrians share descent directly from the ancient Assyrians, one of the key civilizations of Mesopotamia. While they are distinct from other Mesopotamian groups, such as the Babylonians, they share in the broader cultural heritage of the Mesopotamian region. Modern Assyrians may culturally self-identify as Syriacs, Chaldeans, or Arameans for religious, geographic, and tribal identification.

The ancient Assyrians originally spoke Akkadian, an East Semitic language, but subsequently switched to the Aramaic language and currently speak various dialects of Neo-Aramaic, specifically those known as Suret and Turoyo, which are among the oldest continuously spoken and written languages in the world. Aramaic (language of the Arameans) was the lingua franca of West Asia for centuries and was the language spoken by Jesus. It has influenced other languages such as Hebrew and Arabic, and, through cultural and religious exchanges, it has had some influence on Mongolian and Uighur. Aramaic itself is the oldest continuously spoken and written language in the Middle East, with a history stretching back over 3,000 years.

The late Ottoman genocides is a historiographical theory which sees the concurrent Armenian, Greek, and Assyrian genocides that occurred during the 1910s–1920s as parts of a single event rather than separate events, which were initiated by the Young Turks. Although some sources, including The Thirty-Year Genocide (2019) written by the historians Benny Morris and Dror Ze'evi, characterize this event as a genocide of Christians, others such as those written by the historians Dominik J. Schaller and Jürgen Zimmerer contend that such an approach "ignores the Young Turks' massive violence against non-Christians", in particular against Muslim Kurds.

Syrians (Arabic: سوريون) are the majority inhabitants of Syria, indigenous to the Levant, most of whom have Arabic, especially its Levantine and Mesopotamian dialects, as a mother tongue. The cultural and linguistic heritage of the Syrian people is a blend of both indigenous elements and the foreign cultures that have come to rule the land and its people over the course of thousands of years. By the seventh century, most of the inhabitants of the Levant spoke Aramaic. In the centuries after the Muslim conquest of the Levant in 634, Arabic gradually became the dominant language, but a minority of Syrians (particularly the Assyrians and Syriac-Arameans) retained Aramaic (Syriac), which is still spoken in its Eastern and Western dialects.

The national name "Syrian" was originally an Indo-European corruption of Assyrian and applied to Assyria in northern Mesopotamia, however by antiquity it was used to denote the inhabitants of the Levant. Following the Muslim conquest of the Levant, Arab identity gradually became dominant among many Syrians, and the ethnonym "Syrian" was used mainly by Christians in Levant, Mesopotamia and Anatolia who spoke Syriac. In the 19th century, the name "Syrian" was revived amongst the Arabic speakers of the Levant. Following the establishment of the Arab Kingdom of Syria in 1920, the name "Syrian" began to spread amongst its Arabic speaking inhabitants. The term gained more importance during the Mandate for Syria and the Lebanon, becoming the accepted national name for the Arabic speakers of the Syrian Republic.

Western Neo-Aramaic (ܐܰܪܳܡܰܝ, arōmay, "Aramaic"), also referred to as Siryon (ܣܪܝܘܢ, siryōn, "Syriac"), is a modern variety of the Western Aramaic branch consisting of three closely related dialects. Today, it is spoken by Christian and Muslim Arameans (Syriacs) in only three villages— Maaloula, Jubb'adin and Bakhʽa—in the Anti-Lebanon mountains of western Syria. Bakhʽa was vastly destroyed during the Syrian civil war and most of the community fled to other parts of Syria or Lebanon. Western Neo-Aramaic is believed to be the closest living language to the language of Jesus, whose first language, according to scholarly consensus, was Galilean Aramaic belonging to the Western branch as well; all other remaining Neo-Aramaic languages are Eastern Aramaic.

Al-Sarkha, Bakh'ah or Bakh'a (Western Neo-Aramaic: ܒܟܥܐ - בכעא lit. 'to cry or to weep', Arabic: الصرخة or بخعة) is a depopulated Syrian village in the Yabroud District of the Rif Dimashq Governorate. According to the Syria Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS), Al-Sarkha had a population of 1,405 in the 2004 census. The village, inhabited by Sunni Muslims of Aramean descent, it was vastly damaged during the Syrian Civil War, and all of the inhabitants fled to other parts of Syria or to Lebanon as refugees. As of 1 February 2025, the village is still completely uninhabited. It was one of the only three remaining villages where Western Neo-Aramaic is spoken, alongside Maaloula and Jubb'adin.

Following their conversion to Islam in the 18th century, the inhabitants of Bakh'a underwent a religious transformation, shifting from being exclusively Christian to entirely Muslim.