I read somewhere that thera little bit less than 12 mil. croats living abroad.
These data included all croats even those that declare them self native to countrie where they live. I don't recall if this was a research or authors theory!?

In my opinion this data of 12 million croats livin in the world is probably correct.

Why do i think so?

Well just in Austria, Hungary, Slovenia there are around 3 million croats, lets just take Family name Horvat (which means croat)
We can see in this picture 20 most popular Family names in Slovenia, they are almost all pure Croatian origin names.

While I agree that Horvat/Horvath clearly denotes Croatian origin, that does not mean that we can attribute everybody with the name to the modern Croatian identity, as many people with the name identify (and have) for many generations within Slovaks and Hungarians. We consider August Senoa, Slavoljub Penkala, Ljudevit Gaj and Vatroslav Lisinski as Croats yet they have foreign names and backgrounds. Same thing with many people which bear the surname Horvat/Horvath, so this is a more dubious form of measurement. Though I agree with your initial statement that there around 12 million Croats in the world, at least by self-identification alone.

Yes, yes i agree Mostar91

Let's just take bosniak/muslims many of them were 100% croats until muslim invasion in 1400s when they skiped to islam in order to save their lives and Families.
Today these ex-croats bosniak/muslim are as far as they can be from croats, they will indentify as absolutley anything except as croats.


Regarding names this is deep theme and it would take a lot of writing to explain my point of view, maybe next time.

Good post Brane, I look forward to speaking about the Croatian ethnonym present in both given and surnames in the future. Perhaps at one point we can open a thread regarding such to further discuss it and incorporate other users in the discussion. There is much to be said, especially in English about characters such as Hrvoje Vukcic Hrvatinic and others which quite literally are the definition of such. Regardless, people will try to disassociate these facts with the truth, which should only strengthen our resolve to objectify such.