Estonians (Estonian: eestlased) are a Finnic ethnic group related to the Finns that mainly inhabit Estonia, a country located south of Finland and the Finnish Gulf. Their national language belongs to Finnic branch and is known as Estonian (Estonian: eesti keel). Although Estonia is often geopolitically categorized as one of the Baltics, Estonians are linguistically, culturally and historically related to the neighboring Finns—both belonging to the Baltic Finnic peoples—differing from the non-Finnic Indo-European speaking Baltic peoples of Latvia and Lithuania.