 During the 18th and 19th century, they formed a sizable part of the population of northern Bačka, but many of them were gradually assimilated into larger ethnic groups in the region.The Bunjevci are a South Slavic ethnic group, Catholic by religion, and Western Shtokavian-Ikavian by dialect, of which majority who still declares as Bunjevci live in the Bačka region in Serbia and Bács-Kiskun county in Hungary.Their endonym, used in Serbo-Croatian, is "Bunjevci" ().