Bulgaria Population

The Bulgarian population grew slowly until the 18th century. It stood at 3 million in 1885 when it was augmented by the territory of Eastern Rumelia. There were 8.5 million Bulgarians by 1994. The distribution of the population by ethnic group was 86% Bulgarians, 9% Turks, and 5% Gypsies, Macedonians, Armenians, and Russians.

Bulgarian is the primary language. It is a southern Slavic tongue and is written in the Cyrillic script. Records were kept in Bulgarian, Turkish, Greek, and Old Church Slavonic.