Austrians have also been defined by their national citizenship, which had, in the course of Austrian history, varying relations to the above, for example referring to a native German-speaker of the one-time Habsburg empire, or in a wider sense to any citizen of any of the various lands of that empire that did not form the Hungarian half of Austria-Hungary. In the latter sense, the definition included many ethnic minorities and speakers of up to twelve different languages.
The English word Austrian is a derivative of the proper name Austria, which comes, via Medieval Latin, from the Old High German name Ostarrîchi, meaning "Eastern Realm". The same word is the source for the New High German word Österreich (Ost- "East] and Reich - "Empire" or realm, among other meanings..
The oldest known mention in writing of Ostarrîchi dates from the year 996, when it was used to refer to a region in what is now Lower Austria.
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