Who were the 'Cimmerians' who apparently had a population of 1.6m in Europe in 1820?

by cnzmur

Link. All the other groups are more or less language families: Sclavonians, Celts, Greeks etc. Google is only giving me the ancient people.

Possibly better suited to the short answer thread but it'd be interesting to know why they were called that.

edit: second question, who are the 'Arnauts'?

Libertat

Giving that it's sourcing a french text,, "Cimmerian" could be a transliteration of Cimmérien, which was used for Criméen ("Crimean") in XIXth and early XXth French geographies. ^(1)

Likewise, Arnautes or Aranaoutes would be a transliteration of the Turkish name for Albanians.^(2)

^(1) Trésor de la Langue Française; 1994 et Littré, 1883

^(2) Dictionnaire ou manuel-lexique du diplomate et du consul; Bn Ferdinand de Cussy; 1846