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This is strictly about linguistic similarity and not genetic similarity.

On a genetic map, a PCA plot, Romans and Romanians simply don't overlap. Romanians cluster with their Balkan neighbors, (1) on account of massive Slavic migration from around the 7th century AD, and (2) on account of strong historical and genetic evidence to suggest that the Roman colonists sent to Dacia were largely recruited from neighboring Balkan provinces (like Moesia and Pannonia), rather than from the city of Rome.

Genetically, the nearest populations to Ancient Romans are Cypriots and certain other Mediterranean types, including Anatolians. But it's not neat; there's no clear unambiguous descent. A lot can happen in >1000 years!

Rome was famously multi-ethnic. This is sort of like asking who are the "ethnic Americans". It's just the wrong question to ask.
Why is genetics more important than any other tie to the Roman empire?
None of these statements are meaningful without a definition on your part of what it means to be "Ancient Roman" in a genetic sense. Do you mean, say, a handful of villagers living in the area of today's Rome on 21 April 753 BCE? I'll grant you that those were possibly a homogeneous bunch. Anything later? Definitely not. Trying to pretend that there is something like a clear genetic definition of "Roman" is... what do you call it? Racism. But don't worry, not the "bad" kind, just the "scientific" kind.
> Genetically, the nearest populations to Ancient Romans are Cypriots

I’ve often wondered what the ethnicity of ancient Romans actually was. Looking at pictures of Greek Cypriots on google was enlightening. The “Roman nose” is quite prominent for many people!

Dacia (Felix) was the Roman Empire's richest region in gold, and this was a very advertised fact. Emperor Trajan's triumphal entry in Rome had in full display the spoils of war, and it was the richest in gold and silver in the entire Roman Empire's history. It's expected that, after "pax romana" went into effect, there to occur a gold rush like the one that happened in USA, drawing massive immigration to the region from all over the empire. Here's one of the gold mining settlements, founded at that time: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ro%C8%99ia_Montan%C4%83

Considering that Dacia Felix was the last incorporated roman province, so the pool of potential immigrants was literally from the Roman Empire at one of its largest territorial extension and thus -- of the highest ethnic diversity. The fact that the region got mixed up genetically and now resembles that of the rest of the Balkan peninsula could be explained by later events. There was massive Slavic migration to the region, then there was significant depopulation of the plains surrounding Carpathian Mountains when Mongols invaded (and periodically raided the region for loot and slaves), and then there was also a massive wave of christian refugees fleeing from the Ottoman Empire expansion to the (still christian) areas north of Danube.

I still find it somewhat fascinating that the Slavs arrived in Europe during recorded history.
Since PCA maps are fun to look at, here’s one for modern-day populations:

https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/1n8xjl6/genome_anc...

"On a genetic map, a PCA plot, Romans and Romanians simply don't overlap"

Can you help me understand how do I look for Romans on a PCA map? For contemporary nations I think I can manage but for Romans I don't

Doesn't "Roman" imply Roman Empire, not the city, though? Those principal component analysis mappings are also quite susceptible to heavy leaning on a posteriori interpretations.
Just wait for Hollywood to create a film about Roman mythology and not cast a single Roman!

But less tongue-in-cheek, the other thing is that the legacy of the Romans is pretty much all around us. The Roman Calendar (with July and August both referencing a Roman leader), the Latin alphabet (with the additional letters like 'y' being added later on to support Greek), the roads we can travel, etc.

It's not only July and August; January, May, June, and Mars, are named after Roman gods; February and April after Roman rituals; and September to December after Roman numerals (7 to 10th month, as they were when the calendar first started).
They're always British in film for some reason
Every modern law system has its roots in Roman one.
I'm a bit surprised that the "people from modern Rome" only got an honorable mention. After all, Rome still sees itself as the successor of the Roman Empire. When first visiting it, I was surprised to see the famous SPQR (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPQR) acronym all over the place - on trash cans, manhole covers etc. etc.
Senatus Populus ... Que Romani! The senate and people of Rome.

Italy, per se, is a modern construct but the capital is still Rome and I think it fair to draw associations to the old empire.

I love seeing the SPQR logo and I think it is a really useful link to the past.

when you see something histórical in Europe ask chatgpt if its something actually ancient that lasted until today or It was a xix century tourist marketing stunt made by the burgoisie
I think the implication was a focus on the more strongly conserved folksy cultures and stuff. Whereas modern Romans are more... Italian. That having perhaps transformed to a great degree than others in the roughly two millennia.
I bought a torrone (Italian nougat dessert) in local Auchan (French supermarket chain) today and while briefly researching the dessert history found out that it was popular in Ancient Rome named as cupedia and in some Southern parts of Italy it still called as cupeta.

Just imagine to make recipe so good that it not just transferred across generations through 2000 years, but also evolved to come in supermarket in Russia.

Only loosely related, but on the topic of deep historical namings: Mayonnaise comes from, and derives its name, from Mahon on Menorca in the Spanish Balearic islands. That in turn is named after Mago Barca, the brother of Hannibal Barca, "the" Hannibal who almost destroyed Rome. Mago was also a Carthaginian general, fighting alongside Hannibal.

So whenever you dip your french fries in mayo, you are celebrating the epic struggles of Carthage and Rome from two millenia ago. Bon appétit.

If you feel daring, there's a group of people publishing ancient roman recipes up to Renaissance ones (and a bit later as well) in italian and English https://historicalitaliancooking.home.blog/recipes/
Pissaladière (classic dish from southeastern France) is sometimes said to come from old garum-like recipes (the Roman functional equivalent to Asian soy sauces).
There was a Roman recipe of what we call now burger.
The citizens of Byzantium identified as being Romans. Interesting, many Greek Christians still did at the time that the modern Greek state was created. When told they are "Hellenes" they responded that they have always been "Romioi".
"Where are the Romans now?" "You're looking at them." - Tony Soprano
Besides Romanians, there are several more eastern european romance-language-speaking peoples ("Vlachs") like Aromanians, Megleno-Romanians and Istro-Romanians. I think they might also deserve a mention.
If we include the word Latin, then we have speakers of Ladino (also called Judeo-Spanish) and Ladin (natively called ladino). The first is derived from Old Spanish and spoken by Sephardic Jews everywhere but in Spain where they were expelled from. The latter is spoken in Northern Italy, specifically in South Tyrol, Trentino and Belluno.

The names are funny just because you can imagine asking someone speaking a language derived from Vulgar Latin what language they're speaking (or writing), and them answering as a fish would when asked about the water.

Depending on who's legal fiction you believe, the Roman Empire was only dissolved in 1806 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reichsdeputationshauptschluss
Feel I should mention the Istro-Romanians (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Istro-Romanians), a small group of Romanian speakers who settled in Istria (now Croatia) some centuries ago. Mostly gone now but one grandmother was from one of the Romanian speaking villages.
My name is Roman (father was Italian born in Rome and identifies as a Roman) and I always find it interesting that people try to speak something that sounds like Russian to me. Never thought about the fact they might think I’m Romanian and are speaking Romanian!
I feel like that wasn't nearly as interesting as the title promised. The stuff that I find fascinating about modern Europe against the Roman Empire is how it carved out the modern dividing lines in some areas, or seeded cultural roots that would become their own thing over time (the British being a pretty interesting one). But its all so long ago that all of the other influences that happened over time are probably bigger hallmarks than their Roman roots (like the British again, being invaded by the normans and vikings).
There are probably a number of more Roman cultural hallmarks around than what are mentioned in the article but they don’t have something that sounds like Rome in the name. Some tenuous stuff here that is quite random, but hey I clicked.
I don't know why people are so confused about where the Romans are. There is a guy named Harun Osman Osmanoğlu and he's the current Caesar of Rome. It's pretty simple.
I think even in the Roman times anyone could be "Roman". The way I understand it being Roman was not a measure of your ethnicity but a measure of your devotion to the empire.

Rome was an extremely militaristic society so they needed soldiers and what I understand is that your status in the military largely dictated your status in society. They requited soldiers from all of their empire thus all backgrounds within (late period).

For a much more convincing chronicle of people identifying as Roman well into the modern era, see https://open.spotify.com/episode/66SexoFR9AvdKaDzWaqR8w
As an American with mostly Western European ancestors (according to a popular DNA testing site), I've always considered Romans as some distant/tangentially related group.

It was surprising to find out that I have "ancient" DNA matches with a couple of Roman and Etruscan individuals.

Small world!

My grandfather was a smith in deep rural Spain. He made and fixed many roman ploughs, well into the 70s. They were called that because they were pretty much the same tool the Romans used.
So the romani arrived in the balkan in the 10th century and in western Europe in the 13th century are romans but not the Italians outside Rome
when visiting the jewish temple in rome someone asked if the roman jews were sephardic or ashkenazi. the answer was 'neither' as there have been jews in rome since before rome and they never left and didn't see themselves as part of the diaspora
God punished the Romans by turning them into Italians
> This root word also survives in the names of other Roman border regions across Europe, like Wales, Cornwall, and Wallonia.

... and the Polish term for Italy - "Włochy".

I’m still around
No mention of the Romansch, that's quite disappointing. But learning more about Romania and Romanian culture still made for a wonderful read, kudos to the author.
I am not my grandfather, and neither current descendants of Romans are Romans.
Don't glorify Rome too much. It was a slavery based society that progressed sciences, technology and civilization little from what they inherited from the Mesopotamian's/Greeks. Heck written Latin didn't even have punctuation marks, not even spaces. That's because it was only used by slave scribes. The nobility that could write, did so in Greek.