"The Ohlone, formerly known as Costanoans (from Spanish costeño meaning 'coast dweller'), are a Native American people of the Northern California coast. When Spanish explorers and missionaries arrived in the late 18th century, the Ohlone inhabited the area along the coast from San Francisco Bay through Monterey Bay to the lower Salinas Valley. At that time they spoke a variety of related languages. The Ohlone languages make up a sub-family of the Utian language family. Older proposals place Utian within the Penutian language phylum, while newer proposals group it as Yok-Utian.
British ethnologist Robert Gordon Latham originally used the term "Costanoan" to refer to the linguistically similar but ethnically diverse Native American tribes in the San Francisco Bay Area. The term "Ohlone" has been used in place of "Costanoan" since the early 1900s by some tribal groups and, in 1967, American anthropologist Clinton Hart Merriam first published the term "Ohlonean" to refer to the Costanoan peoples. Since then, the term "Ohlone" has been adopted by most ethnographers, historians, and writers of popular literature." - (en.wikipedia.org 10.08.2021)
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