The Boykos or Boikos (; ; ; ), or simply Highlanders (; ), are an ethnolinguistic group located in the Carpathian Mountains of Ukraine, Slovakia, Hungary, and Poland. Along with the neighbouring Lemkos and Hutsuls, the Boykos are considered a sub-group of Rusyns and speak a distinct East Slavic dialect. Within Ukraine, the Boykos and other Rusyns are seen as a sub-group of ethnic Ukrainians. Boykos differ from their neighbors in dialect, dress, folk architecture, and customs.
Etymology
thumb|Museum of Boyko Culture, [[Dolyna]]
Regarding the origin of the name Boyko there exist several etymological hypotheses, but it is generally considered, as explained by priest Joseph Levytsky in his Hramatyka (1831), that it derives from the particle . Specifically, it derives from the exclamation "бой!, бойє!" (< bo-i-je >), meaning "it is really so!", which is often used by the population. The 19th-century scholar Pavel Jozef Šafárik, with whom Franjo Rački and Henry Hoyle Howorth agreed, argued a direct connection of the Boykos with the region of Boiki mentioned in the 10th century De Administrando Imperio, but this thesis is outdated and rejected, The derivation from Boii, As in the case of Hutsuls and Lemkos, they are recorded in historical and ethnographic sources since the 18th and 19th century.
Some people otherwise identifiable as Boykos regard that name as derogatory and call themselves highlanders (verkhovyntsi). possibly also Ulichs who arrived from the East, or Vlach shepherds who later immigrated from Transylvania. They also lived in Sanok, Lesko and Przemyśl County of the Podkarpackie Voivodeship in Poland, before the Population exchange between Poland and Soviet Ukraine and the forced relocation of Rusyns and Ukrainians in Poland in 1947. In commemoration of Boykos, Ukraine's national parliament, the Verkhovna Rada, in 2016 renamed Telmanove Raion into Boykivske Raion where Boykos were deported from Czarna, Bieszczady County (today in Poland) after the 1951 Polish–Soviet territorial exchange. It is estimated from the evidence available that in 1970 there lived 230,000 people of Boyko origin. The deprecated and archaic term Ruthenian, while also derived from Rus, is ambiguous, as it technically may refer to Rusyns and Ukrainians, as well as Belarusians and in some cases Russians, depending on the historical period. According to the 2001 Ukraine census, only 131 people identified themselves as Boykos, separate from Ukrainians.