a Baltic Finnic tribe that lived south of the Gulf of Finland in the territory of the Vodskaia Piatina, in the north-western part of Novgorod Land. Although the Votes are mentioned in 11th-century sources, scholars believe that the Votes began to merge with the Slavs as early as the ninth century. The Votian language is closely related to the north-eastern dialect of Estonian. The Votes had completed the process of Slavicization by the 19th century. Isolated settlements of Votes still exist along the southern coast of the Gulf of Finland.