Hungarians

[H. İhsan Erkoç]

Jan 2, 2009 15:03:23 GMT 3 Maotun said:

The Hunnic word Var mentioned by Jordanes, also can be a Hungarian word.

Hunugur is a corruption of the Turkic name On Oġur which means "Ten Tribes" in Old Western Turkic (the Old Eastern Turkic or Standart Old Turkic version would be On Oġuz).

[hjernespiser]

Maotun,
Welcome back! I thought you may have gotten upset because we disagree and left us. I hope this is not the case.

cyberjoker said:

Sabirs, according to Jordanes, were a horde of Attila's Huns, known by the name of Hunugurs.

The Hunnic word Var mentioned by Jordanes, also can be a Hungarian word.

It may be, but must note that Rona-Tas considers the Hunnic language unknown not Turk.
"We don't know what was the language of the Huns", 2003.

Do you consider that the stating of "Hungarians were the descendants of Huns" in various sources through Italy, France, and Germany, was the official state propaganda and a lie of Italy, France, and Germany? And if you do, why would they state this?

"To the south dwell the Acatziri,
a very brave tribe ignorant of agriculture, who subsist
on their flocks and by hunting. Farther away and above
the Sea of Pontus are the abodes of the Bulgares, well
known from the wrongs done to them by reason of our
oppression. From this region the Huns, like a fruitful
root of bravest races, sprouted into two hordes of people.
Some of these are called Altziagiri, others Sabiri; and
they have different dwelling places. The Altziagiri are
near Cherson, where the avaricious traders bring in the
goods of Asia. In summer they range the plains, their
broad domains, wherever the pasturage for their cattle
invites them, and betake themselves in winter beyond the
Sea of Pontus. Now the Hunuguri are known to us from
the fact that they trade in marten skins. But they have
been cowed by their bolder neighbors."

This took me a few moments to think about. Are you suggesting that because Jordanes said the Sabirs were also called the Hunuguri and because the name Hungarian is derived from Onogur (Hunuguri) that this means Magyars were Sabirs?

"The remnant turned in flight and sought
the parts of Scythia which border on the stream of the
river Danaper, which the Huns call in their own tongue
the Var."

Cool. This sounds like a stream that feeds the Dnieper is called the Var in the Hunnic language. Has this been looked into closer by anyone? I see from Wikipedia there is a Dniper tributary called the Vorskla... What do you mean "could be" a Hungarian word? This seems hard to tell. It could be an English word too.

I think what Rona-Tas says about the Hun language is irrelevant to what he says about the Magyar language. Besides, language and blood don't follow the same lines.

The propaganda wasn't perpetrated by Italy, et al. It was Hungarians taking the stories that foreign countries had written about Scythians and Huns and then using them in order to proclaim internationally that the Arpadians had the authority to claim a right over Attila's old domain. Maybe Arpad was related to Attila. That doesn't necessarily mean the entire Magyar horde was related to the Huns, but the Kezai Gesta makes it seem so. As for the regular Hungarian folk, they were now Christianized. Therefore all origin theories had to relate to descent from Adam, Eve, and Noah. That meant all other native origin stories had to be suppressed. So when Orosius writes that the Huns were made by witches and demons, Simon Kezai had to say "Hang on a minute." and remind us that the Bible says that "that which is born of flesh is flesh and that of spirit is spirit" so it is impossible for men to be born of evil spirits. This also meant that whatever other native stories there were about origin were also false. It is propaganda, nothing less.

A really neat book you might like to read is Geza Roheim's Hungarian and Vogul Mythology. I wrote a little piece to a Hungarian folklor list a number of years ago connecting Csaba with the Mansi World-Surveyor Man (Mir Susne Hum). It was really exciting to see an independent assessment of the Csaba legend along the same lines in the Roheim book.... (http://steppes.proboards23.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=board23&thread=962)

BTW, are Hungarians descendants of Japheth and Eneh as Josephus tells us (sometimes via Gomer and sometimes via Magog) or of Ham via Nimrod/Menmarot?

[Subu'atai]

So Arpad = Possible Hun
Magyar = Uralics

Yay! The first piece of possible intellectual understanding which took 8 years to reach me either then the propaganda I was forced to accept from my first gf that she was descendant of the Huns. *wipes sweat* Thank you

[Maotun]

Jan 3, 2009 10:32:05 GMT 3 hjernespiser said:

Maotun,
Welcome back! I thought you may have gotten upset because we disagree and left us. I hope this is not the case.

thx and re.
just some holiday you know

This took me a few moments to think about. Are you suggesting that because Jordanes said the Sabirs were also called the Hunuguri and because the name Hungarian is derived from Onogur (Hunuguri) that this means Magyars were Sabirs?

Not exactly, that was just a note,
but we had discussed above that the Sabir was a former name of the Hungarians before Magyar, according to DAI. And you wrote that we know even less on Sabirs than on Huns, hence I qouted that.

Cool. This sounds like a stream that feeds the Dnieper is called the Var in the Hunnic language. Has this been looked into closer by anyone? I see from Wikipedia there is a Dniper tributary called the Vorskla... What do you mean "could be" a Hungarian word? This seems hard to tell. It could be an English word too.

Ok, that's right, but I meaned: the theories of Hunnic language are based on the etymologies of the preserved words. In English as much I can measure, the word doesn't make any sense (or?), but in Hungarian it does, hence I wrote it can be such word.
Maybe Mongolian or Turkish too, but I don't know exactly.

I think what Rona-Tas says about the Hun language is irrelevant to what he says about the Magyar language. Besides, language and blood don't follow the same lines.

Ok, I just quoted him because it is another school of thought on Hunnic language among the scholars.

"The propaganda wasn't perpetrated by Italy, et al. It was Hungarians taking the stories that foreign countries had written about Scythians and Huns and then using them in order to proclaim internationally that the Arpadians had the authority to claim a right over Attila's old domain. Maybe Arpad was related to Attila. That doesn't necessarily mean the entire Magyar horde was related to the Huns, but the Kezai Gesta makes it seem so. As for the regular Hungarian folk, they were now Christianized. Therefore all origin theories had to relate to descent from Adam, Eve, and Noah. That meant all other native origin stories had to be suppressed. So when Orosius writes that the Huns were made by witches and demons, Simon Kezai had to say "Hang on a minute." and remind us that the Bible says that "that which is born of flesh is flesh and that of spirit is spirit" so it is impossible for men to be born of evil spirits. This also meant that whatever other native stories there were about origin were also false. It is propaganda, nothing less.
"

Maybe,
but do you think that all the great historians, diplomats and rulers of the Europe, even the Pope did believe it?
I can't even imagine this.

And there were such sources already before Arpad, which connected the Hungarians to the Avars.

I think in the 840s and later, when the first raiding groups of Hungarians appeared at the lower Danube and in the Carpathian Basin and Germany, the West EU did exactly know who were the Avars and Hungarians.

I may quote some of them and we can discuss it.

A really neat book you might like to read is Geza Roheim's Hungarian and Vogul Mythology. I wrote a little piece to a Hungarian folklor list a number of years ago connecting Csaba with the Mansi World-Surveyor Man (Mir Susne Hum). It was really exciting to see an independent assessment of the Csaba legend along the same lines in the Roheim book.... (http://steppes.proboards23.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=board23&thread=962)

Thx, I'll look into it.

BTW, are Hungarians descendants of Japheth and Eneh as Josephus tells us (sometimes via Gomer and sometimes via Magog) or of Ham via Nimrod/Menmarot?

Rather Nimrod.

According to our national anthem,
we are the "blood of Bendeguz" (Mundizuk)

a ref to this from one of our chronicles:
"Attila, by the grace of God, son of Bendeguz, grandson of the great Nimrod, king of Huns, Medes, Goths, Danes, fear of World, Scourge of God."

(noting that the national anthem of the Szekelys' is dedicated to Csaba, Attila's third son)

Our origin story the "Wondrous Stag legend" also mentions Nimrod.

[Maotun]

Aug 20, 2006 19:39:44 GMT 3 H. İhsan Erkoç said:

But of course the Carolingians couldn't have genocided the entire Avars

There still were Iazyges in 19th century Hungary? What happened to them? Which language did they speak?

Yes, moreover they are still around nowadays with some of their separate traditions and identity. They had even held a demonstration for their distant cousins when the Ossetic-Georgian war was.
Their language is now already full of Hungarian, but until the 18th century a part of them had been speaking Jazyg.
Also a Hungarian-Jazyg dictionary was found in the same century, which preserved their language.

[H. İhsan Erkoç]

Thanks for the info. I had actually read some more about them before, but thanks for the share

[hjernespiser]

Jan 3, 2009 15:39:22 GMT 3 Subu'atai said:

So Arpad = Possible Hun
Magyar = Uralics

Yay! The first piece of possible intellectual understanding which took 8 years to reach me either then the propaganda I was forced to accept from my first gf that she was descendant of the Huns. *wipes sweat* Thank you

I think that simplifies it too much. One easily falls into the trap of equating language with genetics then. By the time the Magyars were under Khazar suzerainty, they had already been in contact and had much influence from Turkics, Iranics, possibly early Slavs, even Vikings. And given the nature of tribal confederations, a lot of cross-breeding certainly went on. So perhaps it is more like this:

Magyar = 5x Uralic + 3x Turkic + 2x Iranic + 1x Rus

[Subu'atai]

... I think I'll just say Magyar = Magyar then

I think I need a brain expansion, this is a really complicated subject =/

[H. İhsan Erkoç]

Jan 5, 2009 2:54:13 GMT 3 Subu'atai said:

I think I need a brain expansion, this is a really complicated subject =/

The entire Steppe History is ;D

[hjernespiser]

There is a book related to this subject. It is called "Pechenegs, Cumans, and Iasians: Steppe Peoples in Medieval Hungary". It talks about the settlement and assimilation of these people into Hungary. I wish I knew more about it, but haven't read it yet.

books.google.com/books?id=czGBAAAAMAAJ

[hjernespiser]

Jan 5, 2009 2:54:13 GMT 3 Subu'atai said:

... I think I'll just say Magyar = Magyar then

I think I need a brain expansion, this is a really complicated subject =/

Magyar is Magyar. What else could it be?

[hjernespiser]

Jan 5, 2009 1:33:50 GMT 3 hjernespiser said:

Magyar = 5x Uralic + 3x Turkic + 2x Iranic + 1x Rus

But don't take only my word for it...

I was cruising JSTOR and came across a review by Peter B. Golden of Pal Liptak's 1983 Avarsand Ancient Hungarians .

" * Review: [untitled]
* Peter B. Golden
* The American Historical Review, Vol. 92, No. 3 (Jun., 1987), pp. 704-705
* Published by: American Historical Association
"

In his book, Liptak apparently uses traditional anthropology (note this is written before contemporary genetic studies) in an attempt to try to understand why, in a Turkic environment, Hungarians still speak an Ugric language. The conclusion is that "Uralians" were numerically superior. I want to also point out that this kind of look at the anthropology of ancient Hungarians is a reason why it must be understood that descent of Arpad from the Huns and descent of all the Magyars from the Huns must be kept as two separate topics.

Golden writes:
"Of the seven tribal names fixed in Hungarian tradition, most, like much of the Arpadian anthroponymy, are of Turkic origin. The names by which the Hungarians were known to the outside world are almost exclusively Turkic"

"Liptak ... finds that the proto-Hungarians contained an important "Turanid" element, distinguished from their Volga Bulghar- Onoghur Turkic neighbors (with whom they mixed) only by the presence of a Uralian element. The Hungarian overlord class of the conquest period contained about 33 percent Turanid stock. This type is almost completely absent from the middle layer (warrior-military retinue stratum) and the common folk. This Turanid element, among whom the Europo-Mongoloids (Mongoloids with strong Europoid admixtures) composed about 6 percent, provided the Turkic influence. The overlord class was primarily Turanid (of Western Eurasian extraction), Uralic, and Pamirian. The middle layer was essentially Mediterranean, Nordoid, and Pamirian with almost no Turanid and Uralic elements. The third layer, the common folk, was also dominated by Mediterranean and Nordoid elements, alongside of other Europoids."

Also note:
"Their subsequent Danubian homeland already contained Avar, Oghuric, Iranian, and other populations that may have even included earlier waves of Ugrians."

Archaeologist Gyula Laszlo holds that the late Avars are nearly identical with Magyars and are probably early Magyars. I think that is the reason behind the "earlier waves" comment.

As for the Avars...
"Liptak's taxonomic review of the population of Hungary of the Avar period indicates that approximately 16 percent of the grave-finds belong to various branches of the Mongoloid race (subdivided into Baikalian, Sinid, Sayanic, and Central Asian). The Inner Asian origin of the ruling strata of the European Avars is beyond question. "Political" but not "ethnic" Avars found in sites not belonging to the upper stratum were Europoids of various types. Thus, relatively small numbers of Inner Asian nomads were able to impose their rule on larger populations."

I have little doubt that this pattern of anthropological stratification among the classes is repeated among many many other steppe peoples too.

[hjernespiser]

Another thought just so that my opinion is understood ...

I think those people all considered themselves as Magyar. It didn't matter to them if this person over here was Turanid or this person over there was Nordoid.

[Maotun]

Something is not exactly clear for me here.

First of all: the Huns themselves did belong to what antropological group?

Jan 6, 2009 6:40:21 GMT 3 hjernespiser said:

"Finds that the proto-Hungarians contained an important "Turanid" element, distinguished from their Volga Bulghar- Onoghur Turkic neighbors (with whom they mixed)."

I found some interestint info on Bulgars:

According to the leading Ukrainian historian and Turkologist Omeljan Pritsak:
“We have to admit that the Bulgars were not Turkic people. A century-old erroneous and highly harmful unscientific view has been overcome."

And if the Avars had some Mongoloid ruler group as you wrote, why their language considered Turkic?

[hjernespiser]

Jan 6, 2009 23:56:00 GMT 3 Maotun said:

First of all: the Huns themselves did belong to what antropological group?

In another review that I found of Liptak's book, the reviewer writes, "The taxonomic characteristics of the ruling class of Huns are not well known." This comes after talk about Gepid and Longobard cemeteries from the Hun and Pre-Avar periods. ("Turanoids" were also found among the Gepids.) I suspect one would need to read Liptak's book to see if he talks about Huns directly at all. So no, it isn't clear at all. But maybe here is a clue. The reviewer writes, "The late Avar Period shows more hybridization resulting in higher frequencies of Europo-Mongolids". This would presume that the starting population didn't have very much "mongolid" influence.

# Review: [untitled]
# Gloria y'Edyn
# American Anthropologist, New Series, Vol. 86, No. 3 (Sep., 1984), pp. 740-742

Lastly, I somewhat bristle when I see people write on the Internet about how the Hungarians moved into the Carpathian Basin and then became "Europeans" anthropologically (and genetically). Perhaps readers here can now understand why. The archaeological record just doesn't support that claim. The Hungarians were quite heterogeneous anthropologically long before ever moving into present-day Hungary.

And if the Avars had some Mongoloid ruler group as you wrote, why their language considered Turkic?

Why would that matter? Language and genes are not transmitted in the same way. I suspect you're confusing the use of the anthropological term "Mongoloid" with the Mongol people and language.