# Hungary



## osemnais

Why is the country name so different from the one in its language? Where do they both come from?


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## ancalimon

From what I know, the name Hungary comes from Turkic ON OGUR ÖYÜ (the country of ONOGUR). On Ogur itself comes from two different words ON and OGUR. Ogur is what a group of Turks called themselves. It's simply Oghuz in a different dialect. I'm not sure about the ON though. It could have a meaning that got lost in Turkic. Or it could simply mean "10". Or it could be related with the word HUN.

These OnOgur people consituted part of the Hungarians, Bulgarians and Uyghurs.


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## osemnais

Have you read that somewhere or did you came up with it yourself? And how would Onoguroyu become Hungary?


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## LilianaB

There are even a few other names for this country different from the Hungarian name and the English one. It is Wengry in Polish and Vengriya in Lithuanian (most likely a Polish loan).


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## ancalimon

osemnais said:


> Have you read that somewhere or did you came up with it yourself? And how would Onoguroyu become Hungary?



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onogurs

I don't know how the name changed into that. But there are countless resources that talks about Hungar being from On Ogur


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## osemnais

LilianaB said:


> There are even a few other names for this country different from the Hungarian name and the English one. It is Wengry in Polish and Vengriya in Lithuanian (most likely a Polish loan).


Where does this one come from?


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## LilianaB

These variations apparently also come from Ongur- on (ten) gur (either a generation or a shot). The Hunes were called this way, the tribes occupying the area near Kuban. The ancient Hungarian tribes where moving towards Kuban and got in contact with the ancient Hunas. This is according to some etymological dictionaries. The Huna tribes occupying those territories were called Ongur. Those Huna tribes occupied the territories from the Ural Mountains to Caucasus in the 5-6 c AD.


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## berndf

osemnais said:


> Why is the country name so different from the one in its language? Where do they both come from?


First of all, _Hungary_ is *not* the official name of the country. That is just what the English call them. The official name is _Magyarország._

The name _Hungary _is derived from the Huns (_Hunni_ in Late Latin), the people who settled in the area in the 5th century displacing the Avars. This was several centuries before the Magyars arrived. Names derived from _Hunni  _(_Ungarn, Hungary, Hongrie, Ungheria, Унгария_) have probably remained popular in many European languages because many people erroneously believe the Magyars to be the decedents of the Huns.


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## berndf

ancalimon said:


> From what I know, the name Hungary comes from Turkic ON OGUR ÖYÜ (the country of ONOGUR). On Ogur itself comes from two different words ON and OGUR. Ogur is what a group of Turks called themselves. It's simply Oghuz in a different dialect. I'm not sure about the ON though. It could have a meaning that got lost in Turkic. Or it could simply mean "10". Or it could be related with the word HUN.
> 
> These OnOgur people consituted part of the Hungarians, Bulgarians and Uyghurs.


According to Etymonline, Latin _Hunni _is from Turkic _Hun-yü_. The name seems to be ultimately derived from the Chinese name of the _Xiongnu_ tribes.


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## osemnais

This explanation makes much more sense.  <...>


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## ancalimon

I thought we were talking about "Hungar" and not "Huns". While I'm not saying that Huns and Onogurs are not related, we can not simply say Hungar was simply derived from Huns. That would be almost like some kind of  folk etymology. Not all Hungarians, Bulgars, Kangars (Sumerians?) are Huns.

http://s155239215.onlinehome.us/turkic/13_Oguz_and_Ogur/OguzesEn.htm
http://s155239215.onlinehome.us/turkic/13_Oguz_and_Ogur/Oguz_and_Ogur_Dialects_Ru.htm
http://s155239215.onlinehome.us/turkic/13_Oguz_and_Ogur/TurkoSlavicSymbiosisOPritsakEn.htm



> The ancient Greek geographer Ptolemy (160-170) mentioned a river Yaik (renamed to   Ural by the Russian Tsarina in the 18th c.; she must have hated Ptolemy more than she got scared of  Stepan Razin) running into Caspian Sea as Daikh (Aikh), confirming with  that that Ogur ancestors of Bulgars, Kangars, or Huns lived in the western  Siberia, in the Itil steppes, before the 2-nd c. AD. Even more ancient reporter, Herodotus, in the 6th  c. BC described  in detail Agacheri (Agathyrsi) Scythians, who, like Savars/Suvars  attested later by  Ptolemy, are believed to have been speaking a language of Ogur branch.  Information of the  ancient western sources places the ancient Western Ogur tribes in the  steppes of Eastern  Europe and Middle East, while the Chinese sources place their  contemporary Eastern Ogurs  in the steppes of Middle Asia and Takla Makan desert. Under the names of  Western Hu and  Hu, i.e Huns, Türkic kün = ”kin”, the Chinese oldest sources extend the  presence of the  Ogur tribes to the Ordoc peninsula.



There has to be another explanation to why Europeans called them Hungarians.
Also we have to know about the relationship between Attila and Pope Leo I. What did the Pope tell the barbarian so that he stopped destroying Europe. These are unanswerable questions. We don't even have information about the language of Huns and in which language did the Pope and Huns communicate with.


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## berndf

ancalimon said:


> That would be almost like some kind of  folk etymology.


Actually, I think you are right there. The Greek Ούγγροι was applied to the Onogurs and to the Magyars which certainly is a confusion as well. In the West, the Latinized name _Hungaria_ was then reinterpreted as "land of the Huns". So, there is a series of confusions. In reality, the Magyars were neither Onogurs nor Huns.


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## ancalimon

berndf said:


> Actually, I think you are right there. The Greek Ούγγροι was applied to the Onogurs and to the Magyars which certainly is a confusion as well. In the West, the Latinized name _Hungaria_ was then reinterpreted as "land of the Huns". So, there is a series of confusions. In reality, the Magyars were neither Onogurs nor Huns.



Actually when Greeks established a colony in Phanagoria in BC 543, the Ogur lived in the Western side of Cimmerian Bosphorus.

In my opinion, the country named "Hungary" consisted of many Ogur (and outsiders knew them by this name) but after the Magyars took control of the country (and after they were Christianized) they became the rulers and something happened to the Ogur culture there. Maybe they got assimilated or were hunted during the Witch Hunts. (some kind of ethnic cleansing maybe).

The word Magyar is as far as I know (and I think) from Finno-Ugric.
I'm not familiar with Finno-Ugric languages. But could the UGRIC part be related with these OGUR in some way?


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## berndf

When the Magyars entered Pannonia, the country was settled by a relatively small Slavic and Turkic speaking population, the remaining population of the Avar empire. The fate of these people is unknown. As you said, they may have been assimilated or enslaved/displaced ("ethnic cleansing").

I personally prefer to assimilation hypothesis. Genetic analyses in various parts of Europe suggest that there was much more continuity in the the population then was previously thought, i.e that all the upheavals of the migration period were mostly exchanges of leading cultures and not of actual populations.


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## francisgranada

ancalimon said:


> ...   The word Magyar is as far as I know (and I think) from Finno-Ugric.


The origin of the ethnonym "magyar" was discussed here.



> But could the UGRIC part be related with these OGUR in some way


As to the relation between the terms Ugric (_Ugor _in Hungarian) and _Hungarian _and eventually _Ogur_, there are hypotheses as well, but I do not know more details. The term Ugric seems to derive from _Yugra_, a region in north-central Asia. 

For curiosity, there are also ethnonyms like Uygur (Turkic) and Yukaghir (a people perhaps related to the Uralic) that in theory could be related "somehow" both to Ugric and Ogur ...


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## francisgranada

ancalimon said:


> ... I don't know how the name changed into that ...



One possibility is the following: _onogur _> Slavic. *_onъgъr- _> *_ongъr-

_The Slavic *_ongъr _then developped regularly according to the corresponding phonetical changes and resulted in the Polish _Węngier _and Czech _Uhor _(from a previous *ugor). The Russian Venger, the Lithuanian etc. variants are from Polish.

This Slavic *_ongъr _could enter also in the Germanic and Romance languages (unger, ungar, ungur, ungaro, ongaro ...) giving birth to the medieval Latin Ungarus > Hungarus (as consequence of the association with the Huns), from which derives _Hungaria_, which has in  turn become _Hungary_ in English.


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## ancalimon

There's something worth mentioning.. There was an enmity between Oghuz Turks and Ogur Turks. While there are times these people lived together, something happened between them and the Ogur simply left the Oghuz and went to live on the frontiers of where Turks lived. Or maybe they were expelled. Today Turks call Hungary as "Macaristan". They don't use the name "Ogur" when talking about them but they still put the Turkic "astan" suffix meaning "blessed lands", "nexus to heavens" (like they put it to most of their countries).. Maybe in order to not forget their connection to there.

There's also something else to mention. Ogur ad Oghuz  are both derived from "OQ, OC"  or "OĞ ~ OW" .  There are many theories about the meaning of these. Some of them being OK (arrow, civilization carrier (their idea of it)) or OĞ (blessed with good luck)

For example OĞUZ means "*aus*picious". Every OQ tribe has a bird symbol. The are also wisemen (shamans) dressed as birds. For example the shamans that turned Turks into Muslims wore bird clothes.

For some reason the symbol of Bulgars and Kayıg (Kayıg is the tribe that started Ottoman Empire) is the same which is :  IVI


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## Ben Jamin

berndf said:


> According to Etymonline, Latin _Hunni _is from Turkic _Hun-yü_. The name seems to be ultimately derived from the Chinese name of the _Xiongnu_ tribes.


The connection between Xiongnu and Huns is pure guessing. The only thing we know that both were Turkic people. As far as I have read, no other connections have been found.
As to the origin of Hungary from Huns: how to explain the ‘g’ sound which lacks in Huns? The ‘H’ at the beginning also appears to be added at a later time, and not in all languages.


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## berndf

Ben Jamin said:


> As to the origin of Hungary from Huns: how to explain the ‘g’ sound which lacks in Huns? The ‘H’ at the beginning also appears to be added at a later time, and not in all languages.


See #12.


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## osemnais

> One possibility is the following: _onogur _> Slavic. *_onъgъr- _> *_ongъr-_


How would the second o become ъ? Doesnt ъ come only from short u?


> For some reason the symbol of Bulgars and Kayıg (Kayıg is the tribe that started Ottoman Empire) is the same which is :  IVI


I dont know about Kayigs, but the Old Bulgarian symbol was IYI and not IVI.


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## francisgranada

osemnais said:


> How would the second o become ъ? Doesnt ъ come only from short u?



It's only a simplified approach to a possible explanation from my side, as I have not seen this word written down in no documents. I have substituted the second "o" arbitrarilly by a "weakened" wovel that later "disappeard", i.e. was no more pronounced. This phonetical process could be, indeed, more complex.


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## ancalimon

osemnais said:


> How would the second o become ъ? Doesnt ъ come only from short u?
> 
> I dont know about Kayigs, but the Old Bulgarian symbol was IYI and not IVI.



There are different versions of Kayıg tribe tamgas. Some of them IVI and a some of them IYI.

http://s155239215.onlinehome.us/turkic/30_Writing/301Tamgas/KashgariTamgasEn.htm



> _Kais(Kays/Kaylar) in the literature. Notably, the tribal symbols of the Dulo  clan of the Bulgars and the Qayп (Kayı) tribe of the Oguzes are the same)_


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