[Aryan ethnonyms of Finno-Ugric peoples]
The former presence of an Aryan-speaking elite layer among the Finno-Ugric speaking peoples of the Oka–Volga–Kama region is clearly visible in the ethnonyms of these peoples. The name Mari goes back to Proto-Aryan *márya- ‘man’, literally ‘mortal, one who has to die’.
It is quite possible that this ethnic name is of Bronze Age origin, for marya- is used in Mitanni Aryan of Syria (c.1500–1300 BC) for the nobility with horse chariots. The name Mordvin seems to go back to early Proto-Aryan mórto- ‘mortal, man’.
The same word was separately borrowed into Finnic after the change o > a had taken place in Proto-Aryan, so as to yield márta- ‘mortal, man’ preserved in Old Indo-Aryan: Finnish marras, stem marta- ‘dying, dead; manly, male’.
The ethnonym Arya/Arya appears as a loanword in Finnish and Saami, the reconstructed original shape being *orya, written orja in modern Finnish, where it denotes ‘slave’; this meaning can be explained as coming from ‘Aryan taken as a war-captive or prisoner’, as English slave+
comes from ‘captive Slav’.
The ethnic name Yugra is used of the Ob-Ugrians in the Old Russian “Nestor’s Chronicle.” As shown by Tuomo Pekkanen (1973), this ethnic name was used of the Hungarians as well and has an Aryan etymology.
The ethnic name Yugra is used of the Ob-Ugrians in the Old Russian “Nestor’s Chronicle.” As shown by Tuomo Pekkanen (1973), this ethnic name was used of the Hungarians as well and has an Aryan etymology.
Proto-Aryan *ugrá- ‘mighty, strong, formidable, noble’ occurs in Old Indo-Aryan and Old Iranian not only as an adjective but also as a tribal name and as a proper name.
Interestingly The Greek historian Strabo (64 BC–AD19) in his Geography (7.3.17) says that the Scythian tribe of ‘Royal Sarmatians’ were also called Oûrgoi.
This is a metathesis form of the word ugra, attested also in Scythian proper names such as Aspourgos (= Old Iranian aspa- ‘horse’ + ugra-).
These Oûrgoi were settled between the Dniester and the Dnieper; according to Strabo, they “in general are nomads, though a few are interested also in farming; these peoples, it is said, dwell also along the Ister (i.e. the Danube),
often on both sides.” The Oûrgoi seem to have included also Hungarians, since a third- or fourth-century Latin inscription (CIL III, 5234) from the borders of Hungary mentions raiders called Mattzari,
which agrees with the later Byzantine transcriptions of Magyar, the self-appellation of the Hungarians, called Majqhari in the tenth-century Muslim sources.
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