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A linguistic study proves that the European Huns and their Asian ancestors spoke the same Palaeo-Siberian language. This result refutes the previously assumed Turkish origin of the Huns / publication in the ‘Transactions of the Philological Society’
New linguistic findings show that the European Huns had Palaeo-Siberian ancestors and do not, as previously assumed, originate from Turkic-speaking groups. That is the result of a joint study by Dr Svenja Bonmann at the University of Cologne’s Department of Linguistics and Dr Simon Fries at the Faculty of Classics and the Faculty of Linguistics, Philology and Phonetics at the University of Oxford. The results of the study ‘Linguistic evidence suggests that Xiōng-nú and Huns spoke the same Paleo-Siberian language’ have been published in the journal Transactions of the Philological Society.
On the basis of various linguistic sources, the researchers reconstructed that the ethnic core of the Huns – including Attila and his European ruling dynasty – and their Asian ancestors, the so-called Xiongnu, shared a common language. This language belongs to the Yeniseian language family, a subgroup of the so-called Palaeo-Siberian languages. These languages were spoken in Siberia before the invasion of Uralic, Turkic and Tungusic ethnic groups. Even today, small groups who speak a Yeniseian language still reside along the banks of the Yenisei River in Russia.
From the third century BCE to the second century CE, the Xiongnu formed a loose tribal confederation in Inner Asia. A few years ago, during archaeological excavations in Mongolia, a city was discovered that is believed to be Long Cheng, the capital of the Xiongnu empire. The Huns, in turn, established a relatively short-lived but influential multi-ethnic empire in southeastern Europe from the fourth to fifth centuries CE. Research has shown that they came from Inner Asia, but their ethnic and linguistic origins have been disputed until now, as no written documents in their own language have survived. A great deal of what we know about the Huns and the Xiongnu is therefore based on written documents about them in other languages; for example, the term ‘Xiōng-nú’ derives from Chinese.
From the seventh century CE, Turkic peoples expanded westwards. It was therefore assumed that the Xiongnu and the ethnic core of the Huns, whose own westward expansion dates back to the fourth century CE, also spoke a Turkic language. However, Bonmann and Fries have found various linguistic indications that these groups spoke an early form of Arin, a Yeniseian language, in Inner Asia around the turn of the millennium. “This was long before the Turkic peoples migrated to Inner Asia and even before the splitting of Old Turkic into several daughter languages. This ancient Arin language even influenced the early Turkic languages and enjoyed a certain prestige in Inner Asia. This implies that Old Arin was probably the native language of the Xiongnu ruling dynasty,” says Dr Svenja Bonmann from the University of Cologne.
Bonmann and Fries analysed linguistic data based on loan words, glosses in Chinese texts, proper names of the Hun dynasty as well as place and water names. Taken by itself, the data on each of these aspects would have comparatively little significance, but taken together it is hard to argue with the conclusion that both the ruling dynasty of the Xiongnu and the ethnic core of the Huns spoke Old Arin.
The findings of the study also made it possible for the first time to reconstruct how the Huns came to settle in Europe: For the two researchers, place and water names still prove today that an Arin-speaking population once left its mark on Inner Asia and migrated westwards from the Altai-Sayan region. Attila the Hun probably also bears an ancient Arin name: Until now, ‘Attila’ was thought to be a Germanic nickname (‘little father’), but according to the new study, ’Attila’ could also be interpreted as a Yeniseian epithet, which roughly translates as ‘swift-ish, quick-ish’.
The new linguistic findings support earlier genetic and archaeological findings that the European Huns are descendants of the Xiongnu. “Our study shows that alongside archaeology and genetics comparative philology plays an essential role in the exploration of human history. We hope that our findings will inspire further research into the history of lesser-known languages and thereby contribute further to our understanding of the linguistic evolution of mankind,” Dr Simon Fries from the University of Oxford concludes.
Dr Svenja Bonmann
Department of Linguistics, University of Cologne
+49 221 470 4112
svenja.bonmann@uni-koeln.de
Dr Simon Fries
Faculty of Classics / Faculty of Linguistics, Philology and Phonetics, University of Oxford
simon.fries@classics.ox.ac.uk
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1467-968X.12321
On the River Yelogui, a tributary of the Yenisei in Siberia. A few speakers of a Yenisei language, K ...
Source: Edward Vajda
Copyright: Edward Vajda
For a long time, researchers assumed that the European Huns spoke a Turkic language. New research sh ...
Source: Edward Vajda
Copyright: Edward Vajda
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