That's a great clarification. Most people think the words Hungary and Hungarian are derivatives of "Hun". But it is not. Huns are completely different. You are right. Actually, it is the derivative of "Onoğur" which symbolizes the group with ten arrows (on=ten / oğuz=arrow) (different than the western culture, the naming tradition is not based on their territories but on some holy and/or heroic concepts/symbols one of which is arrow. -a long story). The best way to easily explain what "arrow" in concrete meaning is is to re-translate it as "power" or "leadershipness of a clan" (no leader but an acknowledged leading ability-and-right of a clan). It has nothing to do with "governance"**.
Oğur is Oğuz, the name of the largest body of the Turkic* people. Turkic people in western territories use a dialect that changes the letter "z" to "r". So, the Onoğuz people migrated to the west were called there as Onogur.
The branch that is the core of today's Hungarian people is "Ugor"s (Ugrians, as you call) of Fin-Ugors. When the Onoguzs reached the area, they combined and named themselves as Manysi-er. Magyars migrated further west after Pecheneks became dominant to push the tribes.
Today, only Hungarians and Turkish* people call Magyars as Magyars and that means a big distortion of the history.
* In fact, the term "Turkic" is also wrong. There is no definition in that sense. "Turkic" is a word that the western literature has found to suit the case to their own way of understanding.
For instance, let's take the name of my country. The name "Trkiye" is also ambigious. Actually, "Turk" in Turkish means 'the one who has the civic, holy understading and divine'. It does not imply any nationality. The name "Trkiye" is indeed Arabic. There is no terminology in Turkish to name a land as Turkish because Turk does not imply to any peoples.
Similarly, all these names of ...-stan countries are not Turkish names. That suffix is Persian.
The tradition is that each State/government of clans named their territories with words of ordinary daily life usage or with the name of some kind of holy alliance. The culture doesn't fit to the western naming conventions.
Further, the clans were not divided like it is understood in western literature. The confusion is the result of the archeologists and historians who tried to translate the ancient scripts without knowing anything about Turkish. Hope new studies and mutual understanding will clear all these confusions.
** Government and "arrows" of clans are also often confused. In fact, they are different and mostly clash though the leaders of clans tended to form a government. Clans migrated and supported other states while governments' faith was to be destroyed by another alliance.
Edited by tekgergedan (03/22/08 04:33 PM)
_________________________