Hungary, the name in English for the European country, is an exonym derived from the Medieval Latin Hungaria. The Latin name itself derives from the ethnonyms Hun, for the Huns who had settled in the land today known as Hungary prior to the Avars, and On-Ogur ("Ten Arrows" or "Ten Tribes" in Oghuric) for the Hungarian tribal federation that conquered the land in the 9th and 10th centuries. Medieval authors called the country Ungaria and later Hungaria, but the Hungarians call themselves Magyars and their country Magyarország (ország means country in Hungarian). They also refer to their country as Hungária, though far less commonly.
Name of the Hungarians and Hungary
Endonym of the ethnic group and country Primary sources use several names for the Magyars/Hungarians. However, their original historical endonym—the name they used to refer to themselves in the Early Middle Ages—is uncertain. In sources written in Arabic, the Magyars are denominated Madjfarīyah or Madjgharīyah, for example by Ahmad ibn Rustah; Badjghird or Bazkirda, such as by al-Mas’udi; Unkalī by al-Tartushi, for instance; and Turk, by sources like ibn Hayyan. One of the earliest written mentions of "Magyar" endonym is from 810.
The Hungarian endonym is Magyar, which is derived from Old Hungarian Mogyër. The name is derived from Magyeri of the 9th or 10th century (contemporarily Mëgyër), one of the 7 major semi-nomadic Hungarian tribes (the others being the Nyék, Tarján, Jenő, Kér, Keszi, and Kürt-Gyarmat), which dominated the others after the ascension of one of its members, namely Árpád, and his subsequent dynasty. The tribal name Megyer became Magyar in reference to the Hungarian people as a whole. There are many hypotheses on the origin of this name. The first element Magy is connected to the ethnonym of the Mansi (mäńćī, mańśi, and måńś), but no Proto-Ugric form can be reconstructed due to irregular vowel correspondences. The second element eri ("man", "men", and "lineage") is also of unclear origin; it was formerly considered to be cognate with Mari erge ("son") and Finnish archaic yrkä ("young man"), but this proposal has been rejected in more recent research.
European exonyms for Hungarians and Hungary In early medieval sources, in addition to the Hungarians, the exonym Ungri or Ugri referred to the Mansi and Khantys also. It may refer to the Hungarians during a time when they dwelt east of the Ural Mountains along the natural borders of Europe and Asia before the Hungarian conquest of the Carpathian Basin in 895–6. The toponym Yugra or Iuhra referred to that territory from around the 12th century. Herodotus in the 5th century BC probably referred to ancestors of the Hungarians when he wrote of the Yugra people living west of the Ural Mountains. In Byzantine sources, the Magyars are called Οὔγγροι Ungroi; Τούρκοι Turkoi, by Emperor Leo VI "the Wise", for example; and Σάβαρτοι άσφαλοι Savartoi asfaloi, such as by Emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogennetos. Written sources called Magyars "Ungarians" prior to the Hungarian conquest of the Carpathian Basin in 895–6 when they lived on the steppes of Eastern Europe, specifically: Ungri by Georgius Monachus in 837, Ungri in Annales Bertiniani of 862, and Ungari in Annales iuvavenses of 881. The ethnonym Ungri is the Latinized form of Byzantine Greek Oungroi (Οὔγγροι). According to an explanation, the Greek name was borrowed from Old Bulgar ągrinŭ, which in turn comes from Oghuric On-Ogur (meaning "ten [tribes of the] Ogurs"), the collective name for the tribes which later joined the Bulgar tribal confederacy that ruled the eastern parts of Hungary after the Avars. The Hungarians probably belonged to the Onogur tribal alliance and it is very possible that they became its ethnic majority. The Latin variant Ungarii used for them by Widukind of Corvey in his The Deeds of the Saxons of the 10th century is most probably patterned after Middle High German Ungarn. The Italians called the Hungarians as Ungherese, the country as Ungheria. When referencing the Magyars, the oldest Medieval Latin sources usually use Ungri, Ungari, late high medieval sources started to use a "H" prefix before the ethnonym: Hungri, Hungari, but some of the later high medieval sources call them Avari or Huni. The "H" prefix before the ethnonym and country name appeared in official Latin language Hungarian documents, royal seals and coins since the reign of king Béla III (r. 1172–1196). The German and Italian languages preserved the original form (without H prefix) of the ethnonym. The addition of the unetymological prefix "H-" in High Medieval-era Latin is most probably due to the politically motivated historical associations of the Hungarians with the Huns who settled Hungary prior to the Avars, Slavs and the Hungarians themselves.
The origin of the English ethnonym and country name The English word "Hungary" is derived from Medieval Latin Hungaria.
Hungarian sources
According to one view, following Anonymus's description, the Hungarian federation in the 9th century was called Hetumoger ("Seven Magyars"): VII principales persone qui Hetumoger dicuntur ("seven princely persons who are called Seven Magyars"), though the Chronicler refers to "seven leading persons" instead of a polity.
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