The origin of the nogai’s ethnic name

Abstract

This article is dedicated to the origin of the nogai’s ethnic name. This nation, lived in the southern Russian and in the trans-Volga steppes in the 15th–18th centures, left many place names in the south of the European Russia, Ukraine, and also in the western Kazakhstan. The main information about the medieval nogais mostly came from the Russian sources, i.e. certificates, diplomatic documents and historical chronicles. The speculations about the nogai’s ethnic name are determined by the absence of the nogai’s written literature, i.e. the absence of any narrative sources in the Nogai language. There are different, but unconvincing versions of the origin of the nogai’s ethnic name. The most popular versions lead to the personal name Nogai and to the Mongolian word “nokhoi” (a dog). Nowadays, these speculations are mostly rejected by the majority of modern scholars. Highly likely, the ethnic name of the nogais came from the Hungarian word “nagy” (i.e. big). The ancestors of the Hungarian tribes — “the white Huns”, lived in the Middle Ages in the Middle Volga region and near the Ural mountains close to “the black Huns” — the ancestors of the Nogais. This neighborhood had a deep influence both on the Hungarian language and on the Turkic languages, and respectively on the Hungarians and Turkic nationalities.