Talk:Ugrians

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Even though this is just a stub, the content is mostly beside the point. The topic of the article, "Ugrians", is defined with one sentence; the rest is mostly general information on Finno-Ugric peoples and does not belong in this article. --AAikio 13:14, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

I've removed the stuff on Finno-Ugrians, and put a link to that article in the "See also" section. --Zundark (talk) 10:48, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

Hungarians are not Ugrians

Re. recent edits, some sources claim this because of the supposed connection between the languages. But Yugria was the country east of Perm, and included the Ket, Komi, Nenet, Selkup and Udmurt.

After the Russian conquest of Yugria, Czar Ivan III used the title "King of the Ugrians" in correspondence with the king of Hungary. That wasn't a territorial claim. — kwami (talk) 12:53, 25 January 2024 (UTC)

What my edits provided was the contemporary terminology that is used to label various historic and contemporary peoples. I have provided sources for this terminology at Talk:Finnic peoples#Western Finns, and included some of them here in the article (see revision before the revert). You should also read the sources in the version to which you reverted. You will find that none of them agree with your personal terminology.

Here's what Sinor 1990, The Cambridge History of Early Inner Asia, p.253, says in a chapter named Ob-Ugrians (underlining mine, and some accents omitted):

The Medieval Islamic geographers make mention of the Wisu and Yura as peoples who lived beyond the Volga Bulghars in the far north and with whom the latter traded for furs. [...] The Yura are the Yugra (Ugra, Iugra of the Rus' chronicles), the Ob-Ugrians, the earliest stages of whose history we have already reviewed. At present they consist of two peoples, the Mansi-Vogul and the Khanty-Ostiak.

So, it seems you are conflating this historic terminology (Yugra) with the present-day terminology, in which the "Ugrian peoples" includes both the Ob-Ugrians and the Hungarians (according to sources that I provided). Note also that the reverted version referred to "linguistic ancestors", which was the term which the reliable source "The Oxford Guide to the Uralic Languages" uses, so your argument about ethnicities is irrelevant. And regardless what you imply in the revert summary, I never claimed that "Ugrian peoples" would constitute a very meaningful ethnic unit in contemporary world. Jähmefyysikko (talk) 15:19, 25 January 2024 (UTC)

@Kwamikagami:: Steven Danver's Encyclopedia Native Peoples of the World (2015) contains your above statements, so I assume you are using it as a source here. The policy WP:TERTIARY urges some caution in using tertiary sources like this. The encyclopedia seems to be mostly good quality, but this specific article titled Samoyedic is very dubious (available at archive.org, pp. 235 and 236). Let me quote the first two paragraphs of the article:

The name Samoyedic is a Russian term meaning “self-eater,” a reference to the alleged practice of cannibalism as described in twelfth-century Russian chronicles. It is a simplification of the ethnic composition of western Siberia, which is inhabited by a diverse set of Ob-Ugrian peoples. Their territory stretches from the northern course of the Dvina River in northern Russia to the Ob River in western Siberia and the Sayan Mountains in the southwestern part of the Altay range.
In the southwest, the Ugrians were influenced significantly by the Turks, and they are related ethnically and linguistically to the Finns and Hungarians. Living next to Russians and Turks, the Ugrians gradually assimilated into those cultures, a fact that is reflected in many loan words from Russian and Turkic, along with southwestern Siberian dialects. The most prominent ethnic groups among the Ugrians are the Ket, Komi, Nenet, Selkup, and Votiak.

What is presented here is a full-blown confusion between Samoyeds (e.g. Ket, Nenets, Selkup), Ob-Ugrians (Khanty and Mansi) and other northern Finno-Ugric peoples (Komi and Votiak a.k.a. Udmurt). The article does cite some good-quality sources which do not share this terminological confusion, but instead make a clear distinction between these peoples. I think you should self-revert per WP:BURDEN if you don't have a better source. Jähmefyysikko (talk) 08:42, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

Danver was the source of my statement above, but I'd never heard of him before this discussion.

He seems to be conflating two uses of 'Ugric', the original one (now obsolete) of those non-Turko-Mongolic peoples east of Perm, and a later one of those Finns who were linguistically closest to the Hungarians (or at least supposedly so), the Hanti and Mansi. In neither era were the Hungarians 'Finns'. — kwami (talk) 10:45, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

I still don't know what statements like Hungarians were not 'Finns' mean, as you have some personal interpretation of the word Finn, and you would also need to specify in which sense you use the word 'were'. Not that it matters much, Finns are not relevant here, and for all I care, we can drop the mention of the 'Ugrian Finns' per WP:DUE as antiquated and rare terminology. Especially at this stage, when we don't discuss other historic terminology. But if we decide to keep it, we need to be faithful to the source, which says that "Ugrian Finns include the Voguls [...], the Ostyaks [...] and the Magyars of Hungary".

With regards to Ugrians, all we need to do is provide sources (per WP:VERIFIABILITY) which indicate how the term is used in scholarly texts, and not to impose our personal preferences. The sources provide answers to questions about which peoples are included, in which sense (ethnic or linguistic), and on which eras the term is typically used. We don't need to engage in WP:OR of our own. Jähmefyysikko (talk) 05:02, 4 February 2024 (UTC)

Good. Let's not do that then. — kwami (talk) 05:50, 4 February 2024 (UTC)

Requested move 2 December 2024

Ugrians → Ob-Ugrians – "Ugrians" is an ambiguous term. It is often understood to include both Hungarians and the Ob-Ugrians (Khanty and Mansi), or to refer to a some theorized proto-Ugric community. For examples, see this book, this Britannica entry, and this study. However, we don't really need an article about Ugrians in the broad sense, since it is just an umbrella term with not much non-linguistic content, and the linguistic content is naturally covered by Ugric languages.

Occasionally, "Ugrian" is used synonymously with "Ob-Ugrian". See Marjorie Mandelstam Balzer's book. Article about Ob-Ugrians would be useful since they are very closely related, but a better title for that article would be Ob-Ugrians per WP:PRECISE and WP:COMMONNAME. Ugrians on the other hand should be made into a disambiguation page which would include links to Ugric languages and to Ob-Ugrians. Jähmefyysikko (talk) 14:14, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

• oppose Ob-Ugric is a linguistic construct, not an ethnic one. There's no reason to have a combined article on the Khanty and Mansi specifically, esp. since we have articles on both. It's the historical Ugrian Finns, whatever the specific conception of them may be in any particular source, that is of encyclopedic interest. Granted, this article barely mentions them, but that's an argument for expanding the article. — kwami (talk) 03:07, 3 December 2024 (UTC)

  Could you elaborate on your idea about "Ugrian Finns", and perhaps show some sources about them? The only source which currently mentions the Ugrian Finns is the late-19th century Britannica, which defines the "race of Finns" linguistically (and includes Hungarians as Ugrian Finns). It's not something we can use to expand the article.

  The Ob-Ugrians are not only linguistically, but also ethnically related. Their mythologies are largely the same, and some traces of a common moiety system remain. Most important consideration for WP is that there are a lot of sources on "Ob-Ugrian peoples": Google Scholar search. Jähmefyysikko (talk) 04:56, 3 December 2024 (UTC)

  Yes, but ethnically I doubt that they're closer than some other of the Ugrians were.

  The reason the Hungarians were included in that old EB article, and that they're no longer counted among the 'Finns', is a linguistic construct, namely the Ugric branch of Finno-Ugric. But that classification is largely obsolete. Anyway, people's ethnicity / ethnic identity doesn't normally change whenever linguists posit a new classification of their languages.

  If the Xanty and Mansi share enough to make a good WP article, fine, but I wouldn't want to exclude other historical Ugrians, which a move to 'Ob-Ugrians' would imply.

  The name 'Ob-Ugrian' is a purported linguist clade, not an ethnicity. It means 'all Ugrian languages apart from Hungarian.' Beside the fact that recent linguistic classifications don't include Hungarian in a Ugric branch, ethnically the Hungarians never were Ugrian. So ethnically 'non-Hungarian Ugrians' are simply Ugrians.

  I'd summarize things the opposite way you did. You say that there's little non-linguistic content to Ugrians, but Ugrian was originally an ethnic construct, if perhaps exonymic. But Ob-Ugrian is an entirely linguistic concept, so there is no non-linguistic content to Ob-Ugrian. If the Xanty and Mansi, and their now-extinct neighbors, shared a lot culturally or ethnically, that has little to do with whether the linguistic Ob-Ugric theory has any merit. The sources that speak of Ob-Ugric peoples as a language-based ethnic unit make the fallacy of reifying linguistic hypotheses as ethnic groups. — kwami (talk) 06:56, 3 December 2024 (UTC)

  To avoid WP:OR, please define your terms and provide sources. What do you mean by "Ugrian" and which sources do you base your definition on? Jähmefyysikko (talk) 07:02, 3 December 2024 (UTC)

  Historically, the Ugrians were a collection of peoples, perhaps identified as such from the outside, that the Xanty and Mansi are thought to descend from. They have little to nothing to do with the purported Ob-Ugric branch of the Uralic language family. If Ob-Ugric is found to be valid, that won't confirm their existence, and if proves to be spurious, that won't make them disappear from the historical record.

  My main concern is that we don't promote the pseudo-scientific fallacy that linguistic relatedness determines ethnic relatedness. One consequence of that fallacy is that ethnicity would shift every time a linguist comes up with a new linguistic classification. For example, there was no 'Hamitic' people that disappeared into the ether when the Hamitic branch of Afroasiatic was abandoned, and claiming there was a Hamitic people that disappeared around 1960 would not be supported by ethnographic evidence. — kwami (talk) 07:46, 3 December 2024 (UTC)

  Thank you for the definition. What you're proposing essentially hijacks the existing term "Ugrians" and assigns it a new meaning. Wouldn't this create confusion for readers when they compare your definition with how the term is used elsewhere in the literature? The suggestion also seems illogical. It goes to great lengths to avoid providing a collective name for the Khanty and Mansi, yet they still serve as a point of reference in the definition.

  I don't think we need to worry about shifting terminology in advance. If a change occurs and affects the field, Wikipedia will follow the updated terminology. However, Wikipedia doesn't lead by introducing new terms. For now, the ethnographic community has not rejected the term "Ob-Ugrians." For example, in Balzer's book that I mentioned earlier, the term "(Ob-)Ugrian" appears about 100 times over 300 pages. It is not an exception among the literature. Jähmefyysikko (talk) 18:16, 3 December 2024 (UTC)

  What are you talking about. That is the traditional meaning of the term 'Ugrian'. The Xanty and Mansi are simply the surviving Ugrian peoples. In a modern context, Ugrian = Ob-Ugrian, but that's not true historically.

  It's easy to find psuedoscientific sources that reify linguistic terms as ethnic terms. We can also find sources that use astronomical terms for astrology, but that doesn't mean we should mimic them.

  If we moved this article to 'Ob-Ugrian', we'd need to recreate it at 'Ugrian' for the full topic. Then we'd want to change 'Ob-Ugrian' into a rd to the 'speakers' section of 'Ob-Ugrian languages' because it's a linguistic rather than ethnographic term, and we'd be right back where we started but with a corrupted article history. — kwami (talk) 21:47, 3 December 2024 (UTC)

  That is the traditional meaning of the term 'Ugrian'. No reliable sources support your claim, so to me it looks like you've invented this meaning yourself. Prove me wrong. Jähmefyysikko (talk) 01:43, 4 December 2024 (UTC)

  No. If you want to play stupid games, you can play them on your own time. If you haven't bothered to look up 'Ugrian', you haven't done the minimal research to argue for a page move. — kwami (talk) 03:44, 4 December 2024 (UTC)

  It's not a game, but a requirement of WP:V. I think the discussion about the "Ugrian Finns" above shows the level of your terminological confusion here. Anyway, according to OED, this book from 1838 features the earliest occurrence of the word Ugrian in English: [1]. Here it is given the meaning "Uralic-speaking peoples". So much for the traditional meaning. Jähmefyysikko (talk) 03:52, 4 December 2024 (UTC)

  The 'stupid game' is you pretending you don't understand things you obviously do. Yes, some sources base ethnicity on linguistics, as I've said several times. I don't follow how proving my point somehow disproves it. As an ethnographic term, different sources give 'Ugrian' [and 'Finn' etc. etc.] different scope, as you've already admitted you understand. E.g. Danver 2015, Native Peoples of the World, p.235, has,

  The Ugrians were influenced significantly by the Turks, and they are related ethnically and linguistically to the Finns and the Hungarians. Living next to Russians and Turks, the Ugrians gradually assimilated into those cultures, a fact that is reflected in many loan words from Russian and Turkic, along with southwestern Siberian dialects. The most prominent ethnic groups among the Ugrians are the Ket, Komi, Nenet, Selkup, and Votiak.

  Like Samoyedic, the name Ugrian, which is preferred by ethnographers, is derived from Russian. Russian chronicles of the twelfth century called the territory east of Perm Yugria. The Ugrians were the first Siberian peoples to come in contact with the Russians. Missionaries, hunters, and fur traders intruded step by step into the country of Yugria. The official annexation of the territory took place in the fifteenth century under Czar Ivan III, who used the title 'King of the Ugrians' in correspondence with Hungarian King Matthias Corvinus.

  Orthodox missionary activity among the Ugrians began in the fourteenth century under Bishop Stephen of Perm, who introduced the Greek and Cyrillic alphabets, but a written language was not accepted by the indigenous population until the nineteenth century. For example, Komi-language poems were printed for the first time in 1866.

  As for Ob-Ugrian, that doesn't match your intended meaning either. It's either the Ugrians in the region of the Ob River, the inhabitants of the region from Ugria to the Ob River, or the speakers of Ob-Ugrian languages, a hypothesis that's been abandoned in many recent sources.

  Sinor 1990 The Cambridge History of Early Inner Asia states that the Xanty and Mansi are a mixture of Ugrians with Siberian immigration. — kwami (talk) 04:56, 4 December 2024 (UTC)

  And as I argued in the earlier discussion, the entry about Samoyeds (!) in Danver which you cite is confused and not reliable. What other source calls the Samoyeds Ugrians? Also, "King of the Ugrians" is an uncommon translation given by that author. The more common translation would be Yugra or some of its variants (same word refers to the people and the principality). In Ivan III, his title is translated as Ivan, by the Grace of God, Sovereign of all Russia and Grand Prince of Vladimir, and Moscow, and Novgorod, and Pskov, and Tver, and Yugorsk, and Perm, and Bulgar, and others, all of which refer to principalities.

  Sinor uses the terms Finno-Ugrian/Ugrian/Ob-Ugrian in a linguistic sense, and that does not contradict the terminology proposed in this move. I agree that the modern Ob-Ugrians are a mixture of the proto-Ugrians (these are the actual immigrants), some Paleosiberian natives and probably other peoples. Jähmefyysikko (talk) 05:42, 4 December 2024 (UTC)

  About the 1838 source: the terminology was not yet established in the 19th century as evidenced by the varying scope of the terms Finn and Ugrian during that period, and variants such as "Ugrian Finns". The current terminology had become established by 1950s at the latest. Jähmefyysikko (talk) 05:53, 4 December 2024 (UTC)