The Hunnic language

Rouran epoch Göktürk epoch Uyghur epoch Kirghiz epoch

Rouran First Göktürk Tang rule Second Göktürk Uyghur Kirghiz Huns Western Göktürk Türgesh Karluk Khazar

Rouran 400–554
First Göktürk 552–630
Tang rule 630–682
Second Göktürk 682–744
Uyghur 744–840
Kirghiz 840–924
Huns 370–469
Western Göktürk 552–659
Türgesh 699–766
Karluk 766–800
Khazar 650–969

The Huns of Europe left no text. All that is known of their language is a set of names, and the sources give the meaning of none of them. The Huns had no script.^[1] The material is a list of personal and tribal names in Greek and Latin spelling, often passed on through Gothic speakers. It also includes a river name and a handful of words.^[2]

Contemporary testimony

Priscus heard Hunnic at Attila’s court in 449.^[3]^[4] He writes that the subjects there spoke Hunnic or Gothic besides their own languages. Those who dealt with the Romans spoke Latin.^[3] At the banquet, the Moorish jester Zercon made everyone laugh with a jumble of Latin, Hunnic and Gothic. Two singers recited songs of Attila’s victories.^[5] Jordanes says that the Huns called the Dnieper in their own tongue the Var.^[6] The name is the old Iranian name of the river, meaning broad. The Huns took it over, and the Pechenegs took it over after them.^[7]

In the villages north of the Danube, Priscus was given medos instead of wine, “as the natives call it”. The servants received a barley drink that the barbarians called kamos.^[8] Some scholars hold that both words are Indo-European. Kamos was drunk in Pannonia long before Attila, and its Turkic derivation from qïmïz is rejected.^[9] Jordanes names one more word. Over Attila’s tomb, the Huns celebrated a strava, as they called it.^[10] Some scholars hold that it is the only word of the language to survive. It has been claimed as Germanic, Slavic and Turkish, but a single word does not allow the language to be classified.^[11] Others hold that strava is a Slavic word, which Priscus or Jordanes took for Hunnic.^[12]

The names

The names of the Huns of Attila’s time have been sorted by their apparent origin. Basich, Berichus, Dengizich, Ellac, Emnetzur, Erekan, Eskam, Mundzuc, Uldin and Ultzindur, among others, are Turkish or probably Turkish. Attila, Bleda, Edeco, Onegesius and Rua are Germanic or Germanized. Hormidac is Persian.^[13] In this sorting, the Germanic names were not the true names of the Hun princes. They were Hunnic names in Germanic dress, fitted to the Gothic tongue.^[14] By the same approach, one tribal name is enough to show Turkish-speaking nomads north of the Black Sea. This is Alpilčur, from alp il čur, meaning hero, people and the title chur. The ending -gur of Kutrigur, Utigur, Onogur and Bittugur is Turkish too.^[15] To judge by the tribal names, a great part of the Huns must have spoken a Turkish language. The personal names give a different picture.^[16] Several names of Attila’s house have been given Turkic etymologies, among them Mundzuc “bead”, Dengizich “sea”, Ernak “small man” and Attila from the Turkic name of the Volga, Etil.^[17] The Gothic theory explains Rua and Attila from Gothic, against a Turkic majority among the Huns.^[18] Names meaning “pure” or “virtuous”, such as Arıg and Silig, are said to be recorded for women of the Huns, the Sabirs and the Uyghurs.^[19] A Parthian and Middle Persian inscription from Dura-Europos has been understood as naming Huns of the south Caucasus with Turkic names. This interpretation is not secure.^[20]

Others hold the evidence simply inadequate. For every Germanic etymology there is a Turkish one. The names reached Greek and Latin writers from Gothic speakers and were therefore altered twice. These scholars add that no Hun is known to have borne a Germanic name, whereas the Goths often took Hunnic ones.^[2] Most of the Turkic etymologies proposed for the names are ambiguous, and the titles belong to the common stock of the steppe world.^[21]

Classification

Some scholars take the ruling group of Attila’s Huns to have spoken Turkic, over subject peoples that included Germanic, Thracian and Iranian peoples. The court also used Gothic and Latin.^[22] The core tribe of the Huns was most probably of Oghuric Turkic origin. It spoke an early form of Oghuric, one of the four great branches of the Turkic languages, which is almost extinct today.^[23] Oghuric differs from Common Turkic in having the sounds r and l where the others have z and š. It survives in Chuvash and in fragments of Volga and Danube Bulgarian.^[24] Some scholars hold that considerable relics of the language of the Huns survive in Volga Bulgarian and Chuvash.^[25]

Others describe the relics as mixed. They are Altaic, Indo-European, Iranian, Germanic, Slavic and others, and some are simply unknown, as befits a polyglot state. One study concluded that European Hunnic was an Altaic language between Turkic and Mongolic, probably closer to Turkic.^[26] A third group finds the material too sparse to classify the language.^[11] A fourth group holds that the language cannot be established beyond doubt, because the analyses of the names have yielded no generally accepted solution. Names that begin with a consonant cluster, such as Bleda and Scottas, cannot be Altaic. Names with an initial r-, such as Rua, cannot be Altaic either, and neither can the word strava. By contrast, Iliger and Dengizich are decidedly Turkic. The Danube Bulgars, whom this group counts as descendants of the Huns led by Ernak, spoke Turkic. To judge by their names, so did the Huns of the Caucasus in the seventh century. This is a strong argument that at least part of the Hunnic leadership spoke a Turkic language.^[27] A fifth group derives the language of the Hunnic ruling stratum from Old Arin, a Yeniseian language. It therefore makes it the language of the Xiongnu too. It explains Attila as an Arin adjective for ‘quick’ with a suffix of degree. It explains Atakam and Eskam as compounds whose second element is the Arin word for ‘wife’.^[28] This view rests on the claim that no Turkic or Mongolic presence in Inner Asia can be shown for the time of the Xiongnu empire. The article on the language of the Xiongnu sets out the argument. The question of the Huns and the Xiongnu continues the argument over the language of the elite.

References

^ Maenchen-Helfen 1973, p. 376
^ a b Thompson 1948, p. 222–223
^ a b Priscus; Müller 1851, fr. 8, p. 86
^ Maenchen-Helfen 1973, p. 124
^ Priscus; Müller 1851, fr. 8, p. 92
^ Jordanes; Mierow 1915, § 269, p. 128
^ Maenchen-Helfen 1973, p. 424
^ Priscus; Müller 1851, fr. 8, p. 83
^ Maenchen-Helfen 1973, p. 424–425
^ Jordanes; Mierow 1915, § 258, p. 124
^ a b Thompson 1948, p. 151
^ Maenchen-Helfen 1973, p. 276, 425–426
^ Maenchen-Helfen 1973, p. 441–443
^ Maenchen-Helfen 1973, p. 389
^ Maenchen-Helfen 1973, p. 403, 438, 441
^ Maenchen-Helfen 1973, p. 441
^ Kafesoğlu 1997, p. 71–72
^ Rásonyi 1993, p. 70
^ Rásonyi 1993, p. 58
^ Kafesoğlu 1997, p. 72
^ Savelyev 2020
^ Rásonyi 1993, p. 69–70
^ Yavuz 2025, p. 105
^ Golden 1992, p. 95–97
^ Golden 1992, p. 20
^ Golden 1992, p. 88–89
^ Sinor 1990, p. 201–202
^ Bonmann 2025, p. 43–44

Sources

Priscus
Jordanes (after Priscus and Ammianus Marcellinus)

Literature

Karl Müller (ed.), Fragmenta Historicorum Graecorum, Bd. IV (darin: Menandri Protectoris fragmenta, griechisch mit lateinischer Übersetzung) (1851)
Charles Christopher Mierow, The Gothic History of Jordanes in English Version, with an Introduction and a Commentary (1915)
Otto J. Maenchen-Helfen, The World of the Huns: Studies in Their History and Culture (1973)
E. A. Thompson, A History of Attila and the Huns (1948)
Peter B. Golden, An Introduction to the History of the Turkic Peoples (1992)
Alexander Savelyev; Choongwon Jeong, Early Nomads of the Eastern Steppe and Their Tentative Connections in the West (2020)
Emre-E. Yavuz, The Gokturk Empire: 2nd Edition (2025)
Denis Sinor (ed.), The Cambridge History of Early Inner Asia (1990)
Svenja Bonmann; Simon Fries, Linguistic Evidence Suggests that Xiong-nu and Huns Spoke the Same Paleo-Siberian Language (2025)
İbrahim Kafesoğlu, Türk Millî Kültürü (1997)
László Rásonyi, Tarihte Türklük (1993)