Oghur is the branch of the Turkic family that has r where the other languages have z and l where they have š.[1] The other branch is Common Turkic, to which the language of the Orkhon inscriptions belongs. Oghur has one living member, Chuvash, on the middle Volga.[2]

The branch has no connected text from the age of the khaganates. It is known from names and loanwords, and from the fragments that the Bulgars left.

The two sounds

The two sounds mark the first split of the family. The numeral that is tokuz, nine, in the inscriptions is tăxăr in Chuvash. The word that is kïš, winter, is hĕl in Chuvash.[3] The two series of correspondences are, in the usual notation, Common Turkic z against Oghur r, and Common Turkic š against Oghur l.[1]

One account dates the split to the beginning of the era. It sets a Pre-Turkic stage before it, and two branches after it: Proto-Bulgar with r and l, and Proto-Turkic with z and š.[4] The oldest Turkic loanwords in Proto-Samoyedic, taken over around the beginning of the era, still show r and l. The Samoyedic yür, “hundred”, stands against the Turkic yüz, and kil, “winter”, against kïš.[5] A recent study reaches a similar picture from the Mongolic, Yeniseian and Samoyedic loanwords. It treats Proto-Bulgar Turkic and Proto-Common Turkic as the two daughters of Proto-Turkic, and it traces the Common Turkic š and the Bulgar l to one older consonant.[6] Mongolic has a parallel. It has l in the word for “donkey”, eljigen, where Common Turkic has äšgäk.[7]

The earliest record

The first Oghur words on record are tribal names. Priscus tells of tribes that came to the Ponto-Caspian steppe about 463, among them the Saragur, the Ogur and the Onogur.[8] The last element, -gur, is understood as the Oghur word for “tribe”. So the Onogur are the “ten tribes”, the Utigur the “thirty” and the Kutrigur the “nine”.[9] See the Onogurs, the Ogurs, the Utigurs and the Kutrigurs.

The next witnesses are the loanwords of the Hungarian language. The ancestors of the Hungarians lived in the fifth and sixth centuries in the same region as the Bulgar Turks, in the north Caucasus and north of the Black Sea. Many Bulgar Turkic words passed into Old Hungarian then, and they show r and l clearly.[5] Two examples are the Hungarian tenger, “sea”, which reflects an Oghur form tengir beside the Common Turkic tengiz, and gyűrű, “ring”, which reflects jürük beside yüzük.[10] The handbook of Old Turkic counts this “rich evidence” as important for the reconstruction of Proto-Turkic. It does not expect the evidence to bear on the language of the inscriptions.[11]

When and where the Hungarians took these words is argued. One account has the Hungarians live as part of Bulgar confederations, especially the Onogur union, and borrow their words there.[1] A second account says that the Hungarians had very close contact with Oghur peoples, but that it is not clear if or when they had it with the Onogurs.[12]

The Danube Bulgars

The Bulgars who crossed the Danube in 679 under Asparukh and settled in what is now Bulgaria spoke an Oghur language.[13] The last dated text in it is of 907.[13] The material is small. It consists of the following.[14]

  • The Old Russian copy of the list of the Bulgar khans, with the animals of the Old Turkic calendar, numerals, titles and names.
  • The runiform and Greek-letter inscriptions of the gold vessels of Nagyszentmiklós.
  • Names and titles in Greek inscriptions of the Bulgars and in Byzantine sources.
  • A few loanwords in Old Church Slavonic.

A few sentences in Greek letters, of the ninth or tenth century, are also on record. They stand apart from the rest of the early Turkic record.[11] In the list of the khans the year of the snake is dilom, where Common Turkic has yïlan. The d where the other branch has y is a mark of this speech.[10] The ordinal “ninth”, tvirem, is built on the Oghur form of “nine”, which Chuvash keeps as tăxăr.[14]

The titles and names of the Danube Bulgars are in the main Turkic. The inscriptions have boyla, kan, tarkan, kolovr, “leader”, and sübigi, “commander”. The names include Bagatur, Bayan, Omurtag and Sivin.[15] See Danube Bulgaria and the Bulgars. For the signs on the stones of the first Bulgar state, see the sign corpus and Murfatlar.

The Volga

The Volga Bulgarian inscriptions date from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. They belong to the Middle Turkic period, and the language they represent differs from that of the Old Turkic corpus.[11] They lie beyond the age of the khaganates, but they show where the branch went. The language of the Volga Bulgars is held to have been akin to Chuvash.[16] See Volga Bulgaria.

Kashgari, writing in the 1070s, says that the language of the Bulgar, the Suvar and the Bachanak is “Turkic of a single type with clipped ends”. He gives awus, “wax”, as a word of the Bulgar dialect.[17] By one account several types of Turkic, Oghur among them, were spoken in Volga Bulgaria in his time.[18] A remark of his on the Bulgar cannot therefore be taken as a remark on one language. See Kashgari on the Oghuz and the Kipchak.

Place in the family

The place of Oghur is argued. The usual account counts it as one of the two main branches of the family, on the strength of the sounds above.[2] A second account sets Oghur beside Turkic, not under it. Some hold that it is not Turkic at all but a form of Altaic very close to Turkic. One scholar wrote that the ancestor of Chuvash and of Common Turkic formed a unity, which he called Pre-Turkic.[19] The question belongs to the larger one of how Turkic, Mongolic and Tungusic are related, and the evidence does not decide it.[20] Claims that the Oghur peoples were Turkicised Ugrians have been made without proof.[21]

Peoples said to have spoken it

Oghur is tied to the Bulgars and the Oghur tribes. For other peoples it is a claim.

  • The Sabirs are Oghur in speech by one view and Common Turkic by another.[22]
  • One account says that Turkic, in an Oghur and possibly in other forms, was spoken within the Avar confederation. It points to Turkic titles and names recorded for the Avars and to runiform texts at Avar sites. A second view regards the Avars as speakers of Common Turkic, and the first account says that this cannot be established with certainty.[23]
  • The Huns are held by some to have spoken an early Oghur. See the Hunnic language.
  • The Khazars show few specifically Oghur words, and the question is open. See the Khazar language.[24]

For the whole family see the Turkic languages.

References

  1. ^ a b c Golden 1980, p. 48
  2. ^ a b Tekin 2003, p. 9
  3. ^ Tekin 2003, p. 11
  4. ^ Tekin 2003, p. 9,11
  5. ^ a b Tekin 2003, p. 15
  6. ^ Ünal April 2022, abstract
  7. ^ Erdal 2004, p. 102
  8. ^ Golden 1992, p. 92
  9. ^ Tekin 2003, p. 30–31
  10. ^ a b Golden 1992, p. 97
  11. ^ a b c Erdal 2004, p. 5
  12. ^ Golden 1992, p. 102–103
  13. ^ a b Tekin 2003, p. 28
  14. ^ a b Tekin 2003, p. 29
  15. ^ Tekin 2003, p. 30
  16. ^ Dunlop 1954, p. 98
  17. ^ Dīvān Lughāt al-Turk; al-Kāshgharī 1072–1074, p. 84,103
  18. ^ Golden 1980, p. 56
  19. ^ Golden 1980, p. 47
  20. ^ Erdal 2004, p. 3
  21. ^ Golden 1992, p. 95
  22. ^ Golden 1992, p. 104
  23. ^ Golden 1992, p. 110
  24. ^ Golden 1980, p. 262

Sources

Literature

  • Peter B. Golden, Khazar Studies, Vols. I–II (1980)
  • Peter B. Golden, An Introduction to the History of the Turkic Peoples (1992)
  • Talât Tekin; Mehmet Ölmez, Türk Dilleri: Giriş (2003)
  • Marcel Erdal, A Grammar of Old Turkic (2004)
  • Orçun Ünal, On *p- and Other Proto-Turkic Consonants (April 2022)
  • Douglas M. Dunlop, The History of the Jewish Khazars (1954)
  • Maḥmūd al-Kāshgharī, Dīwān Lughat al-Turk (1072–1074)

Related

What links here1

Languages
Oghuz and Kipchak speech in Kashgari

Cite this article

Yavuz, Emre-E. “Oghur Turkic.” Turkic Atlas, revised 8 November 2026. https://turkicatlas.org/languages/oghur-turkic/

Last revised: 8 November 2026