Name of Hungary

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 (H)ungarī, Ungrī, and Ugrī for the steppe people that conquered the land today known as Hungary in the 9th and 10th centuries. Medieval authors denominated the Hungarians as Hungaria, but the Hungarians even contemporarily denominate themselves Magyars and their homeland Magyarország. Primary sources use several names for the Magyars/Hungarians. However, their original historical endonym/ethnonym — 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. The folk etymology holds that Magyar was derived from the name of Prince Muageris. There are many hypotheses on the origin of this name. The accepted is that the first element Magy derives from Proto-Ugric *mäńć- ("man", "person"), which is also found in the name of the Mansi (mäńćī, mańśi, and måńś). The second element eri ("man", "men", and "lineage") survives in Hungarian férj ("husband") and is cognate with Mari erge ("son") and Finnish archaic yrkä ("young man"). In early medieval sources, in addition to the Hungarians, the exonym Ungri or Ugri referred to the Mansi and Khantys also.