Chuvash people

The Chuvash people (UKˈtʃuːvɑːʃ , UStʃʊˈvɑːʃ ; чӑваш tɕəˈʋaʃ; chăvash tɕʊˈvaʂɨ), Chuvashian, plural: чӑвашсем, chăvashsem; чува́ши) are a Turkic ethnic group, a branch of the Onogurs, native to an area stretching from the Volga-Ural region to Siberia. Most of them live in Chuvashia and the surrounding areas, although Chuvash communities occur throughout the Russian Federation. They speak Chuvash, a unique Turkic language that diverged from other languages in the family more than a millennium ago. There is no universally accepted etymology of the word Chuvash, but there are three main theories. The popular theory accepted by Chuvash people suggests that Chuvash is a Shaz-Turkic adaptation of Lir-Turkic Suvar (Sabir people), an ethnonym of people that are widely considered to be the ancestors of modern Chuvash people. Compare Lir-Turkic Chuvash: huran to Shaz-Turkic Tatar: qazan (‘cauldron’). One theory suggests that the word Chuvash may be derived from Common Turkic jăvaš ('friendly', 'peaceful'), as opposed to sharmăs ('warlike'). Another theory is that the word is derived from the Tabghach, an early medieval Xianbei clan and founders of the Northern Wei dynasty in China. The Old Turkic name Tabghach (Tuoba in Mandarin) was used by some Inner Asian peoples to refer to China long after this dynasty. Gerard Clauson has shown that through regular sound changes, the clan name Tabghach may have transformed to the ethnonym Chuvash. Chuvash language The Chuvash language is a member of the Turkic language family and is the only Oghur Turkic language that survives. It's spoken in Chuvashia and nearby regions along the middle course of the Volga River, in the central part of European Russia. Chuvash is the sole living representative of Volga Bulgar language. It is considered to share a linguistic connection with the Khazar language in Oghuric languages, which itself constitutes a significantly divergent principal group. Since the surviving literary records for the non-Chuvash members of Oghuric are scant, the exact position of Chuvash within the Oghuric family cannot be determined.