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Concept
Nanai people
Summary
The Nanai people (нанайцы) are a Tungusic people of East Asia who have traditionally lived along Heilongjiang (Amur), Songhuajiang (Sunggari) and Wusuli River on the Middle Amur Basin. The ancestors of the Nanai were the Wild Jurchens of northernmost Manchuria (outside China- Russian Manchuria).
The Nanai language belongs to the Manchu-Tungusic family. According to the 2010 census there were 12,003 Nanai in Russia.
Common names for these people include Nanai (Nanai: нанай, нани, nanai, natives, locals, people of the land/earth) and Hezhen (хэдзэни, χədʑən; ). There are also terms formerly in use: Goldi, Golds, Goldes, and Samagir.
Other self names are Qilang (kilən, those who live by the river; ), nanio and nabəi. na means 'land, earth, ground, country' or, in this context, 'native, local'; nio, bəi, or nai means 'people' in different dialects.
The Russian linguist L. I. Sem gives the name Hezhe nai () or Hezheni (, xədʑən) and explains it as the self-name of the Nanai of the lower Amur, meaning 'people who live along the lower course of the river'. It is the source of the Chinese name for the Nanai, Hezhe (赫哲), formerly Heijin (黑斤) and Hezhehala (赫哲哈喇).
Some of the earliest first-hand accounts of the Nanai people in the European languages belong to the French Jesuit geographers travelling on the Ussuri and the Amur in 1709. According to them, the native people living on the Ussuri and on the Amur above the mouth of the Dondon River (which falls into the Amur between today's Khabarovsk and Komsomolsk-on-Amur) were known as Yupi Tartars, while the name of the people living on the Dondon and on the Amur below Dondon was transcribed by the Jesuits into French as Ketching.
The latter name may be the French transcription of the reported self-name of the Nanai of the lower Amur, xədʑən, which was also applied to the closely related Ulch people.
According to the Jesuits, the language of the Yupi people seemed to occupy an intermediate position between the Manchu language and that of the "Ketching" people (); some level of communication between the Yupi and the Ketching was possible.
Official source
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