Valery Stoyanow
Papers of BAS. Humanities and Social Sciences
Vol. 10, 2023, No. 1
Some historiographical notes on the correlation
between Huns and H[s]iung-nu
Valery Stoyanow
Abstract. The first historian of the nomadic empires, Joseph de Guignes, identified in the 18th century the European Huns with the H[s]iung-nu from the Chinese sources and since then this issue has been an object of several analyses not only in the historical and archaeological but also in the linguistic field. One of them has tried to find the original form and etymology of the name Hun itself, another has linked the few preserved words from Hunnic with their possible correspondences from the Altaic and Uralic (especially Turkic and Mongolic) but also Iranian, Caucasian and even Paleo-Asiatic languages in an attempt to determine the language and ethnic origin of the Huns. The problem, however, still remains without a clear solution.
Keywords: Huns, Hsiung-nu, historiographical review