UGRO-FINNS. - A special linguistic family divided into two branches: the eastern or Ugric and the western or Finnic.
To the first belong Hungarian, Vogul and Ostyak; to the second, Syryenian, Votyak, Cheremis, Mordvin, the Finnic languages properly so called (Livonian, Veps, Votic, Estonian, Karelian, Finnish) and Lapp. Their original home was north-eastern Europe, and specifically the forested territories between the Volga and the Urals, along the Kama and Belaya rivers. It was there that their first contacts with Indo-European peoples took place, as is attested by words common to all the Ugro-Finnic languages going back to Proto-Indo-European (e.g. Hung. név = name, Vog. nam, Ost. nem, Syr. nim, Finn. nimi, Lapp. namma, as against Old Indic nāman, Avestan nāma, Greek ὄνομα, Lat. nomen, Goth. namō, etc.). More numerous are the evidences of relations between the Ugro-Finnic peoples and the Aryan branch of the Indo-Europeans (e.g. Hung. szdz = hundred, Vog. sat, Ost. sāt, Syr. so, Vot. su, Cher. tadō, Mord. tada, Finn. sata, and Old Indic sātām, Avestan satam, Lithuanian szinūtas, Old Church Slavonic sto, etc.). Their primitive but relative unity broke up around the middle of the 2nd millennium B.C. with the separate development of the Ugric group from the Finnic one. The ancestors of the present-day Hungarians broke away; finding themselves near the far more numerous and stronger people of the Bulgaro-Turks, who lived in western Siberia, they moved together with them, in the years 460-70 A.D., toward the Caucasus, remaining for centuries in a Turkic environment that greatly contributed to transforming their civilization. The Hungarians began to be autonomous when, no longer able to find defense within the Bulgaro-Turkic Empire against the repeated attacks of the Pechenegs, they had to turn toward the West. The command of the seven Hungarian tribes was by then already in the hands of the central tribe called Magyar, which later gave its name to the people, and the first stage was Lebedia, between the Don and the Dnieper, the second Etelköz (= land enclosed by rivers), between the Dnieper and the lower Danube. Here there took place the definitive union of the tribes under the leader Árpád, who led the Magyar people into their new seats between the Carpathians and the Danube, the Drava and the Austrian Prealps; this happened in the last decade of the 9th century (v. UNGHERIA).
UGRO-FINNS. - Group of Mordva women of the Volga, with Baltic and Uralid characteristics." fetchpriority="high" />The other two components of the Ugric group, namely the Voguls and the Ostyaks, who remained in the territory of the Urals, continued to live together, and their migration from the ancient European seats to their present ones near the Ob River took place in times not very distant. Voguls and Ostyaks are by now reduced to scanty remnants: in 1926 their number was respectively 5,200 and 18,000.
The name Ugric, Ugrian, a learned technical term, however, derives from designations recurring in historical sources for more than a millennium. The words ugri, ungar, hongrois, Ungarn, Hungaria go back to the ancient name of the Bulgaro-Turks: ouogur, which in the forms \ongur, \ongr passed, through the Slavic languages (ugre, ugry, ugré, úgrin, cúgrin, etc.), into medieval Latin (plur. ungri), German (ungor) and, relatinized as ungarus, became French Hungri, Hungaria, etc. In Byzantine Greek it is found as early as the 10th century: οὔγγροι. On the other hand, the names Ugra, Jugra, Jugria, used by the ancient Russian sources, by Arab geographers and by European writers of the 15th-16th centuries to designate the territory inhabited by the Voguls and the Ostyaks, are likewise derivations of ouogur-\ongur*.
Once the ancient Ugro-Finnic unity was broken, the western complex for a long time still travelled the same road of evolution and maintained, more than the Ugric group, frequent relations with Indo-European peoples. Its split into a further two branches took place around 1000 B.C. The Finnic branch (Cheremis, Mordvins, Finns and Lapps) moved toward the West, while the Syryenians and Votyaks (called the Perm peoples) remained in their eastern seats between the Vyatka and Kama rivers.
The Syryenians, from the 13th century tributaries of the Russians, were converted to Christianity at the end of the 14th century through the work of St. Stephen of Perm, creator of the Syryenian alphabet, who translated into his language many religious texts, which, alongside those Hungarian ones of the 11th, 12th and 13th centuries, constitute the oldest Ugro-Finnic monuments. According to a Soviet statistic of 1926, the number of the Syryenians amounted to 364,000, the greater part of whom are engaged in agriculture and commerce.
The Votyaks, slightly more numerous, live south of the Syryenians in a territory which until 1236 formed part of the Bulgaro-Turkish Empire destroyed in that year by the Tartars. After a long and peaceful coexistence with the Bulgaro-Turks, the Votyaks fell under the dominion of the Tartar khans, which lasted until 1552, when the Russians made the Votyaks too tributaries of Moscow. In 1920 the territory inhabited by them received an autonomous status. The very young Votyak literature is nourished in part by the rich folk poetry, in part reflects, like the Syryenian one as well, Soviet literature.
The ancestors of the present-day Cheremis and Mordvins detached themselves from the Finns properly so called not before the 2nd century B.C. and continued to form a single people, until the division, which unfolded slowly, became complete in the 7th century A.D. In the history of the Cheremis and Mordvins three main epochs are distinguished: 1) Bulgaro-Turkish influence (700-1236); 2) Tartar domination (1236-1552); 3) Russian domination (from 1552).
The idiom of the Cheremis is imbued, more than any other Ugro-Finnic language, with Turkish elements. Today the Cheremis, numbering about 425,000, live in two groups to the north-west and north-east of the bend of the Volga. The Mordvins, south of the Cheremis and the Votyaks, are dispersed along the two banks of the Volga and intermingled with Russians and Turco-Tartars. Despite their relatively high number (in 1926: 1,267,000), they resist the Russian cultural and linguistic influence quite weakly.
The Lapps have lived from very remote times in the northern regions of Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia. Their total number amounts to barely 35,000. They speak different dialects, which undoubtedly belong to the Ugro-Finnic family, while anthropologically the Lapps, according to recent studies, represent the remnant of a very ancient Nordic Mongoloid type. Their present language is certainly not their original idiom, but the speech of the Finns adopted in the last centuries B.C., that is, at the time of the split of the western Ugro-Finnic branch into the Finnic and Mordvin-Cheremis groups. Their name too derives from Finnic, where lappi, loppi means "secluded place", and lappalainen "inhabitant of out-of-the-way places" which, in a transferred sense, means "backward, primitive, incisive". The Norwegians, who from ancient times had contacts with the Lapps, always called them "Finns", and this word (fanni, fanni), handed down for the first time by Tacitus (Germania, ch. 46), in the Middle Ages served to designate now the Lapps, now the true Finns (suomalainen).
The ethnic units of the Finns, Estonians, Karelians, Veps, Votes and Livonians came into being after the detachment of that Ugro-Finnic group which, setting out from the ancient seats of the Volga, moved toward the West to settle finally in the territory south of the Gulf of Finland and Lake Ladoga. Its components are linguistically still very close today. In the last centuries B.C., this group reached the vicinity of Baltic peoples (Lithuanians, Letts, ancient Prussians), from whom it learned agriculture, cattle-raising and house-building. In the first centuries of the Christian era the Germanic influence began, which was decisive for the further cultural development of that group, and only toward the 8th century A.D. did its members begin to take on the more or less clear contours of new ethnic individualities.
The Finns took possession of their present homeland (Suomi) between the 3rd and 7th centuries A.D. (v. FINLANDIA).
The Karelians, once the most advanced among the inhabitants of the surroundings of Ladoga and Onega, toward the middle of the 13th century succumbed to the Russians and, converted to Orthodoxy, lost all cultural contact with the Finns. The feeling of brotherhood was reborn following the discovery in Karelia of the common ancient poetic treasure. Today the Karelians (no more than 300,000) live in Russian Karelia and further south, in the region of Tver and Novgorod. The Veps (barely 30,000 souls) are dispersed in the territory south of Onega and east of Ladoga. Their backward civilization and an instinctive reserve saved them from Russification, which, however, has recently been progressing more and more. The smallest little group of the Finnic peoples is represented by the Votes, who in a few lost localities of Ingermanland eke out the last days of their life. Almost entirely extinct too is the language of the Livonians, who gave their name to Livonia, inhabited by them since the 12th century.
The Estonian people, emerged from Russian servitude, which did not succeed in stripping them of their individuality and language, in 1918 organized themselves into an independent State, Estonia, which in 1934 had 1,125,000 inhabitants. The two main dialects of Estonian, the speeches of Tallinn and of Tartu, are very dissimilar and each of them developed its own literary language: their unification is of recent date. At present Estonia is incorporated into the Soviet State.
Bibliography12 works
Emerico Várady