Makkay János: A magyarság keltezése – A Jász-Nagykun-Szolnok Megyei Múzeumok közleményei 48. (1994)

was the Turkic name of the Khasars which was khazar in the Persian). In western sources it was commonly Hungarus-Hungari [and its reflexes and variants], all of them clearly referring to a Turkic ethnic group speaking a Turkic language, since Hunganis can be traced back to the Turkic tribal name onogur i.e. the 'ten ogur [tribes]'. On the other hand, the present name of the Hungarian language, state, nation and land, magyar [and its variant megyer ] never occurs in contemporary and later sources. The only exceptions are some Persian-Arabic sources, where we find some very confused remarks from early Arabic and Persian geographers mentioning a Turkic people with a name like mod$gerijje. Modern transcriptions of this word and of the reconstructed roots of magyar are superabundant (see chapter 2.10.2.!). A nice example from Györffy, never read before is metij'i . The variants listed here are only a fraction of the many transliterations and transcriptions that have been suggested! This shows that it is futile to attempt to relate the present name of the Hungarians (magyar/megyer) to any reconstructed or transliterated Persian or Arabic form denoting Old-Bashkirian, a pure Turkic people. (The Moslim geographer Istakhri called the people of Árpád bag"girl i.e. bashkir in the early 10th century.) The study of the etymology of the Hungarian magyar/megyer has a long history, and our historians and linguists naturally believe that the problem has finally been resolved, and that it derives from a Proto-Ugric tribal name denoting a clan (a half part) of a prehistoric tribe. According to the view commonly held at present, the root of magyar goes back to a Finno-Ugric (Proto-Ugric) name marié, which "ethnic name is identical with that used by Indo-Europeans to refer to themselves. It corresponds to the Old-Iranian manus (= man, human, male), which in turn derived from the Indo-European manu and has the same origin as the German word mann, the Old High-German mennisk (= Mensch in modern German) [actually the correct OHG form was mannisco 'Mensch' while OHG mennisc meant 'menschlich'] and the Russian muzh [correctly mid] ... A period may well have existed when the Ugrians called their Iranian neighbours manus, the Iranians having used this word to mean 'man'. When a group of Iranians living in the steppe expanded its rule over the neighbouring Ugrians, social mimicry made the Ugrians assimilate with the victors, take their name, and call 212