Magyar News, 1992. szeptember-1993. augusztus (3. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)
1993-01-01 / 5. szám
Hungarians, when they are among themselves here in America, or Hungarians in their native country Hungary in general, are speaking a language which they call “Magyar,” call themselves “Magyars” and their country “Magyarország.” Yet abroad, people of other nationality call them “Hungarians,” their language “Hungarian,” and the country “Hungary.” (Only exceptions of this rule are the peoples living in close contact with the Hungarians in the Carpatho- Danubian basin, the Slovaks, Serbs, Creations, who are using the name “Madjar” and “Madjarska,” and the Rumanians who call the Hungarians “Maghiars.” If we try to explain the origin of this discrepancy between the two names which have no similarity whatsoever to each other, although they identify the very same people, language and country, we have to turn to the prehistory of the Hungarian people, and explore the origins of their language, as well as their racial-ethnic characteristics at the time of their appearance on the European scene in the late 9th century. There are two approaches to find the answer. One is through the comparative philology, the study of primitive languages spoken in the geographical area where the early Hungarians lived. The other approach is the study of the ancient foreign and Hungarian chronicles, and the legends and oral tradition of the people, which lived in the memory of the Hungarians for countless generations. Since the second half of the 19th century, studies of modem comparative philology traced back the origin of the Hungarian language to the Finno-Ugrian family of languages; the western group of this branch, the Finns and Estonians living in the northeastern region of Europe, adjacent to the Baltic, while the eastern group, consisting of various Ugor tribes, among them also the early Hungarians, lived probably since the beginning of our era in the north-eastern part of European Russia, the northern Ural region and northern Siberia. According to comparative linguistic studies, the closest Ugor relatives of the Hungarians are the Voguls who lived between the upper Volga and the western slopes of the Ural, while the settlements of the Hungarian tribes were in the forest belt, close to the junction of the upper Volga and the Kama rivers, extending probably also south-east of the Volga, into Baskiria. The languages of the various Finn-Ugor tribes, especially that of the Voguls, show many similarities to the Hungarian in their basic structure, grammar and syntax, and even in individual words covering the primary concepts of the primitive tribal way of life. According to some more recent comparative research, the archaic form of the word “magyar” which is a compound, Mae-er. meaning a group of people who speak their own, same language as opposed to other people who don ’ t. From this opposition, Wg. (ourselves) against Them (those who don’t understand us) eventually derived as distinctive attribute, the tribal name Mager or Magor, indicating the tribe which speaks the same language. In this context it is interesting to note that in the modem Hungarian language the archaic root mag- apparently survived in these words “magam” (I, myself) or “magunk” (we, ourselves), and so on in the further variations of the word, preserving almost the same meaning as the archaic form of the ancient tribal name had. On the basis of the affinity of the Hungarian language with the Ugor languages, as demonstrated by the comparative study of languages, the Finno-Ugrian origin of the Hungarians can not be put in question. However, in a later period of their history, the Hungarians underwent profound changes which affected not only their language, but also their ethnic characteristics, social and cultural aspects of their tribal life, transforming them from hunting-fishing people of the northern forest into a people of nomadic horsemen-warriors resembling the Tiircic peoples of the southern steppe. Later this change was reflected also in the various new names given to them by their neighbors, like Savirs, Onogurs, Hunugors, from where the name Hungar, or in Latin form Hungarus derived. It was around the 4-5th centuries, perhaps under the pressures of the great migration of peoples which dislocated a number of peoples living in the great forest and the steppe west of the Ural, that the Hungarians left their settlements of the upper Volga and Kama region, and moved southward in the steppe, largely the region between the Don and the Ural mountains, which the ancient Roman and Greek authors called Scythia. It is here that the Hungarians came in close contact with the Onogurs, a people of Tiircic origin, already known to Byzantine (Procopius) and late Roman (Jordanes) authors. In the 7th through the early 9th centuries the Hungarian tribes are subjects of the Kazar empire, a well organized political and economic unit under the leadership of a prince of Kagan whose power extended from the lower Don-Volga region down to the Caucasus. Arab and Persian authors mention there the presence of the Hungarians, sometimes calling them Savirs, and also identifying them jointly with the Onogurs. The Hungarians learned from the Kazars the elements of agriculture, took over in their language some 200 Tiircic words, and losing the characteristics of their forest-dweller Ugor ancestors; in their appearance, life style, and their language, mixed with many Tiircic words, they looked to the contemporaries more like another Tiircic people of the steppe. Around the middle of the 9th century, as the central controlling power of the Kazar Kaganate started to decline, the Hungarians, together with afew otherTiircic tribes, like the Kabars, left the land of the Kazars and moved westward in the area between the lower Danube and the Dnieper, the “land between the rivers,” called “Etelköz” in Hungarian. It is here, on the northern shore of the Danube, that the Hungarians in loose tribal federation, as immediate neighbors of the Byzantine empire, made their first appearance on the stage of European history. The Byzantine emperor, Leo VI, the Wise, used the Hungarians for a short time as allies in his war against the Bulgarians, another Tiircic tribe which entered the Balkans a few hundred years earlier, representing a constant threat in the back of the empire. After a severe defeat suffered form the Bulgarians, the tribal leaders of the Hungarians recognized the necessity of a stronger united military leadership and elected as supreme leader the head of the Magyar tribe, Álmos. It was the emperor Constantine VII, Porphyrogenitus, who provided the first reliable information about the Hungarians in the 10th century in his scholarly work. De Administrando Imperio (About the administration of the Empire), based on information received form his father, Leo VI, and also from Hungarian envoys who were visiting his court. Constantine in his book identifies the Hungarians as Tiirks and also mentions that their tribal federation has two languages, which indicates the fact that the tribal federation of the Hungarians consisted not only of Hungarian (magyar) but also of Tiircic tribes. The associated seven, or with the Kabars, eight tribes some time around the last decade of the 10th century left the lower Danube region and moved northward, along the eastern Carpathian mountain range to the vicinity of Kiev; the Hungarian tribes entered the city itself.. At any rate it was around this time that Álmos, who was already stricken with age, was killed, sacrificed by his people, according to the sacred samanic rites, and his son, Árpád was elected as his successor and leader of the tribal confederation. It was then Árpád, who in 896 led the seven tribes, crossing the northeastern Carpathians, into the great plains between the rivers of the Danube and the Tisza. The eighth tribe of the Kabars entered already earlier Transylvania through the mountain passes of the Southeastern Carpathians. Andor Urbanszky MAGYARS Ol
