Uyghur People - Name

Name

Uyghur is often pronounced /ˈwiːɡər/ by English speakers, though an acceptable English pronunciation closer to the Uyghur people's pronunciation of it would be /uː.iˈɡʊr/. Several alternate romanizations also appear: Uighur, Uygur, and Uigur. The Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region provincial government recommends that the generic ethnonym, adopted in the early 20th century for this Turkic people, be transcribed as "Uyghur."

The meaning of the term Uyghur is unclear. However, most Uyghur linguists and historians regard the word as coming from uyughur (uyushmaq in modern Uyghur language), literally meaning 'united' or 'people who tend to come together'. Chinese Tang dynasty annals refer to them by the ethnonyms Huí Hú or Huí Hé. The etymology cannot be accurately determined, for historically the groups it denoted were not ethnically fixed, since it denoted a political rather than a tribal identity, or was used originally to refer to just one group among several, the others calling themselves Toquz Oghuz. According to Yin Weixian, the Turkic runic inscriptions record a word uyɣur, which was first transcribed into Chinese as Huí Hé (回紇), but later, in response to an Uyghur request, changed to Huí Hú (回鶻) in 788 or 809. The earliest record of an Uyghur tribe is from the Northern Wei Dynasty (386-534 AD). At that time the ethnonym Gaoche (in Uyghur: Qangqil, قاڭقىل) (Chinese: 高車; pinyin: Gāochē; literally "wheelwagon") to the Tura (Chinese: Tiele) tribes. Later, the term Tiele (Chinese: 鐵勒; pinyin: Tiělè; Turkic: Tele) itself was used. The first use of Uyghur as a reference to a political nation occurred during the interim period between the First and Second Göktürk Khaganates (630-684 CE). In modern usage, Uyghur refers to settled Turkic urban dwellers and farmers of Kashgaria or Uyghurstan who follow traditional Central Asian sedentary practices, as distinguished from nomadic Turkic populations in Central Asia. The Bolsheviks reintroduced the term Uyghur to replace the previously used Turk or Turki.