Finnic peoples

The Finnic or Fennic peoples, sometimes simply called Finns, are an ethnolinguistic group who speak Finno-Permic languages and who are thought to have originated in the region of the Volga River. The largest Finnic peoples by population are the Finns (also referred to by the Finnish endonym Suomi, 6 million), Estonians (1 million), Mordvins (800,000), Mari (570,000), Udmurts (550,000), Komis (330,000) and Sami (100,000).[1]

The Finnic nations identified by language:

Western Finns

Pinks: Sami

Blues: Baltic Finns

Eastern Finns

Yellows and red: Volga Finns

Browns: Perm Finns

The scope of the name "Finn" and "Finnic" varies by country. Today, Finnish and Estonian scholars restrict the term "Finnic" to the Baltic Finns, who include the Western Finns of Finland and their closest relatives but not the Sami.[2] In Russia, however, where the Eastern Finns live, the word continues to be used in the broad sense, and sometimes implies the Volga Finns who have their own national republics.

Three groups of people are covered by the names "Finn" and "Finnic" in the broad sense:[3][4]

• the Sami people spread across northern Fennoscandia
• the Baltic Finns, also known as the Western Finns, of Finland, Estonia, Karelia and northwestern Russia
• the Volga Finns and the Perm Finns,[5] also known as the Eastern Finns, of central Russia, including the four central-Russian republics of Komi, Mari El, Mordovia and Udmurtia.[6]

In the 19th century, the Ugrians were considered to be a branch of Eastern Finns (as "Ugrian Finns"),[7] but due to the theory that the Hungarian language is most closely related to the Ugrian languages and because the Hungarians are not ethnically Finns, the Ugrians are now generally excluded.

Linguistically, the situation is more complex: in particular, the unity of the Volga Finnic languages is disputed, and because of this the Permians are sometimes counted as Volga Finns and sometimes not. The distinction is a linguistic one, however, and varies between linguistic reconstructions. Linguistically also, the Finnic peoples are sometimes called "Finno-Ugric", uniting them with the Hungarians, or "Uralic", uniting them also with the Samoyeds, but these linguistic connections were not discovered until the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries, and do not underlie traditional ethnic identity.[8]

Finnic peoples migrated westward from very approximately the Volga area into northwestern Russia and (first the Sami and then the Baltic Finns) into Scandinavia, though scholars dispute the timing. The ancestors of the Perm Finns moved north and east to the Kama and Vychegda rivers. Those Finnic peoples who remained in the Volga basin began to divide into their current diversity by the sixth century, and had coalesced into their current nations by the sixteenth.