A new linguistic study challenges long-standing views on the origins of the Huns, revealing that they were not of Turkic descent and likely spoke a now-extinct Palaeo-Siberian language.
The research, led by Svenja Bonmann from the University of Cologne’s Department of Linguistics, argues that the Huns and their Inner Asian ancestors, the Xiōng-nú, spoke a Yeniseian language known as Arin. The findings appear in the latest issue of Transactions of the Philological Society.
Scholars debated whether the Huns were Turkic, Mongolic, or Iranian for centuries. This new analysis provides the strongest case yet that the Huns’ native language was Old Arin, a now-extinct tongue from the Yeniseian family, once spoken in southern Siberia.
The study connects linguistic evidence with recent genetic and archaeological research to build a comprehensive picture of the Huns’ identity.
Researchers examined data from four domains: loanwords, glosses in Chinese texts, personal names, and place names. These sources show clear signs of a common linguistic thread between the Huns and the Xiōng-nú, the nomadic empire that ruled parts of Inner Asia from the 3rd century BC to the 2nd century AD.
The Xiōng-nú were also long assumed to speak Turkic, Mongolic, or Iranian languages. However, the study notes that written evidence for Turkic or Mongolic presence in Inner Asia only appears centuries after the fall of the Xiōng-nú empire. Earlier theories relied on later inscriptions or questionable reconstructions of Chinese transcriptions.
Bonmann’s team argues that traces of Yeniseian words in early Turkic and Mongolic languages are not borrowings into Yeniseian, as previously believed, but rather Yeniseian into these neighboring languages.
This is evident in five early loanwords found in both Turkic and Mongolic that match phonetic patterns specific to Arin. These borrowings date back to before Turkic and Mongolic languages split into their subbranches, indicating that Arin had contact with them at an early stage.
The Jié couplet, the only known text in the Xiōng-nú language, also plays a key role in the findings. Scholars had previously interpreted it as a Turkic tongue. But Bonmann’s team shows that its grammar and sounds match those of Arin more closely. For instance, the word for “army” in the couplet matches the Arin form, not the equivalents in other Yeniseian languages.
Names of prominent Huns further strengthen the case. The study reinterprets the name “Attila” not as a Germanic nickname but as possibly derived from an Arin word meaning “quick” with an attached suffix meaning “somewhat” or “rather.” Other Hunnish names also appear to contain Arin roots, including one name possibly meaning “heavenly wife.”
Place names in and around the Altai-Sayan region, a known Xiōng-nú retreat zone, align with this hypothesis.
Many river and lake names share roots with Yeniseian words for “water” and “river,” particularly in forms unique to Arin. This pattern matches the known westward migration path of the Huns, further suggesting a connection between the two groups.
Archaeological and genetic data support this linguistic evidence. A 2025 genetic study by Gnecchi-Ruscone and colleagues found direct genetic links between elite Xiōng-nú individuals and people buried in the Carpathian Basin, where the Huns settled in the 5th century AD.
Taken together, the linguistic, genetic, and archaeological data point to a single conclusion: the Huns descended from the Xiōng-nú and spoke an early form of the Yeniseian language Arin. The Huns’ Turkic or Mongolic classification appears to be a later misreading of the historical record.
These findings reveal that the Huns were not of Turkic origin and spoke a Palaeo-Siberian language. They show that the Huns carried a language lineage to Europe once thought to be isolated in Siberia.
