Chuvashes
| Total population | |
|---|---|
| (up to 2 million) | |
| Regions with significant populations | |
 Russia
|
1,637,094 |
 Kazakhstan
|
22,305 |
 Ukraine
|
10,593 |
 Uzbekistan
|
10,074 |
 Turkmenistan
|
2,281 |
 Belarus
|
2,242 |
 Moldova
|
1,204 |
 Kyrgyzstan
|
848 |
 Georgia
|
542 |
 Latvia
|
534 |
 Azerbaijan
|
489 |
 Estonia
|
373 |
| Languages | |
|
Chuvash Russian (as second language) |
|
| Religion | |
| † Orthodox Christianity | |
| Related ethnic groups | |
| Possibly Sabirs or Volga Bulgars | |
The Chuvash people (Chuvash: чăваш; Russian: чуваши; Turkish: çuvaş) are a Turkic ethnic group, native to an area stretching from the Volga Region to Siberia. Most of them live in Republic of Chuvashia and surrounding areas, although Chuvash communities may be found throughout the Russian Federation.
There is no universally accepted etymology of the word Chuvash, but there are three main theories that try to explain it:
There are rival schools of thought on the origin of the Chuvash people. One is that they originated from a mixing between the Turkic Sabir tribes of Volga Bulgaria and also according to some researches with local Finno-Ugric populations. Another is that the Chuvash are a remainder of the pre-Volga Bulgar population of the Volga region, Volga Bulgars. They are unusually susceptible to Osteopetrosis, with a prevalence of 1 of every 3,500—4,000 newborns.
The closest ancestors of the Chuvashes seem to be the Turkic Volga Bulgars. It cannot be absolutely proven that the Chuvashs are indeed direct descendants of the early Bolgars, but it is does seem very likely. Naturally, they have been subjected to much infusion and influence, not only from Russian and Turkic peoples, but also from neighboring Finnic tribes, with whom they were persistently and mistakenly identified for centuries, perhaps aided by the fact that the Chuvash language is a highly divergent form of Turkic, and was not easily recognized as such. Racially, the Chuvash seem to be a mixed Finnic and Turkic type.
In the samples (~25) of the Chuvash DNA project haplogroups J2 (mostly J2a) and E are more common than the rest of the haplogroups among Chuvashes, followed by N and R1a. According to the data of Rootsi et al. 2004, Tambets et al. 2004 (79 samples), and Trofimova 2005 (43 samples) the following distribution of haplogroups is obtained:
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Wikipedia