Jurchens
| Jurchen people | |||||||||
| Chinese name | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chinese | |||||||||
| Traditional Chinese | (variant) | ||||||||
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| Korean name | |||||||||
| Hangul | 여진 (S. Korea) 녀진 (N. Korea) |
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| Khitan name | |||||||||
| Khitan | dʒuuldʒi (女直) | ||||||||
| Mongolian name | |||||||||
| Mongolian | Зүрчид Jürčid |
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| Transcriptions | |
|---|---|
| Standard Mandarin | |
| Hanyu Pinyin | Rǔzhēn |
| Wade–Giles | Ju-chen |
| Transcriptions | |
|---|---|
| Revised Romanization | Yeojin Nyeojin |
| McCune–Reischauer | Yŏjin Nyŏjin |
The Jurchen, also known by many variant names, were a Tungusic people who inhabited the region of Manchuria until around 1630, at which point they were reformed and combined with their neighbors as the Manchus. The Jurchen established the Jin Dynasty, whose empire conquered the Northern Song in 1127, gaining control of most of North China. Jin control over China lasted until their 1234 conquest by the Mongols. The Manchus would later conquer the Ming and establish the Qing Dynasty, which ruled China until their overthrow in 1911.
The obscurity of the origin of the Jurchen is reflected in the confusion surrounding their name, particularly in older English works. It is recorded variously in different languages and different eras. The apparently cognate ethnonyms Sushen (Old Chinese: */siwk-[d]i[n]-s/) and Jizhen (, Old Chinese: */tsək-ti[n]/) are recorded in ancient Chinese geographical works like the Classic of Mountains and Seas and the Book of Wei.
The present name dates back to at least the 10th century, when Balhae was destroyed by the Khitans.Jurchen is an anglicization of Continental Jurčen, an attempted reconstruction of this unattested original form of the native name, which has been preserved transcribed into Middle Chinese as Trjuwk-li-tsyin () and into Khitan small script as Julisen. It was the source of Fra Mauro's Zorça and Marco Polo's Ciorcia, reflecting the Persian form of their name.Vajda considers that the Jurchens' name probably derives from the Tungusic words for "reindeer people" and is cognate with the names of the Orochs of Khabarovsk Province and the Oroks of Sakhalin. ("Horse Tungus" and "Reindeer Tungus" are still the primary divisions among the Tungusic cultures.)
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