Khanty people

Khanty

Khanty from the Ob river
Total population
(31,000 )
Regions with significant populations
Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug (Russia)
Russia	30,943 (2010)
Ukraine	100 (2001)
Languages
Russian, Khanty
Religion
Russian Orthodoxy, Shamanism
Related ethnic groups
Mansi

Khanty (in older literature: Ostyaks) are an indigenous people calling themselves Khanti, Khande, Kantek (Khanty), living in Khanty–Mansi Autonomous Okrug, a region historically known as "Yugra" in Russia, together with the Mansi. In the autonomous okrug, the Khanty and Mansi languages are given co-official status with Russian. In the 2010 Census, 30,943 persons identified themselves as Khanty. Of those, 26,694 were resident in Tyumen Oblast, of which 17,128 were living in Khanty–Mansi Autonomous Okrug and 8,760—in Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug. 873 were residents of neighbouring Tomsk Oblast, and 88 lived in the Komi Republic.

In the centuries of the second millennium BC, the territories between Kama and Irtysh rivers were the home of a Proto-Uralic speaking population who had contacts with Proto-Indo-European speakers from the South. The inhabitants of these areas were of Europid stock. This woodland population is the ancestor of the modern-day Ugrian inhabitants of Trans-Uralia. Some consider the Khanty's ancestors to be the prehistoric metalworking Andronovo Culture. Other researchers say that the Khanty people originated in the south Ural steppe and moved northwards into their current location about 500 AD.

Khanty probably appear in Russian records under the name Yugra (ca. 11th century), when they had contact with Russian hunters and merchants. The name comes from Komi-Zyrian language jögra ('Khanty'). It is also possible that they were first recorded by the English King Alfred the Great (ca. 9th century), who located Fenland (wetland) to the east of the White Sea in Western Siberia. The older Russian name Ostyak is from Khanty as-kho 'person from the Ob (as) River,' with -yak after other ethnic terms like Permyak.