The Madjars or Madi-yar people are a Turkic ethnic group in

Kazakhstan Kazakhstan, officially the Republic of Kazakhstan, is a transcontinental country located mainly in Central Asia and partly in Eastern Europe. It borders Russia to the north and west, China to the east, Kyrgyzstan to the southeast, Uzbeki ...

. They number about 1,000–2,000 and live mostly in the

Kostanay Region Kostanay Region ( kk, Қостанай облысы, translit=Qostanai oblysy; russian: Костанайская область, translit=Kostanayskaya oblast) is a region of Kazakhstan. Its administrative center is the city of Kostanay. The pop ...

Ethnonym

Turkologist scholar Dr. Imre Baski claims that the

ethnonym An ethnonym () is a name applied to a given ethnic group. Ethnonyms can be divided into two categories: exonyms (whose name of the ethnic group has been created by another group of people) and autonyms, or endonyms (whose name is created and used ...

Madjar means 'faithful Muslim', literally 'friend or follower of Muhammad', ultimately from ''Muhammad-i-yar''.

Genetics

The Madjars have sometimes been linked

onomastic Onomastics (or, in older texts, onomatology) is the study of the etymology, history, and use of proper names. An ''orthonym'' is the proper name of the object in question, the object of onomastic study. Onomastics can be helpful in data mining, w ...

ally to the

Magyars Hungarians, also known as Magyars ( ; hu, magyarok ), are a nation and ethnic group native to Hungary () and historical Hungarian lands who share a common culture, history, ancestry, and language. The Hungarian language belongs to the Uralic ...

(Hungarians); proponents of this view include supporters of "

Hungarian Turanism Hungarian Turanism ( hu, Turánizmus / Turanizmus) is a diverse Turanist / Pan-Turkic phenomenon that revolves around an identification or association of Hungarian history and people with the histories and peoples of Central Asia, Inner Asia or ...

", such as András Zsolt Bíró, who noticed the high frequency of Y-DNA

Haplogroup G-M201 Haplogroup G (M201) is a human Y-chromosome haplogroup. It is one of two branches of the parent haplogroup GHIJK, the other being HIJK. G-M201 is most commonly found among various ethnic groups of the Caucasus, but is also widely distributed a ...

among Madiyars and the presence of Haplogroup G amongst Hungarians. However, it is not supported by any strong material evidence. In fact, haplogroup G is rare in Hungary (at a rate around 3%) and has much higher rates in parts of Western and Southern Europe (e.g. Italy and France). Southern German populations also have a higher rate of Haplogroup G than the Hungarian population. Furthermore, Turkologist Imre Baski concluded that the Kazakh clan name ''Madi-yar'' "cannot possibly be linked to the Magyar ethnonym and thus cannot serve as proof for a relationship between Madiyar and Magyar."

Footnotes

Bibliography

Nándor Dreisziger. 2011. "Genetic Research and Hungarian 'Deep Ancestry'"
p. 3. * D. Vanek, et al." 2009. "Kinship and Y-Chromosome Analysis of 7th Century Human Remains: Novel DNA Extraction and Typing Procedure for Ancient Material". ''Croatian Medical Journal'', 50:3, pp. 286–95. Ethnic groups in Kazakhstan Turkic peoples of Asia {{Asia-ethno-group-stub