General Information

The total number of Khanty, according to the All-Russian population censuses, was: in 2002 - 28,678 people (13,033 men, 15,645 women); in 2010 – 30,943 people (14,134 men, 16,809 women), in 2020 – 31,467 people (14,560 men, 16,907 women).

The Khanty language , with Mansi and Hungarian, form a special Ugric group within the Finno-Ugric branch of the Ural-Yukaghir language family.

Endonyms and exoethnonyms. The ethnonym Khanty, derived from the group’s self-name, was established in the Soviet times and identified with the name of the river Konda, (with khondikho meaning “khan’s people”). Today, linguists believe that the original Finno-Ugric root kont meant a “clan” or a “community.”

In the early documents, the Khanty are identified as Ostyaks, the term first recorded in the 16th century. Some surmised that it had originated from the name of one of the groups of the northern khanty, as yakh , “the Ob people,” since the Khanty traditionally call themselves by the name of the river they live on. However, linguists hypothesize that the Khanty used the Turkic origin of the ethnonym “Ostyak” (meaning a “foreigner,” “wild man”) to indicate the subordinate position of the non-Turkic population in the political system of the Siberian and other Tatar khanates. Until the 16th century, when the term “Ostyak” appeared in Russian sources, the Khanty, like the Mansi, was called the yugra or yugrich . The modern common name of the Khanty and Mansi, associated with the settlement in the Ob basin, is Ob Ugrians (as opposed to the Hungarian/Khungarian Ugrians).

Settlement

The Khanty are one of the peoples of Western Siberia, settled in the Ob-Irtysh basin from the rivers of Demyanka and Vasyugan in the South to the Ob Bay in the North. Administratively, the Khanty belong to the Khanty-Mansi and Yamalo-Nenets autonomous areas, which are territorially part of the Tyumen region. A small part of them also live in the North of the Tomsk region. In ancient times, the ancestors of the Khanty had occupied the territory from the lower reaches of the Ob in the North to the Baraba steppe in the South and from the Yenisei in the east to the Trans-Urals, including the basins of the rivers Northern Sosva, Lyapin, Pelym, and Konda. Gradually, some of the western groups moved east and north. In the second half of the 19th century, in what is now the Khanty-Mansi autonomous area, the Khanty lived along the Middle Ob and the tributaries Vakh, Bolshoy and Maly Yugan, Tromyegan, Agan, Pim, Balyk, Salym and the Lower Ob with the tributaries Kazym, Vogulka, Synya, Voykar, Kunovatand along the Lower Irtysh and Nizhnyaya Conda. In the subsequent period, the boundaries of their settlement did not change. However, by the beginning of the 20th century, the Khanty and Mansi living on the Balyk, Salym, Konda, Irtysh, and Ob, had lost their cultural specificity due to significant Russian influence. To date, the assimilation of the Irtysh and Kondin Khanty is almost complete. All the other groups of the Ob-Ugric population retain, albeit to varying degrees, the ethnic features of their culture and language.

Currently, the majority of Khanty live in the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug - Ugra (62%) and in the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug (32%); as well as in the Tyumen region (without Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug-Yugra and Yamal-Nenets Autonomous Okrug), in the Tomsk, Sverdlovsk regions and the Komi Republic (see table).

Number and settlement of the Khanty

according to the All-Russian censuses of 2002, 2010, 2020.

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Source : All-Russian Population Census 2002. Volume 4. Table. 1. National composition of the population // Federal State Statistics Service. URL . http :// www . perepis 2002. ru / index . html ? id =17; All-Russian population census 2010. Volume 4. Table. 1. National composition of the population // Federal State Statistics Service. URL . https :// rosstat . gov . ru / free _ doc / new _ site / perepis 2010/ croc / perepis _ itogi 1612. htm ; All-Russian Population Census 2020 Volume 5. Table. 1. National composition of the population // Federal State Statistics Service. URL . https :// rosstat . gov . ru / vpn /2020/ Tom 5_ Nacionalnyj _ sostav _ i _ vladenie _ yazykami ; All-Russian Population Census 2020 Volume 5. Table. 17. Population of indigenous peoples of the Russian Federation. URL . https :// rosstat . gov . ru / vpn /2020/ Tom 5_ Nacionalnyj _ sostav _ i _ vladenie _ yazykami

Ethnographic groups

 Widespread settlement coupled with relative isolation of the groups inhabiting the basins of the tributaries of the Ob and Irtysh, and long-term contacts with other nations determined the ethnic identity of the various Khanty groups.

In accordance with the dialectal division, researchers distinguish three large ethnographic groups: the northern (self-name khante, khanti ) residing on the Lower Ob with the tributaries of Kazym, Kunovat, Synya, Voykar, the southern ( khande ) from the lower reaches of the Konda, the Irtysh and part of the Middle Ob, and the eastern ( kantakh , kantek , etc.) from the Middle Ob with the tributaries of Agan, Pim, Tromyegan, Bolshoy and Maly Yugan, Vakh, Vasyugan, each characterized by the dialects that are considered as independent languages (the northern Khanty do not understand the language of the southern and the eastern ones). Within the ethnographic groups there are smaller ethnic divisions. Their representatives settle around the isolated basins of the Ob and Irtysh tributaries and characterized by specific cultural and social features, expressed in clothing, ornaments, birch bark boxes, fur bags for storing property, etc. They generally call themselves Kasum yokh or Synya yokh (“people of the Kazym”, “people of the Synya”), etc.