Linguistic Evidence Suggests that Xiōng‐nú and Huns Spoke the Same Paleo‐Siberian Language

Abstract The Xiōng‐nú were a tribal confederation who dominated Inner Asia from the third century BC to the second century AD. Xiōng‐nú descendants later constituted the ethnic core of the European Huns. It has been argued that the Xiōng‐nú spoke an Iranian, Turkic, Mongolic or Yeniseian language, but the linguistic affiliation of the Xiōng‐nú and the Huns is still debated. Here, we show that linguistic evidence from four independent domains does indeed suggest that the Xiōng‐nú and the Huns spoke the same Paleo‐Siberian language and that this was an early form of Arin, a member of the Yeniseian language family. This identification augments and confirms genetic and archaeological studies and inspires new interdisciplinary research on Eurasian population history.