Hungarian is a member of the Uralic language family. Linguistic connections between Hungarian and other Uralic languages were noticed in the 1670s, and the family’s existence was established in 1717. Hungarian is assigned to the Ugric branch along with the Mansi and Khanty languages of western Siberia (Khanty–Mansia region of North Asia). However, there is debate on whether that is a valid grouping. The classification of the Hungarian language as Uralic has historically been the subject of intense scholarly debate, with a number of prominent linguists arguing that Hungarian is a Turkic language. Historically, the language was written using the Old Hungarian Script, an alphabetic writing system born from the Old Turkic Script.
When the Samoyedic languages were determined to be part of the family, some linguists initially assumed that Finnic and Ugric were closer to each other than to the Samoyedic branch of the family. That is now frequently rejected.
The name of Hungary could be a result of regular sound changes of Ungrian/Ugrian, and the fact that the Eastern Slavs referred to Hungarians as Ǫgry/Ǫgrove (sg. Ǫgrinŭ) seemed to confirm that. Current literature favors the hypothesis that it comes from the name of the Turkic tribe Onoğur (which means ‘ten arrows’ or ‘ten tribes’).
a weirdo indeed ☞