Finnic peoples

The Finnic or Fennic peoples, sometimes simply called Finns, are the nations who speak languages traditionally classified in the Finnic^[1] (now commonly Finno-Permic) language family,^{[disputed – discuss]} and which are thought to have originated in the region of the Volga River. The largest Finnic peoples by population are the Finns (6 million), the Estonians (1 million), the Mordvins (800,000), the Mari (570,000), the Udmurts (550,000), the Komis (330,000) and the Sami (100,000).^[2]

The scope of the terms "Finn" and "Finnic" varies by context. They can refer to the Baltic Finns of Finland, Scandinavia, Estonia and Northwest Russia. The broadest sense in the contemporary usage includes four groups:^[3] the Baltic Finns, the Sami of northern Fennoscandia, and the Volga Finns and Perm Finns of Russia.^[4] The last two include the Finnic peoples of the Komi-Permyak Okrug and the four Russian republics of Komi, Mari El, Mordovia and Udmurtia.^[5] Until the early 20th century, the Ugrians were also considered to be a branch of Finns (as "Ugrian Finns"),^[6][7][8] but such terminology is not in use anymore.

The Finnic peoples are sometimes called Finno-Ugric, uniting them with the Hungarians, or Uralic, uniting them also with the Samoyeds. These linguistic connections were discovered between the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries.^[9]

Finnic peoples migrated westward from very approximately the Volga area into northwestern Russia and (first the Sami and then the Baltic Finns) into Scandinavia, though scholars dispute the timing. The ancestors of the Perm Finns moved north and east to the Kama and Vychegda rivers. Those Finnic peoples who remained in the Volga basin began to divide into their current diversity by the sixth century, and had coalesced into their current nations by the sixteenth.^{[citation needed]}