Shiwei

Shiwei (simplified Chinese: 室韦; traditional Chinese: 室韋; pinyin: Shìwěi; Wade–Giles: Shih4-wei3) were a Mongolic people that inhabited far-eastern Mongolia, northern Inner Mongolia and northern Manchuria and were recorded from the time of the Northern Wei (386-534) until the rise of the Mongols of Genghis Khan in 1206 when the name "Mongol" and "Tatar" were applied to all the Shiwei tribes. They were closely related to the Khitan people to their south. As a result of pressure from the west, south and south-east they never established unified, semi-sedentarized empires like their neighbors, but remained at the level of a nomadic confederation led by tribal chieftains, alternately submitting to the Turks, the Chinese and the Khitan as the political climate evolved. The Mengwu Shiwei, one of the twenty Shiwei tribes during the Tang dynasty (618-907), were called the Menggu during the Liao dynasty (907-1125) and are generally considered to be the ancestors of the Mongols of Genghis Khan. The modern Korean pronunciation of Mengwu (蒙兀) is Mong-ol (/moŋ.ol/). Mongolia is still called "Menggu" (蒙古 Měnggǔ) in Chinese today.