Historical Issues With Xibe Language and Ethnonym
The name "Xibe" have been linked by some people with that of the ancient Xianbei. The modern expert on the Manchu people Pamela Kyle Crossley notes that if such a connection is indeed true, it would imply the Xianbei/Xibe undergoing a language shift from an either early Turkic or Proto-Mongolian language to a Tungusic one at some point in their history. They also note that such a putative connection encounters an obvious problem of explaining "many centuries intervening between the Xianbei and Sibo, during which there is virtually no evidence of a 'Sibo' people".
The same Manchurologist, P. Crossley, suggested that the Xibe "were well known to Russians moving toward the Pacific, who named Siberia after them". This, however, appears rather less likely than the standard derivation of the Russian Sibir (Siberia) from the name of Sibir Khanate and its capital Sibir. The latter names were well attested already in the mid-16th century (see, e.g., "Sibier Provincia" on Sigismund von Herberstein's map of Moscovia dated 1549, or the city and region of "Sibier" on Mercator's map of Asia (1595), while Russian explorers did not even reach today's Inner Mongolia until Ivan Petlin (1618), or the Amur basin, until Vassili Poyarkov (1643).
Read more about this topic: Xibe People
Famous quotes containing the words historical, issues and/or language:
“Religion means goal and way, politics implies end and means. The political end is recognizable by the fact that it may be attained—in success—and its attainment is historically recorded. The religious goal remains, even in man’s highest experiences, that which simply provides direction on the mortal way; it never enters into historical consummation.”
—Martin Buber (1878–1965)
“I can never bring you to realize the importance of sleeves, the suggestiveness of thumb-nails, or the great issues that may hang from a boot-lace.”
—Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930)
“Whether we regard the Women’s Liberation movement as a serious threat, a passing convulsion, or a fashionable idiocy, it is a movement that mounts an attack on practically everything that women value today and introduces the language and sentiments of political confrontation into the area of personal relationships.”
—Arianna Stassinopoulos (b. 1950)