Source: TW
Aryan ethnonyms of Finno-Ugric peoples.
The former presence of an Aryan-speaking elite layer among the Finno-Ugric speaking peoples of the Oka–Volga–Kama region is clearly visible in the ethnonyms of these peoples.
The name Mari goes back to Proto-Aryan *márya- ‘man’, literally ‘mortal, one who has to die’. It is quite possible that this ethnic name is of Bronze Age origin, for marya- is used in Mitanni Aryan of Syria (c.1500–1300 BC) for the nobility with horse chariots. The name Mordvin seems to go back to early Proto-Aryan mórto- ‘mortal, man’. The same word was separately borrowed into Finnic after the change o > a had taken place in Proto-Aryan, so as to yield márta- ‘mortal, man’ preserved in Old Indo-Aryan: Finnish marras, stem marta- ‘dying, dead; manly, male’.
The ethnonym Arya/Arya appears as a loanword in Finnish and Saami, the reconstructed original shape being *orya, written orja in modern Finnish, where it denotes ‘slave’; this meaning can be explained as coming from ‘Aryan taken as a war-captive or prisoner’, as English slave comes from ‘captive Slav’.
The ethnic name Yugra is used of the Ob-Ugrians in the Old Russian “Nestor’s Chronicle.” As shown by Tuomo Pekkanen (1973), this ethnic name was used of the Hungarians as well and has an Aryan etymology. Proto-Aryan *ugrá- ‘mighty, strong, formidable, noble’ occurs in Old Indo-Aryan and Old Iranian not only as an adjective but also as a tribal name and as a proper name.
Interestingly The Greek historian Strabo (64 BC–AD19) in his Geography (7.3.17) says that the Scythian tribe of ‘Royal Sarmatians’ were also called Oûrgoi. This is a metathesis form of the word ugra, attested also in Scythian proper names such as Aspourgos (= Old Iranian aspa- ‘horse’ + ugra-). These Oûrgoi were settled between the Dniester and the Dnieper; according to Strabo, they “in general are nomads, though a few are interested also in farming; these peoples, it is said, dwell also along the Ister (i.e. the Danube), often on both sides.”
The Oûrgoi seem to have included also Hungarians, since a third- or fourth-century Latin inscription (CIL III, 5234) from the borders of Hungary mentions raiders called Mattzari, which agrees with the later Byzantine transcriptions of Magyar, the self-appellation of the Hungarians, called Majqhari in the tenth-century Muslim sources.