History
The Oirats or Western Mongols share some history, geography, culture and language with the Eastern Mongols, and were at various times united under the same leader as a larger Mongol entity — whether that ruler was of Oirat or Eastern Mongolian descent.
The name Oirat may derive from a corruption of the group's original name Dörben Öörd, meaning "The Allied Four." Perhaps inspired by the designation Dörben Öörd, other Mongols at times used the term "Döchin Mongols" for themselves ("Döchin" meaning forty), but there was rarely as great a degree of unity among larger numbers of tribes as among the Oirats.
Comprising the Khoshut (Хошууд Hošuud), Choros or Ölöt (Өөлд Ööld), Torghut (Торгууд Torguud), and Dörbet (Дөрвөд Dörvöd) tribes, they were dubbed Kalmyk or Kalmak, which means "remnant" or "to remain", by their western Turkic neighbors. Various sources also list the Bargut, Buzav, Kerait, and Naiman tribes as comprising part of the Dörben Öörd; some tribes may have joined the original four only in later years. This name may however reflect the Kalmyks' remaining Buddhist rather than converting to Islam; or the Kalmyks' remaining in then Altay region when the Turkic peoples migrated to the West.
Read more about this topic: Oirats
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The history of the world is none other than the progress of the consciousness of freedom.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)
“It is remarkable how closely the history of the apple tree is connected with that of man.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“History is more or less bunk. It’s tradition. We don’t want tradition. We want to live in the present and the only history that is worth a tinker’s damn is the history we make today.”
—Henry Ford (1863–1947)