Abstract
The Nagaybaks are one of the Turkic-speaking groups of the Southern Urals, related to Christened Tatars of the Middle Volga, to Chuvash, and possibly to Udmurt and eastern Mari. The key factor in their origin was the emergence of Orenburg Cossack Host with a number of native troops in the 1730s. Unlike the Kalmyk, Bashkir, and Misher Tatar troops, which were ethnically homogeneous, the Nagaybaks served alongside Russian Cossacks. Owing to certain circumstances, specifi cally to the state policy of “organizing” the natives (Christening, recruiting for the Cossack Host, and geographic isolation from closest ethnic relatives), their ethnicity shifted from religious (“Christened Tatars”) and social (Tatar Cossacks) to ethic proper (Nagaybaks). This case exemplifi es the impact of state policy on the origins of new ethnic groups. Current Nagaybaks ethnicity includes geographic, religious, and social constituents. Recent scholarship and the last two censuses mention just one name, Nagaybaks, which, in essence, is an exoethnonym. This article discusses all exoethnonyms and endoethnonyms of that group.
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