General information

The endonym “Chukchi” comes from the self-name of the tundra Chukchi chauchu/chavchu , that is, “reindeer man”. The coastal Chukchi were called ankalyt/ankalyn , “the sea people”. There was also a common self-name for both the reindeer herders and the sea animal hunters, lygyoravetlyan , “real people”, but it did not take root as the official name of the people.

The Chukchi are an indigenous people of the Far Northeast Asia. According to the All-Russian Census of 2010, its population is just under 16 thousand people. They live mainly in the Chukotka autonomous area (over 12 thousand people), the north of the Kamchatka Territory and the Nizhnekolymsk district of Yakutia. The Chukchi are settled over a vast territory: from Kolyma to the Bering Sea and from the Arctic Ocean to the Kamchatka Territory. Their territory measures over 1600 km from east to west and 1200 km from south to north.

The total number of Chukchi, according to the 2020 All-Russian Population Census, is 16,228 people (7,641 men and 8,587 women).

There are traditionally two ethnographic groups: (1) the nomadic reindeer herders and (2) the sedentary seaside seal hunters. The reindeer herders settled in the continental part of Chukotka, and the sea hunters lived on the coast of the East Siberian, Chukchi, and Bering seas. This division is somewhat arbitrary, especially now, when not all the Chukchi continue to be engaged traditionally.

In addition, there have always been marriages between the reindeer herders and the hunters, as well as a change of occupation with the nomads settling and the coastal residents migrating to the tundra. Mobility and sociability developed trading and marital relations between the two groups of the Chukchi result in a linguistic and cultural integrity.

In addition, various researchers, such as Vladimir Bogoraz, identified the ethno-territorial groups of the Chukchi according to their habitats. By the end of the 19th century, the following groups of the reindeer-herding Chukchi had emerged: Indigirskaya, Alazeya, Western Kolymskaya, Sukho-Anyuyskaya, Bolshe-Anyuyskaya, Verkhne-Anadyrskaya, Chaunskaya, Erri, Onmylanskaya, Telkepskaya, of the Big River, of the White River.

Throughout the 20th century, there were relocations of the Chukchi forced by the state policy of sedentarization and consolidation of villages. Every Chukchi group had its own linguistic and cultural specificity.

Researchers distinguish three dialects of the Chukchi language: the western, the eastern, and the southern. Linguists have been studying them, determining the specifics of each one.