Eastern Han Chinese in the context of "Wuhuan"

Yancai (Chinese: 奄蔡; pinyin: Yǎncài; Wade–Giles: Yen-ts’ai; lit. 'Vast Steppe' < LHC *ʔɨam-sɑ < OC (125 BCE) *ʔɨam-sɑs, a.k.a. 闔蘇 Hésū < *ĥa̱p-sa̱ĥ; compare also Latin Abzoae) was the Chinese name of an ancient nomadic state centered near the Aral Sea during the Han dynasty period (206 BC—220 AD). They are generally considered to have been an Iranian people of the Sarmatian group. After becoming vassals of the Kangju in the 1st century BC, Yancai became known as Alan (Chinese: 阿蘭; pinyin: Ālán; Wade–Giles: A-lan). Yancai 奄蔡 is often connected to the Aorsi of Roman records, while 阿蘭 Alan has been connected to the later Alans.

Kangju (Chinese: 康居; pinyin: kāngjū; Wade–Giles: K'ang-chü; Eastern Han Chinese: kʰɑŋ-kɨɑ < *khâŋ-ka (c. 140 BCE)) was the Chinese name of a kingdom in Central Asia during the first half of the first millennium CE. The name Kangju is now generally regarded as a variant or mutated form of the name Sogdiana. According to contemporaneous Chinese sources, Kangju was the second most powerful state in Transoxiana, after the Yuezhi. Its people, known in Chinese as the Kāng (康), were evidently of Indo-European origins, spoke an Eastern Iranian language, and had a semi-nomadic way of life. The Sogdians may have been the same people as those of Kangju and closely related to the Sakas, or other Iranian groups such as the Asii.

The Yuwen (Chinese: 宇文; pinyin: Yǔwén < Eastern Han Chinese: *wa-mun < Old Chinese *waʔ-mən) is a Chinese compound surname which originated from a pre-state clan of Xianbei ethnicity of Xiongnu origin during the era of Sixteen Kingdoms in China, until its destruction by Former Yan's prince Murong Huang in 345. Among the eastern Xianbei clans that ranged from the central part of the present day Liaoning province and eastward, Yuwen clan was the largest, and was awarded the position of the leader of eastern Xianbei (東部大人) by Chinese rulers. A descendant of the Yuwen tribe, Yuwen Tai, established the Northern Zhou dynasty in the 6th century.

Yuwen were descendants of the nomadic Xiongnu who assimilated into the Xianbei after 89 CE and ruled the Kumo Xi and Khitan (both Mongolic peoples) before being defeated by Murong Huang in 344, upon which Yuwen separated from the Kumo Xi and Khitan. The language of the Yuwen is thought to be Turkic or a very distant branch of Mongolic.

Han (漢; 221–263), known in historiography as Shu Han (蜀漢 [ʂù xân] ) or Ji Han (季漢 "Junior Han"), or often shortened to Shu (Chinese: 蜀; pinyin: Shǔ; Sichuanese Pinyin: Su < Middle Chinese: *źjowk < Eastern Han Chinese: *dźok), was a dynastic state of China and one of the three major states that competed for supremacy over China in the Three Kingdoms period. The state was based in the area around present-day Hanzhong, Sichuan, Chongqing, Yunnan, Guizhou, and north Guangxi, an area historically referred to as "Shu" based on the name of the past ancient kingdom of Shu, which also occupied this approximate geographical area. Its core territory also coincided with Liu Bang's Kingdom of Han, the precursor of the Han dynasty.

Shu Han's founder, Liu Bei (Emperor Zhaolie), had named his dynasty "Han", as he considered it a rump state of the Han dynasty and thus the legitimate successor to the Han throne, while the prefix "Shu" was first used by the rival state of Cao Wei to delegitimize the claims of the Shu Han state to orthodox succession. Later on when writing the Records of the Three Kingdoms, the historian, Chen Shou, also used the prefix "Shu" to describe Liu Bei's state of Han as a historiographical prefix to differentiate it from the many other states officially named "Han" throughout Chinese history.

Wu (Chinese: 吳; pinyin: Wú; Middle Chinese *ŋuo < Eastern Han Chinese: *ŋuɑ), known in historiography as Eastern Wu or Sun Wu, was a dynastic state of China and one of the three major states that competed for supremacy over China during the Three Kingdoms period. It previously existed from 220 to 222 as a vassal kingdom nominally under its rival state Cao Wei but declared complete independence in November 222. It was elevated to an empire in May 229 after its founding ruler Sun Quan (Emperor Da) declared himself emperor.

The name Wu was derived from the place it was based in—the Jiangnan (Yangtze River Delta) region, which was also historically known as Wu. It was called Dong Wu ("Eastern Wu") or Sun Wu by historians to distinguish it from other Chinese historical states with similar names in that region, such as the Wu state of the Spring and Autumn period and the Wuyue kingdom of the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period. It was called Eastern Wu because it occupied most of eastern China in the Three Kingdoms period, and Sun Wu because the family name of its rulers was Sun.

Old Chinese, also called Archaic Chinese in older works, is the oldest attested stage of Chinese, and the ancestor of all modern varieties of Chinese. The earliest examples of Chinese are divinatory inscriptions on oracle bones from around 1250 BC, in the Late Shang period. Bronze inscriptions became plentiful during the following Zhou dynasty. The latter part of the Zhou period saw a flowering of literature, including classical works such as the Analects, the Mencius, and the Zuo Zhuan. These works served as models for Literary Chinese (or Classical Chinese), which remained the written standard until the early twentieth century, thus preserving the vocabulary and grammar of late Old Chinese.

Old Chinese was written with several early forms of Chinese characters, including oracle bone, bronze, and seal scripts. Throughout the Old Chinese period, there was a close correspondence between a character and a monosyllabic and monomorphemic word. Although the script is not alphabetic, the majority of characters were created based on phonetic considerations. At first, words that were difficult to represent visually were written using a "borrowed" character for a similar-sounding word (rebus principle). Later on, to reduce ambiguity, new characters were created for these phonetic borrowings by appending a radical that conveys a broad semantic category, resulting in compound xingsheng (phono-semantic) characters. For the earliest attested stage of Old Chinese of the late Shang dynasty, the phonetic information implicit in these xingsheng characters which are grouped into phonetic series, known as the xiesheng series, represents the only direct source of phonological data for reconstructing the language. The corpus of xingsheng characters was greatly expanded in the following Zhou dynasty. In addition, the rhymes of the earliest recorded poems, primarily those of the Classic of Poetry, provide an extensive source of phonological information with respect to syllable finals for the Central Plains dialects during the Western Zhou and Spring and Autumn periods. Similarly, the Chu Ci provides rhyme data for the dialect spoken in the Chu region during the Warring States period. These rhymes, together with clues from the phonetic components of xingsheng characters, allow most characters attested in Old Chinese to be assigned to one of 30 or 31 rhyme groups. For late Old Chinese of the Han period, the modern Southern Min languages, the oldest layer of Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary, and a few early transliterations of foreign proper names, as well as names for non-native flora and fauna, also provide insights into language reconstruction.

The Di (Chinese: 氐; pinyin: Dī; Wade–Giles: Ti; < Eastern Han Chinese *tei < Old Chinese (B-S): *tˤij) were an ancient ethnic group that lived in western China, and are best known as one of the non-Han Chinese peoples known as Five Barbarians that seized power in northern China during the Sixteen Kingdoms period. This ethnic group should not be confused with the earlier Dí (狄), which refers to unrelated nomadic peoples in northern China during the earlier Zhou dynasty. The Ba-Di (巴氐) were a branch of the Di that intermixed with another ethnic group known as the Cong people (賨).

Tuyuhun (Chinese: 吐谷渾; LHC: *tʰɑʔ-jok-guən; Wade-Giles: T'u-yühun), also known as Henan (Chinese: 河南) and Azha (Tibetan: ཨ་ཞ་, Wylie: ‘A-zha; Chinese: 阿豺), was a dynastic monarchy established by the nomadic peoples related to the Xianbei in the Qilian Mountains and upper Yellow River valley, in modern Qinghai, China.