The Huns were a nomadic people who lived in Central Asia, the Caucasus, and Eastern Europe between the 4th and 6th centuries CE. They were first reported living east of the Volga River, in an area that was part of Scythia at the time. By 370 CE, the Huns had arrived on the Volga, causing the westward movement of Goths and Alans. By 430, they had established a vast, but short-lived, empire on the Danubian frontier of the Roman empire in Europe. Several central and eastern European peoples seem to have maintained kingdoms under Hunnic hegemony, including not only the recently arrived Amali-led Goths, but also Gepids, Sarmatians, Heruli, Suebi, Sciri, and Rugii, who were all already associated with the Carpathian-Danubian region before the Huns arrived.
The Huns, especially under their King Attila, made frequent and devastating raids into the Eastern Roman Empire. In 451, they invaded the Western Roman province of Gaul, where they fought a combined army of Romans and Visigoths at the Battle of the Catalaunian Fields, and in 452, they invaded Italy. After the death of Attila in 453, the Huns ceased to be a major threat to Rome and lost much of their empire following the Battle of Nedao (c. 454). Descendants of the Huns, or successors with similar names, are recorded by neighboring populations to the south, east, and west as having occupied parts of Eastern Europe and Central Asia from about the 4th to 6th centuries. Variants of the Hun name are recorded in the Caucasus until the early 8th century.
In the 18th century, French scholar Joseph de Guignes became the first to propose a link between the Huns and the Xiongnu people, who lived in Mongolia and northern China from the 3rd century BCE to the late 1st century CE. Since Guignes's time, considerable scholarly effort has been devoted to investigating such a connection. The issue remains controversial, but recent archaeogenetic studies show some Hun-era individuals to have DNA similar to populations in ancient Mongolia. Their relationships with other entities, such as the Iranian Huns and the Huna people who invaded the Indian subcontinent, have also been disputed.
Very little is known about Hunnic culture, and very few archaeological remains have been conclusively associated with the Huns. They are believed to have used bronze cauldrons and to have performed artificial cranial deformation. No description exists of the Hunnic religion at the time of Attila, but practices such as divination are attested, as well as the likely existence of shamans. It is also known that the Huns had a language of their own; however, only three words and personal names attest to it.
Economically, the Huns are known to have practiced a form of nomadic pastoralism. As their contact with the Roman world grew, their economy became increasingly tied with Rome through tribute, raiding, and trade. They do not seem to have had a unified government when they entered Europe but rather to have developed a unified tribal leadership in the course of their wars with the Romans. The Huns ruled over a variety of peoples who spoke numerous languages, and some maintained their own rulers. Their main method of warfare was mounted archery.
The Huns may have initiated the Great Migration, a contributing factor in the collapse of the Western Roman Empire. The memory of the Huns also lived on in the hagiographies of various Christian saints, where the Huns play the role of antagonist, as well as in Germanic heroic legend, where the Huns are variously the antagonists or allies of the main Germanic figures. In Hungary, a legend developed based on medieval chronicles that the Hungarians, and in particular the Székely ethnic group, are descended from the Huns. However, mainstream scholarship has dismissed a close connection between the Hungarians and Huns. Modern culture generally associates the Huns with extreme cruelty and barbarism and is intertwined with the Mongol Empire.
The origins of the Huns and their links to other steppe people remain uncertain: they likely originated in Central Asia but their origins are disputed. Classical sources assert that they appeared in Europe suddenly around 370.
Most typically, Roman writers' attempts to elucidate the origins of the Huns simply equated them with earlier steppe peoples. Roman writers repeated a tale that the Huns had entered the domain of the Goths while they were pursuing a wild stag, or else one of their cows that had escaped, across the Kerch Strait into Crimea. Discovering the land fertile, they then attacked the Goths. Jordanes's Getica relates that the Goths held the Huns to be offspring of "unclean spirits" and Gothic witches (Getica 24:121).
Relation to the Xiongnu and other peoples called Huns
Since Joseph de Guignes in the 18th century, modern historians have associated the Huns who appeared on the borders of Europe in the 4th century CE with the Xiongnu who had invaded numerous Central Plain polities from the Mongolian Plateau between the 3rd century BCE and the 2nd century CE. After the devastating defeat by the Han dynasty, the northern branch of the Xiongnu retreated north-westward; their descendants may have migrated through the Eurasian Steppe and consequently they may have some degree of cultural and genetic continuity with the Huns. Scholars also discussed the relationship between the Xiongnu, the Huns, and a number of people in central Asia who were also known as or came to be identified with the name "Hun" or "Iranian Huns". The most prominent of these were Chionites, the Kidarites, and the Hephthalites.
Otto J. Maenchen-Helfen was the first to challenge the traditional approach, based primarily on the study of written sources, and to emphasize the importance of archaeological research. Since Maenchen-Helfen's work, the identification of the Xiongnu as the Huns' ancestors has become controversial. Additionally, several scholars have questioned the identification of the "Iranian Huns" with the European Huns. Walter Pohl cautions that
none of the great confederations of steppe warriors was ethnically homogenous, and the same name was used by different groups for reasons of prestige, or by outsiders to describe their lifestyle or geographic origin. [...] It is therefore futile to speculate about identity or blood relationships between H(s)iung-nu, Hephthalites, and Attila's Huns, for instance. All we can safely say is that the name Huns, in late antiquity, described prestigious ruling groups of steppe warriors.
As of October 2026, there is no general consensus on the issue of a Hun–Xiongnu connection. Recent supporters of a connection between the Huns and Xiongnu include Hyun Jin Kim and Etienne de la Vaissière. De la Vaissière argues that ancient Chinese and Indian sources used Xiongnu and Hun to translate each other, and that the various "Iranian Huns" were similarly identified with the Xiongnu. Kim believes that the term Hun was "not primarily an ethnic group, but a political category" and argues for a fundamental political and cultural continuity between the Xiongnu and the European Huns, as well as between the Xiongnu and the "Iranian Huns".
The name Hun is attested in classical European sources as Greek Οὖννοι (Ounnoi) and Latin Hunni or Chuni. John Malalas records their name as Οὖννα (Ounna). Another possible Greek variant may be Χοὖνοι (Khounoi), although this group's identification with the Huns is disputed. Classical sources also frequently use the names of older and unrelated steppe nomads instead of the name Hun, calling them Massagetae, Scythians, and Cimmerians, among other names.
The etymology of Hun is unclear. Various proposed etymologies generally assume at least that the names of the various Eurasian groups known as Huns are related. There have been a number of proposed Turkic etymologies, deriving the name variously from Turkic ön, öna (to grow), qun (glutton), kün, gün, a plural suffix "supposedly meaning 'people'", qun (force), and hün (ferocious). Maenchen-Helfen dismisses all of these Turkic etymologies as "mere guesses" and proposes an Iranian etymology, from a word akin to Avestan hūnarā (skill), hūnaravant- (skillful). He suggests that it may originally have designated a rank rather than an ethnicity. Robert Werner has advanced an etymology from Tocharian ku (dog), suggesting—as the Chinese called the Xiongnu dogs—that the dog was the totem animal of the Hunnic tribe. He also compares the name Massagetae, noting that the element saka in that name means dog. Others such as Harold Bailey, S. Parlato, and Jamsheed Choksy have argued that the name derives from an Iranian word akin to Avestan Ẋyaona, and was a generalized term meaning "hostiles, opponents". Christopher Atwood dismisses this possibility on phonological and chronological grounds. While not arriving at an etymology per se, Atwood derives the name from the Ongi River in Mongolia, which was pronounced the same as, or similarly to, the name Xiongnu, and suggests that it was originally a dynastic name rather than an ethnic name.