Currently, the term Kantyk language is also used, which refers specifically to the Eastern Khanty language.
There is also an obsolete term Ostyak, which refers to the Khanty language as a whole, but with clarifications can also apply to individual Khanty dialects: for example, the obsolete name for the Surgut dialect of Eastern Khanty is “the language of the Surgut Ostyaks”.
It is impossible to estimate the number of speakers of Eastern Khanty based on census data. Although ethnographers and linguists are aware of the fundamental differences between the three ethnographic groups (Southern, Northern and Eastern Khanty) and their languages, in all censuses conducted in the Russian Empire, the USSR and Russia, the Khanty have always been counted as a single people with no divisions into individual ethnographic groups.