1. General information (endonyms, ethnographic groups, population according to the latest census, settlement)

The word “Kets” is not the original endonym. It was officially introduced and came into use only in the 1920s. As was the case for other peoples of the North, the name was based on the word “man” ( ket ). Before this, the Kets had been known as “Ostyaks”, “the Yenisei Ostyaks” and “the Yenisei people”. The word “Ostyaks” was not the self-name, either. It was used, by analogy with the name for the Ob-Ugric Ostyaks (Khanty) and the Samoyed-speaking Selkup, by the Russian service class people who were advancing from the Ob to the Yenisei at the beginning of the 17th century. The name “Ostyaks”, common to many peoples, expresses the external similarity, noticed by the Russian explorers, of the appearance and occupations of the indigenous inhabitants of the river valleys: fishermen and hunters. This might explain the common name of the Ostyaks (“Dyandri”) among the Yenisei Tungus, although the Tungus also had names for the individual groups (Vasilevich 1931: 134; Dolgikh 1950: 92), and among the Nenets (“Khabi”). The meaning of the latter is “a dependent one” or “slave” (Khomich 1966: 23).

In this case, apparently, we can talk about the commonality of historical destinies, specifically, the subordination in military clashes. Such stories are widespread in the legends of the Ob Ugrians, Selkup and the Kets themselves. The Kets named themselves according to their clan affiliation and the territory of residence (for example, the Yeloguy people, the Podkamennaya (Stony) Tunguska people).

According to the All-Union Census of 1979, there were 1,072 Kets in the USSR; in 1989, there were 1,113, of which 1,084 resided in the RSFSR. The 2002 All-Russian Census recorded 1,494 Kets (the numbers having increased by 34%), including 119 Yughs. According to the census of 2010, there were 1,219 Kets (mainly in the Krasnoyarsk Territory). The census of 2020/2021 showed that the number of Kets had decreased to 1,088.  The largest number of Kets live in the Krasnoyarsk Territory (911) and the Tomsk Region (110).

The landscape factor was of decisive importance in the folk (territorial, ethnic) identification. At the beginning of the 20th century, Vasily Anuchin wrote in his diary that the Kets “when talking about any people, ask what river they dwell on and how many rivers one has to cross to get there” (Anuchin 1908). In the 1960–1980s, the older people, in order to form their own geographical idea, still asked whether such and such city or country was “above” or “below”; that is, whether the newcomers came “down here” or “up here”. The space- structuring axis was the flow of the main river, and the reference point was the position of clan. The river is the Yenisei: its meridional flow determined the concepts of “up” (upper reaches – south) and “down” (lower reaches – north). In accordance with this, the people were classified into the “Nizovsky” (“the Lower ones”) and the “Verkhovsky” (“the Upper ones”). For the Yeloguy residents, for example, the Nizovsky (Ket tygyden ; from tyga - “downstream”, “to the north”; den - “people”) were their fellow tribesmen Kets, Selkup, Evenks, Nenets, Russians and other inhabitants of the territories to the north of them.

The term “Verkhovsky” (Ket utaden ; from uta - “upstream, to the south”) was even broader. Back in the 1960s, it was attributed not only to the people from the places located south of Yeloguy, but also to those who came from Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Germany (Peoples of Western Siberia...2005: 630-632).

The territorial names of the Ket groups are often based on hydronyms. An example of the “river” territorial names can be yelukden (“the Yeloguy people”), tymdeden (“the Ket river people”), etc. At the end of the 19th - beginning of the 20th centuries, the Kets were divided into the coastal (residents of the Yenisei coast) and the forest ones (inhabiting the remote forest areas).

The absence of a single original endonym can be explained by the level of the social and ethnic development of the Kets at the time of their first acquaintance with the Russians. Blood-related (tribal) groups constituted the main territorial and social unit then; the stability of kinship ties had ensured the preservation of tribal self-names until the middle of the 20th century. At the same time, the unification of the Kets into districts ( uezds ) and sub-districts ( volosts ) carried out by the Russians, the expansion of contacts between individual groups based on the tax ( yasak ) duty, and increased resettlement activities contributed to their ​​self-identification and the establishment of the ethnonym “Ostyaks” as a single endonym. Such expressions as “Ostyak boat”, “Ostyak stove”, “Ostyak bread”, and even the word Ostegen (“Ostyaks”) itself had been common in the speech of the older generation of Kets until the 1960s. But the young people displayed negative attitude toward the word “Ostyaks” even then, and the rejection later became universal, as the people saw it as outdated and offensive. The objective reason for this was the frequent and derogatory use of the word by the local and newcomer Russians.

The need to replace the old name with a new one was obvious from a practical point of view, too. The word “Ostyaks”, in addition to identifying the Kets and the Khanty, was also used to designate the Selkup (the neighbors of the Kets in the North Turukhansk district). Applying one ethnic term to three different peoples caused confusion. During the census of 1959, for instance, two small Selkup groups (the villages of Makovskoye and Sym) were mistakenly counted as Kets. The error occurred because the northern ethnonym Selkup had not taken root among the southern group, while the local self-name was forgotten and until 1959 the Selkup had been called "Ostyaks". And since the old name of the Kets was “Ostyaks,” it was used to count the Selkup in the census (Peoples of Western Siberia...2005: 632).

The word “Kets”, clear to everyone, quickly gained popularity and was universally perceived as a self-name. It should, however, be said that the name Ketó (stressed on the final syllable) has spread in the region and gradually established itself both in the official documents and among the people. It is thought to be more euphonious and significant; its origin is the vocative form of the word ket (“man”): this is how one Ket male addresses another (Peoples of Western Siberia...2005: 633).

Currently, in the Krasnoyarsk Territory there are 6 ethnic Ket groups: Yeloguyskaya (the Kellog village on the Yeloguy River), Surgutikha (the Surgutikha village on the Yeloguy River), Pakulikha (the Baklanikha village on the Yenisei), Kureyskaya (the Serkovo village on the Kureyka River and the village of Maduyka on Lake Maduyskoye) - in the Turukhansky district; Symskaya (about 40 people in the village of Sym on the Sym River) – in the Yenisei district. The sixth group, Podkamennotungusnaya (the village of Sulomai on the Podkamennaya (Stony) Tunguska River), was attached to the Baykitsky district of the Evenki Autonomous Okrug in the 1960s. In the beginning of the 21 ^st century, the village of Sulomai was destroyed by a devastating flood. With the assistance of the authorities, Christian communities and foreign charitable foundations, (mainly the Nansen Foundation), the village and all the related infrastructure were shortly rebuilt in a new location. In total, in the Krasnoyarsk Territory there are 9 ethnic Ket settlements, of which only Kellog and Sulomai can be considered mono-ethnic.

The Kets (Yeniseitsy, Ostyaks). Basin of the Yenisei River. Portrait of a man. 1901-1906.