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

The total number of Nanais, according to the 2020 All-Russian Population Census, is 11,668 people (5,454 men and 6,214 women).

The Nanai, a Tungus-Manchu people, live in the Lower Amur plain, at the foothills of the Sikhote-Alin mountains, and along the rivers Urmi, Kur, and Gorin. This is the largest of the eight indigenous peoples of the Khabarovsk territory: the 2010 census puts their number at 12.003 persons. Around 11.000 of them lived in the Khabarovsk territory (i.e., the Amur, Nanai, Komsomolsk, Solnechny, and Khabarovsk districts; in the cities of Khabarovsk and Komsomolsk-on-Amur); 383 persons lived in the Primorye territory, 148 in the Sakhalin region, 95 in the Jewish autonomous region, and 69 in the Kamchatka territory. The Sakhalin Nanai migrated from the Amur in 1946. The Nanai ( Hezhen ) also live in Northeast China, in the lower reaches of the rivers Sungari and Ussuri. The 2010 сensus puts the number of Hezhen in China at 5.354 persons (3.618 in Heilongjiang province, mostly in Tongjiang and Fuyuan counties in Jiamusi prefecture, and in Raohe county in Shuangyashan prefecture).

Most Nanai live in the catchment area of the Amur and its tributaries. Most settlements populated by the Nanai are located mostly on the Lower Amur plain (lowland). The Ussuri group lives at the foothills of the Sikhote-Alin mountains; Nanai settlements on the shores of the Kur, Urmi, and Gorin are within the boundaries of the Khingan-Bureya uplands and the Evoron-Chukchagir lowlands.

Evenks, Yakuts, and Negidals called the Nanai natki, natkans, ngatki ; the Ainu and the Nivkh called them ants ; Yerofey Khabarov’s records preserved the ethnonym the Achan connected with the Akkhani territorial group that lived along the Amur from the mouth of the Sungari and to the village of Sakachi-Alyan (today it is called Sikachi-Alyan) and along the Ussuri. The ethnonym Goldes was the Nanai’s official name before the revolution and can be found in the documents and literature of the time. The elderly Nanai continued to use the name into the early 2000s, particularly in some districts of the Primorye territory. The Nanai’s ethnic and territorial groups have special endonyms: monay (munei), mona nayni (mune nayni), bira guruni, bira beyeni, birani nanay (nany), nan’u (nann’u), and nabe . In the past, the Nanai used to call themselves after the territory where they lived (for instance, Bolankans were the people who lived close to Lake Bolon, Naikhinkans lived in the village of Naikhin; Mangunkans used to live along the Amur; Gerinkens lived along the river Gorin). Most Nanai endonyms are derived from hydronyms, names of local areas, camping grounds, and clan names. People living along the Ussuri were called Ussurinkans . There are also ethnonyms based on specific locations along the river: the Solonay , “living upriver,” Khedinkens , “living downriver,” the Birani, “river people.”

Currently, the Nanai are divided into four territorial groups: the Amur, Kur-Urmi, Gorin, and Bikin groups. The largest one, the Amur group, comprises different Nanai clans living in the catchment area of the Middle Amur. The Kur-Urmi Nanai group traditionally lives along the Urmi and the Kur that merge into the Tunguska, the Amur’s left tributary. Up until the early 20 th century, the Gorin Nanai had been identified with Samagirs, a people of the Tungus origins. Lands populated by the Gorin Nanai spanned the valleys of the rivers Gorin, Devyatka, and Lake Evoron, stretched northeast toward the Amur, and bordered on Negidals’ lands in the northeast. Samagirs, taiga nomads, migrated to that area in the 17 th century and demarcated their lands and those of the local Nanai. Later, the demarcation line between these two groups, nomadic taiga dwellers and settled fishermen, gradually began to disappear. Ethnic and cultural features divide them into Lower and Upper groups.

Nanai is a Tungus-Manchu language of the Altaic family and has many dialects. Nina Lipskaya-Valrond identified eight Nanai dialects. The Russian Nanai use Cyrillic-based writing. 

In the 1990s, the Nanai mostly came to live in the few dozen settlements in the Khabarovsk territory. Average population numbers in the indigenous settlements were 800 persons. The largest one, the village of Naikhin (with the village of Daerga) is home to about 1.200 Nanai. Most Nanai settlements are multi-ethnic and are home to other ethnic groups along with the Nanai, mostly Russians and Ukrainians. Many Nanai live in the large urban-type settlements.