| Summary: | The article deals with the issue of an isolated view in the medieval historiography of the Latin cultural circle, the identification of Magyars as Massagetae. Operating within the established practice of their age, the litterati tried to determine the role played by emerging ethnic groups by applying methods based on principles of etymology and analogy. Thus they identified names of those ethnic units with the ethnonyms known to them from the Bible and ancient literature. In dealing with emerging ethnic units, earlier unknown,
they followed the principle of the variability of names of the attested ethnic units. This principle was applied to Hungarians credited with emerging from Scythia and referred to in medieval sources as a gens ignota / exter(n)a.
The identification of Hungarians with earlier known ethnic units was strengthened by terms used to describe them as barbari, pagani, infideles.
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