ABSTRACT
The Chechens refer to themselves as ‘Nokhchii’ (sing. ‘Nokhchi’ or ‘Nokhcho’), or ‘Nokhchiin qam’ (‘The Chechen People’), and call their country ‘Nokhchichoe’ (literally: ‘The Chechen Home’), ‘Nokhchiin mokhk’ (‘The Chechen Country’), or ‘Daimokhk’ (‘Fatherland’). A number of these names derive from the ethnonym and toponym of a large Chechen tribe, the Nokhchmekhkakhoi, and its domicile in southeast Chechnya, which is also called ‘Ichkeria’. First mention of this ‘proto’ community, as ‘Nakhchmateans’, is found in the medieval Georgian and Armenian Chronicles.
