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The Ossetians or Ossetes ((オセット語:ир, ирæттæ), '; дигорæ, дигорæнттæ, ') are an Iranian ethnic group of the Caucasus Mountains, indigenous to the region known as Ossetia.〔Bell, Imogen. ''Eastern Europe, Russia and Central Asia'', p. 200.〕〔Mirsky, Georgiy I. ''On Ruins of Empire: Ethnicity and Nationalism in the Former Soviet Union'', p. 28.〕〔Mastyugina, Tatiana. ''An Ethnic History of Russia: Pre-revolutionary Times to the Present'', p. 80.〕 They speak Ossetic, an Iranian language of the Eastern branch of the Indo-European languages family, with most also fluent in Russian as a second language. The Ossetians are mostly Eastern Orthodox Christian, with a Muslim minority. The Ossetians mostly populate Ossetia, which is politically divided between North Ossetia–Alania in Russia, and South Ossetia, which since the 2008 South Ossetia war has been ''de facto'' independent from Georgia. ==Etymology== The Ossetians and Ossetia received their name from the Russians, who adopted the Georgian designations ''Osi'' (sing., pl.: ''Osebi'') and ''Oseti'' ("the land of Osi"), used since the Middle Ages for the Iranian-speaking population of the Central Caucasus and probably based on the old Alan self-designation "As". As the Ossetians lacked any single inclusive name for themselves in their native language, these terms were accepted by the Ossetians themselves already before their integration into the Russian Empire.〔Shnirelman, Victor (2006). (The Politics of a Name: Between Consolidation and Separation in the Northern Caucasus ). ''Acta Slavica Iaponica'' 23, pp. 37–49.〕 This practice was put into question by the new Ossetian nationalism in the early 1990s, when the dispute between the Ossetian subgroups of Digoron and Iron over the status of the Digoron dialect made the Ossetian intellectuals search for a new inclusive ethnic name. This, combined with the effects of the Georgian-Ossetian conflict, led to the popularization of "Alania", the name of the medieval Sarmatian confederation, to which the Ossetians traced their origin, and inclusion of this name into the official republican title of North Ossetia in 1994.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Ossetians」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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