Multicultural China in the Early Middle Ages. Sanping Chen

founder Gao Huan (496–547) of the Northern Qi, that these Southern dynasties were revered by many in the north as the “legitimate” Chinese regime (Bei Qi shu, or History of the Northern Qi, 24.347).

      Second, a cognate of echi, the well-known Old Turkic word for both “elder brother” and “father's younger brother,” had been used early on by the Tuoba explicitly for the second meaning. This was the Tuoba royal clan name Yizhan, which went back to the very early stage of the rise of the Tuoba, when its chiefs for the first time divided up their growing tribal followings among “seven royal branches” of the Tuoba clan. The name was later sinified to Shusun, “descendants of the paternal uncles” (Wei Shu 113.3006). Peter Boodberg in his 1936 study of the Tuoba language seemed to be the first to recognize Yizhan (Middle Chinese pronunciation iet-tsian), curiously again with an -n suffix, as a cognate of the Old Turkic word echi.