Oroch

The Oroch are a Tungusic people of the Tatar Strait coast, whose name comes from oron, a domestic reindeer; their tradition holds that they gave up reindeer herding to settle as fishermen on the Amur estuary and seashore. They formed on the wooded slopes of the Sikhote-Alin from a mix of Evenki, Nivkh and Ainu elements, and were divided into five territorial groups.

Their Southern Tungusic speech was never written, and their old self-designation nani meant “people of this place”. Qing records knew their coast as the land of the Kuerka, seal hunters who fished among the offshore islands; Russian travellers adopted the name Oroch only in the 1800s.