Turcilingi

The Turcilingi (also spelled Torcilingi or Thorcilingi) were an obscure barbarian people, or possibly a clan or dynasty, who appear in historical sources relating to Middle Danubian peoples who were present in Italy during the reign of Romulus Augustulus (475–76). Their only known leader was Odoacer (Odovacar), but he was described as a ruler of several ethnic groups.

Although various origins have been proposed including Hunnic, recent research favors the idea that the Turcilingi might be identical to the Thuringii, who are first mentioned in association with a type of horse, and became politically important only long after the fall of Odoacar.

Identification
From the sources it is not possible to infer the origin of the Turcilingi.

The Turcilingi are generally considered to have been a Germanic tribe. By one 19th century account, the Turcilingi appear to have originated in Germany, perhaps near the Baltic Sea, and thence moved with the Huns into Gaul and finally to the Danube, possibly Noricum, before entering Italy with Odoacer. It was often assumed that they were an Eastern Germanic people related to the Sciri, or at least connected to the Sciri by special affinity. Nineteenth-century German scholarship thus supposed that the Turcilingi were neighbours of (or the same people as) the Sciri in the first century, or that they were the royal clan of the Sciri or the Huns. The more enthusiastic invented a homeland for them straddling the Oder, with the Sciri to the east, the Vandals to the west, and the Rugii to the north. These scholars placed them in the Gothic mouvance.

More recently, Herwig Wolfram has continued to classify the Turcilingi as a Germanic tribe, and supports the notion that they were the royal clan of the Sciri.

Still more recently, they have been identified with the Thuringii by Wolfram Brandes and Helmut Castritius, and this conclusion has begun to gain more acceptance, including Walter Pohl and Peter Heather. The reasoning is based on upon the facts that the Suda describes Odoacer's brother Onoulphus as a Thuringian on his father's side and Scirian on his mother's. The Thuringian identity of Odoacer's father is denied in the Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire. Hyun Jin Kim thinks the Suda contains a hypercorrection by a scribe who did not recognise the Turcilingi. Jordanes refers to both peoples.

Kim argues that they were "a Turkic-speaking tribe under Hunnic rule ... probably of mixed origin ... with possibly a Germanic and Turkic (Hunnic) mixture." Cahen, too, argued they were Turkic-speaking Huns.

Etymology
The problem of identification is related to the problem of etymology. Both are related to the question whether the Turcilingi were Germanic or not. The root Turci- has led some scholars to suggest that they were a Turkic-speaking tribe. The -ling suffix is Germanic, denoting members of a line, usually one descended from a common ancestor. Kim believes the name is a Germanization of Turkic name.