a. and sb. [a. Fr. altaïen f. Altai (mountains in Asia): see -AN.] A term applied by Castrèn to the peoples and languages lying between the Altai Mountains and Arctic Ocean; called by some ethnologists Ugro-Finnish.
1874. trans. Peschel’s Races of Man. (1876), 377. This group of nations which Castrèn has named Altaians is closely allied to the Eastern and Southern Asiatics.
