Also spelled “Buryad”, this ethnonym lends its name to the Republic of Buryatia. According to tradition, it has ties to the name of the ancestor of all the Mongols of Borte-Chino, with the wolf as its totemic animal.
According to another version, the steppe-Mongols named the northern inhabitants of the Baikal region buraad - "forest inhabitants" from the word "buraa" – "forest".Russian documents of the XVII-XVIII centuries nameBuryatsas "fraternal people". The Russian first mention of Buryatsis found in the documents of the SibirskyPrikaz (the Tsar’s authority for Siberia).
An important place in the economy of the Buryats was not only animal breeding (bred large and small cattle, horses, and camels), hunting and fishing, but also a primitive farming - sowing millet, buckwheat, and barley.
