Look up Tartar or tartar in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change the link to tartar powder replacement directly to the intended article. Turkic ethnic groups bearing the name “Tatar”. Many noble families in the Tsardom of Russia and Russian Empire had Tatar origins.

From the beginning, the extra r was present in the Western forms and according to the Oxford English Dictionary this was most likely due to an association with Tartarus. The Persian word is first recorded in the 13th century in reference to the hordes of Genghis Khan and is of unknown origin, according to OED “said to be” ultimately from tata. Tatar is usually used to refer to the people, but Tartar has since come to refer to derived terms such as tartar sauce, steak tartare, and the Tartar missile. Some of these populations still use Tatar as a self-designation, others do not. The name Tatar is also an endonym to a number of peoples of Siberia and Russian Far East, namely the Khakas people.

11th century Kara-khanid scholar Mahmud al-Kashgari noted that the historical Tatars were bilingual, speaking other Turkic languages besides their own language. There are two Tatar dialects—Central and Western. Mishärs, the Central dialect is spoken by Kazan and Astrakhan Tatars. The dialects are quite remote from Standard Tatar and from each other, often preventing mutual comprehension. The claim that Siberian Tatar is part of the modern Tatar language is typically supported by linguists in Kazan and denounced by Siberian Tatars. Crimean Tatar is the indigenous language of the Crimean Tatar people. Because of its common name, Crimean Tatar is sometimes mistakenly seen in Russia as a dialect of Kazan Tatar.