Tatars or Tartars?

Break from packing (Do I need to pack a jacket? A Russian dictionary? Why did the guy who painted our bathroom yesterday make off with my razor? Is 500 pills' worth of ibuprofen too much? aaaaaah) to write a bit:

Kazan is the capital of Tatarstan, one of the 21 ethnic republics within the Russian Federation. Tatarstan is the homeland of the Volga Tatars, a predominantly Muslim Turkic people about whom I will write more later, when I learn more about them. The Tatar lands aren't far from Moscow, so they were incorporated into the Russian Empire very early (before it was even an empire, actually).

But the question has come up in conversation a few times now: is it Tatarstan or Tartarstan? Tatars? Tartars? Did they invent the sauce? (No.) Steak tartare? (Yes.)

Well! Good thing I always have the answers. The Tatars call themselves the Tatars, and Russian-speakers also call them the Tatars, but in English, they're commonly referred to as the Tartars. This sounds slightly old-fashioned and/or imperialist to me, as it sort of hearkens back to the days when the term was used (in both Russian and English) to refer to any number of Eurasian peoples both nomadic (Kazakhs) and not-so (various groups in the North Caucasus) and Muslim (Volga Tatars) and not (Mongols). Sort of a catch-all term for a threatening "other" in Russia's history.

But anyway, it's not my very favorite term, but I don't think anyone except a cranky anthropologist would really fault you for using "Tartar." (I've met a couple cranky anthropologists. They're impossible not to offend.) I think the idea that we always have to call groups and places by what they call themselves is kind of silly, in that it is usually only applied haphazardly, mostly to non-Western groups. We don't call the Germans the Deutsch, or refer to Armenia as Hayistan. Then again, we also don't name sports teams after them. Hmm.

Woo, on to more packing, then: Moscow-ward!