Circassians. The Circassians, also known by their endonym Adyghe, are a Northwest Caucasian ethnic group native to Circassia, many of whom were displaced in the course of the Russian conquest of the Caucasus in the 19th century, especially after the Russo-Circassian War in 1864. The Circassians mainly speak the Circassian languages, a Northwest Caucasian dialect continuum with three main dialects and numerous sub-dialects. Many Circassians also speak Turkish, Russian, English, Arabic and Hebrew, having been exiled by Russia to lands of the Ottoman Empire, where the majority of them live today. Most Circassians are Sunni Muslim. In its narrowest sense, the term Circassian includes the twelve historic Adyghe princedoms of Circassia; Abdzakh, Besleney, Bzhedug, Hatuqwai, Kabardian, Mamkhegh, Natukhai, Shapsug, Temirgoy, Ubykh, Yegeruqwai and Zhaney, each star on the Circassian flag representing one princedom. Historical Circassia has been divided by Soviet and Russian administrations into the modern-day titular Circassian republics of Adygea, Kabardino-Balkaria, Karachay-Cherkessia and Krasnodar Krai, as well as southwestern parts of Stavropol Krai and Rostov Oblast. Accordingly, Circassians or Adyghe have also been designated as the following: Adygeans in Adygea, Kabardians in Kabardino-Balkaria, Cherkess in Karachay-Cherkessia, and Shapsug in Krasnodar Krai, although all four are essentially the same people. About 800,000 Circassians remain in historical Circassia, while others live in the Russian Federation outside these republics and krais. The 2010 Russian Census recorded 718,727 Circassians, of whom 516,826 are Kabardian, 124,835 are other Adyghe in Adygea, 73,184 are Cherkess and 3,882 Shapsug. The Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization estimated in the early 1990s that there are as many as 3.7 million ethnic Circassian diaspora outside the titular Circassian republics, and that, of these 3.7 million, more than 2 million live in Turkey, 300,000 in the Levant and Mesopotamia and 50,000 in Western Europe and the United States. The Circassians refer to themselves as Adyghe. The name is believed to derive from atte height to signify a mountaineer or a highlander, and ghei sea, signifying a people dwelling and inhabiting a mountainous country near the sea coast, or between two seas. The word Circassians is an exonym. The Russians referred to all Circassian tribes as Cherkesy, which may be derived from Kerkety, the name of one of the Adyghe tribes native to the northwestern Caucasus. In the 10th century, Persians, Georgians and Arabs referred to the Circassians as Kashak, which appears to be a Georgian word derived from Ossetian Kasogi. The Turkic peoples referred to the Circassians as Cherkas, a name which had come into common use by the 13th century. This designation originally did not designate the Adygei but rather the people living in southern Ukraine. Even in contemporary times, Ukraine has a province named Cherkessk, with its provincial capital bearing the same name. With the advent of the Golden Horde in the 13th century, the designation Cherkess came to refer to the Adygei who remained in the Caucasus, and then became a generic term for all who lived there. This in turn created terminology anomalies, and as a result, Cherkes became often used alongside other names such as Adygei, Abaza, Kabardian, Karachay, and Abkhaz. In Medieval Oriental and European texts, the Adygei people were known by the name Cherkess/Circassians. The Encyclopaedia Islamica adds: This is because the Cherkess, the Kabardians and the Adygei people share a common language, which is spoken by the north-western Caucasian people, and belongs to the family known as Abkhazian-Adygei. In Persian sources, Charkas/Cherkes is used to refer to the actual Circassians of the northwest Caucasus, and in some occasions as a general designation for Caucasians who live beyond Derbent. In Russian historiography the term had been used as an exonym for Russian, Ukrainian and Cossack people at least until the end of the 18th century, and Caucasian Tatar peoples.