The Nanai people are a Tungusic people of East Asia who have traditionally lived along Heilongjiang (Amur), Songhuajiang (Sunggari) and Wusuli River on the Middle Amur Basin. The ancestors of the Nanai were the Jurchens of northernmost Manchuria (Outer Manchuria). The Nanai/Hezhe language belongs to the Manchu-Tungusic languages. According to the 2010 census there were 12,003 Nanai in Russia. Name Common names for these people include нанай/Nanai (meaning 'natives, locals, people of the land/earth'); self-designation Hezhen (means 'people of the Orient'); ; ; . There are also terms formerly in use: Goldi, Golds, Goldes, Heje, and Samagir. Own names are ( and ) and (). means 'land, earth, ground, country' or, in this context, 'native, local' and , , means 'people' in different dialects. The Russian linguist L. I. Sem gives the self-name in the Cyrillic form, хэǯэ най (Hezhe nai) or хэǯэны (Hezheni), and explains it as the self-name of the Nanai of the lower Amur, meaning, "people who live along the lower course of the river". It is the source of the Chinese name for the Nanai, formerly "" (Heijin), "" (Hezhehala), and modern Chinese name "" (Hezhe). Traditional lifestyle and culture Some of the earliest first-hand accounts of the Nanai people in the European languages belong to the French Jesuit geographers travelling on the Ussuri and the Amur in 1709. According to them, the native people living on the Ussuri and on the Amur above the mouth of the Dondon River (which falls into the Amur between today's Khabarovsk and Komsomolsk-on-Amur) were known as Yupi Tartars (fish-skin tartars), while the name of the people living on the Dondon and on the Amur below Dondon was transcribed by the Jesuits into French as Ketching. The latter name may be the French transcription of the reported self-name of the Nanai of the lower Amur, , which was also applied to the closely related Ulch people, According to the Jesuits, the language of the "Yupi" people seemed to occupy an intermediate position between the Manchu language and that of the "Ketching"(, gàiqīng) people; some level of communication between the Yupi and the Ketching was possible. Some Han Chinese are said to have founded clan subdivisions among the Nanai and the Nanai have absorbed Manchu and Jurchens. Nanai culture is influenced by Han Chinese and Manchu culture and the Nanai share a myth in common with southern Chinese. The Nanais at