The Chuvash people, also called Chuvash Tatars, are a Turkic ethnic group, a branch of the Oğurs, inhabiting an area stretching from the Idel-Ural region to Siberia.

Most of them live in the Russian republic of Chuvashia and the surrounding area, although Chuvash communities may be found throughout Russia as well as in Central Asia. They speak Chuvash, a Turkic language that diverged from other languages in the family more than a millennium ago. Among the Chuvash believers, the majority are Eastern Orthodox Christians although a minority follow Vattisen Yaly or Sunni Islam.

There is no universally accepted etymology of the word Chuvash, but there are two theories. One theory suggests that the word Chuvash may be derived from Common Turkic jăvaş ('friendly', 'peaceful'), as opposed to şarmăs ('warlike').^{[citation needed]}

Another theory is that the word is derived from the Tabghach, an early medieval Xianbei clan and founders of the Northern Wei dynasty in China. The Old Turkic name Tabghach (Tuoba in Mandarin) was used by some Inner Asian peoples to refer to China long after this dynasty. Gerard Clauson has shown that through regular sound changes, the clan name Tabghach may have transformed to the ethnonym Chuvash.

Chuvash is a Turkic language spoken in European Russia, primarily in the Chuvash Republic and adjacent areas. It is the only surviving member of the Oghur branch of Turkic languages, one of the two principal branches of the Turkic family.

Although there is no direct evidence, some scholars believe that Chuvash may be descendant from a dialect of Volga Bulgar language while others support the idea that Chuvash is another distinct Oghur Turkic language. Since the surviving literary records for the non-Chuvash members of Oghuric (Bulgar and possibly Khazar) are scant, the exact position of Chuvash within the Oghuric family cannot be determined.

Some scholars suggest Hunnish had strong ties with Bulgar and to modern Chuvash and refer to this extended grouping as separate Hunno-Bulgar languages. However, such speculations are not based on proper linguistic evidence, since the language of the Huns is almost unknown except for a few attested words and personal names. Scholars generally consider Hunnish as unclassifiable.

Despite grammatical similarity with the rest of Turkic language family, the presence of changes in Chuvash pronunciation (which are hard to reconcile with other members of the Turkic family) has led some scholars to see Chuvash as originating not from Proto-Turkic, but from another proto-language spoken at the time of Proto-Turkic (in which case Chuvash and all the remaining Turkic languages would be part of a larger language family).