It is found on a golden buckled bowl or cup which is among the pieces of the Treasure of Nagyszentmiklós[1][2] which are now in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.

[10][11][3] It was found in 1799 on the banks of the Aranca river, near Nagyszentmiklós (today Sânnicolau Mare in Timiș County, Romania),[12][3][13] in the region of Pannonian Avars settlement in the Carpathian Basin.

Similar characters can be found on a bone needlecase excavated in the Late Avar cemetery of Szarvas (in Békés County, Hungary) and dated to the second half of the 8th century.

[28] Beta has also a prominent base line, a form found in the Greek inscriptions from Bulgaria dated to the early 9th century,[27][29][30] but otherwise it is rarely attested in the Greek-writing world: only[27][29] on several Cherson coins of the Byzantine emperor Basil I (867-886)[29][30][31] and also on one inscription of the same emperor, found in Mesembria (today Nesebar, Bulgaria).

He concluded that the inscription records two Gepid princes, Bouila and Boutaoul, and the three lands they ruled: Tagro, Etzi and Dygetoi.

[1][7] It has been often compared with the Turkic Bulgar language of the First Bulgarian Empire,[35][7][30] attested on several 8th-9th century inscriptions found in north-eastern Bulgaria and written in Greek letters.

[48] More recently Eugene Helimski argued the language is close to Proto-Tungusic,[49] but this proposal was rejected by Marcel Erdal as far-fetched.

[55][56] This etymology was challenged based on the observation that according to the predominant model of construction of Turkic patronymics, the possessive forms oğlu or oğli are expected.

[55] In 1900, Karl Brugmann derived the Common Slavic *županъ from župa "district, small administrative region",[58] an etymology that was accepted by many linguists.