They lived in northern Hebei, southeastern Inner Mongolia and the western part of Liaoning, Jilin and Heilongjiang along the Yan Mountains and Greater Khingan Range.

While sometimes it was used in this general way to describe people of non-Han descent, and carried the same negative overtones of the English term, this was not always the case.

(2009:453)In 307 BCE, the 胡 Hú proper, encompassing both the eastern Dōnghú (東胡, "Eastern Hu") and the western Linhu (林胡, "Forest Hu"), were mentioned as a non-Chinese people who were neighbors of Zhao[4][5] and skilled at mounted archery (a military tactic which King Wuling of Zhao would later adopt).

[7] It was used by Han Chinese to describe anyone who is not of ethnic Han Chinese descent and were considered barbarians: for example, Sima Qian also used Hu to call the Xiongnu, who were then ruled by Touman chanyu, once expelled by Qin general Meng Tian north from the Ordos Loop, yet able to regain their territory following the Qin Empire's collapse.

[17] The traditional explanation, going back to the second-century Han dynasty scholar Cui Hao 崔浩 is that the Donghu were originally located "east of the Xiongnu" who were one of the "Five Barbarians" (Hú).

[18] Modern Chinese apologetics suggests that "Donghu" was a transcription of an endonym and did not literally mean "Eastern Barbarian".

[20]The historian Nicola di Cosmo concludes: We can thus reasonably say that, by the end of the fourth century B.C., the term "Hu" applied to various ethnic groups (tribes, groups of tribes, and even states) speaking different languages and generally found living scattered across a wide territory.

Their fragmentation, however, could be turned, when the need arose, into a superior form of political organization (a "state").

[21]In modern Standard Chinese usage hú has lost its original meaning although it still appears in words like èrhú 二胡 (lit.

Old Chinese reconstructions of Dōnghú include *Tûngɣâg,[23] *Tungg'o,[24] *Tewnggaɣ,[25] *Tongga,[26] and *Tôŋgâ > *Toŋgɑ.

[27] William H. Baxter and Laurent Sagart (2014)[28] reconstruct the Old Chinese ancestor of 胡 Hú as *[g]ˤa.

[32][33] Some dictionaries and scholars (e.g. Jean-Pierre Abel-Rémusat) confuse Dōnghú 東胡 with Tungusic peoples, Tonggu 通古.

"[34]This "chance similarity in modern pronunciation", writes Pulleyblank, "led to the once widely held assumption that the Eastern Hu were Tungusic in language.

"[35] Among the northern ethnic groups, the Donghu was the earliest to evolve into a state of civilization and first developed bronze technology.

Shortly afterwards, Duke Mu of Qin, having obtained the services of You Yu, succeeded in getting the eight barbarian tribes of the west to submit to his authority.

[53] However, many non-Han Chinese rulers were claimed to be the Yellow Emperor's descendants, for individual and national prestige.

Pulleyblank cites Paul Pelliot that the Donghu, Xianbei, and Wuhuan were "proto-Mongols".The Eastern Hu, mentioned in the Shih-chi along with the Woods Hu and the Lou-fan as barbarians to the north of Chao in the fourth century B.C., appear again as one of the first peoples whom the Hsiung-nu conquered in establishing their empire.

[58] Pulleyblank also writes that although there is now archaeological evidence of the spread of pastoral nomadism based on horse riding from Central Asia into Mongolia and farther east in the first half of the first millennium B.C.E., as far as we have evidence it did not impinge on Chinese consciousness until the northward push of the state of Zhao 趙 to the edge of the steppe in present Shanxi province shortly before the end of the fifth century B.C.E.

Earlier it had referred to a specific proto-Mongolian people, now differentiated as the Eastern Hu 東胡, from whom the Xianbei 鮮卑 and the Wuhuan 烏桓 later emerged.

[69] In 1980, Russian scholar Lydia Leonidovna Viktorova criticized the 19th century phonetic identification of the ancient people of the Donghu (Eastern Hu) with the Tungus.

[34] A genetic study published in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology detected the paternal haplogroup C2b1a1b among the Xianbei and Rouran.

It is suggested that the majority was of Mongolic and Tungusic origins, and that they stood in contact with other Steppe nomadic entities, such as the Xiongnu and the Saka people further West.

[75] A genetic study published in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology in August 2018 detected the paternal haplogroup C2b1a1b among the Xianbei and Rouran.