They are one of the closest ethnic groups to the Manchu and Nanai, and are possibly of Xi Yeren Jurchen origin.

A central objective has been the establishment of a Territory of Traditional Natural Resource Use of federal status, which was proposed in cooperation with the national umbrella organisation RAIPON and the Russian Institute of Anthropology and Ethnography but failed to be approved by the authorities.

[2] Until the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century Russian and Western researchers did not separate Udege and Oroch, considering them one people (often called Orochoni).

He was also the first to introduce the ethnonym Udihe, Udiheitsi (Russian: удээ, удэхэ, удихэ), which became an official, in particular autoethnonym already in the 1930s.

Each territorial group had its own self-name: Hungarian – Hungake, Bikinska – Bikinka, Anyuyska – Uninka, and so on.