Noin-Ula burial site
Many immigrants lived in the Xiongnu pasturelands, but at first they did not mix with the Xiongnu. To be a Xiongnu, one had to be a member of a clan, born of Xiongnu parents. The newcomers were well off, but were outsiders, and could marry only among themselves, not the Xiongnu. Only later did they intermix, increase in numbers, even created a state that existed from 318 to 350 AD.
Xiongnu
Harold Walter Bailey proposed an Iranian origin of the Xiongnu, recognizing all the earliest Xiongnu names of the 2nd century BC as being of the Iranian type. This theory is supported by turkologist . Central Asian scholar Christopher I. Beckwith notes that the Xiongnu name could be a cognate of Scythian, Saka and Sogdia, corresponding to a name for Northern Iranians. According to Beckwith the Xiongnu could have contained a leading Iranian component when they started out, but more likely they had earlier been subjects of an Iranian people and learned from them the Iranian nomadic model.