The origin of the Szeklers, a Magyar ethnic group, has been much debated.

According to their own tradition, repeated in Procopius' De bello Gothico, they are descended from Attila's Huns; a small number of scholars believe that they are related to the Scythians who may have joined the Magyars on their trek westward.

It is, however, now generally accepted that they are true Hungarians, or Magyars (or at least the descendants of a Magyarized Turkic people), either transplanted to Transylvania to guard the frontier or having arrived her before the Magyar conquest of the Pannonian Plain in 896, their name meaning simply “frontier guards.”