Edwin G. Pulleyblank
From "Xiajiasi" 黠戛斯, Soviet scientists reconstructed the ethnonym "Khakass". Edwin G. Pulleyblank surmises that "red face and yellow head" meaning was possibly a folk etymology provided by an interpreter who explained the ethnonym based on Turkic "qïzïl" ~ "qizqil", meaning 'red'. The description of the Kirghiz as tall, blue-eyed blonds excited the early interest of scholars, who assumed that Kyrgyz might not have originally been Turkic in language. Golden considered Kyrghyzes to be Palaeo-Siberians Turkicized under Turkic leadership. Ligeti cited the opinions of various scholars who had proposed to see them as Germanic, Slav, or Ket, while he himself, following Castrén and Schott, favoured a Samoyed origin on the basis of an etymology for a supposed Kirghiz word "qaša" or "qaš" for "iron". However Pulleyblank argued: