Sunuwar Dictionary

Sunuwar is a pronominalized Tibeto-Burman language of the eastern hill region of Nepal and belongs to the so called “Kiranti” nucleus classified by Shafer as East Himalayish and later by Benedict as Bahing-Vayu. Apart from a difference in nomenclature for the higher level nodes, all the major classifications agree fairly consistently on the constituent members of the Kiranti nucleus, and include Sunuwar in that nucleus.

In the writings one may be confused reading sometimes Sunwar or Sunuwar. In the early days of our research it was common that the people of this Kiranti Rai group called themselves outside the group “Sunwar.” When they came to town and were asked what kind of people they belonged to, the Nepali speaking people in town, not knowing the different Rai groups of the eastern hills, understood Sunar. And the Sunar is the clan name of the professional blacksmiths. Their mother tongue is the Nepali language. The Sunwar people wanted to make it clear that they are not Sunar and started to pronounce their name slowly and clearly and put the extra /u/ into their name making the second /u/ coming out clearly with the result of an extra syllable “Sunuwar.” Among themselves they use a completely different name and that is Koynts.

Dev Bahadur Satwa Dzeent reported to us that the Sunuwar had migrated to Nepal from the north-eastern area of China about 1000 years ago because of persecution. In their homeland they had been hunters. When they settled in Nepal they turned to agriculture as the Nepali people in the hills. Those Sunuwar who had settled outside the eastern border of Nepal in Darjeeling call themselves Mukhya.