General location of the Xianyun, who "lived in an area that stretched from the Hetao (bend of the Yellow River) to the upper Yellow River Valley", with the Chinese capital Xi'an and Western Zhou frontier outpost of Baicaopo () next to this area.[4]
Paul R. Goldin (2011)将“葷粥 ~ 獯鬻 ~ 獯鬻 ~ 薰育”一词的上古汉语发音构拟为*xur-luk，将“獫狁”构拟为hram′-lun′，将“匈奴”构拟为*xoŋ-NA；并认为这三个名称“显然毫无关联”。他还指出，音变使这些名称变得比实际上更相似，使得史学家认为这些名称指同一个人群。[20]
^灵台白草坡 西周墓葬里的青铜王国. www.kaogu.net.cn. The Institute of Archaeology (CASS Chinese Academy of Social Sciences). [2024-06-27]. （原始内容存档于2019-09-16）. There is research on the ethnic image of the northern nomadic people of the Altaic language family. It may be that this is the image of the Xianyun tribe that once posed a serious military threat to the northern border of the Zhou Dynasty. They were called "Ghost people" (Guifang) because they looked different from the Chinese. 有考证系阿尔泰语系的北方游牧民族人种形象。可能是曾经对周朝北方边境构成严重军事威胁的猃狁部族，因相貌异于华夏，被称作“鬼方”。
^So, Jenny F.; Bunker, Emma C. Traders and raiders on China's northern frontier: 19 November 1995 - 2 September 1996, Arthur M. Sackler Gallery(PDF). Seattle: Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Inst. [u.a.] 1995: 123–124. ISBN 978-0295974736. The Europoid faces of the two figures atop the present ornament are the only other clues to its non-Chinese origins. It is therefore almost inevitable that such scabbard ornaments should appear in far western and northern contexts, where cultural exchange was easiest and most active. (with photographs)
^So, Jenny F.; Bunker, Emma C. Traders and raiders on China's northern frontier: 19 November 1995 - 2 September 1996, Arthur M. Sackler Gallery(PDF). Seattle: Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Inst. [u.a.] 1995: 90, item 1, discussing item 41 pages 123–124. ISBN 978-0295974736. The faces on no. 41, a scabbard ornament made some eight hundred years earlier, suggesting that peoples of similar ethnic—probably West Asian—origins may have arrived at China's northwestern borders as early as the beginning of the first millennium B.C.
^Cao, Wei; Liu, Yuanqing; Linduff, Katheryn M.; Sun, Yan. The rise of states and the formation of group identities in western regions of the inner Asian frontier (c. 1500 to the eighth century BCE). Ancient China and its Eurasian Neighbors: Artifacts, Identity and Death in the Frontier, 3000–700 BCE. 23 November 2017: 186. ISBN 9781108290555. doi:10.1017/9781108290555.005. According to Li Feng's study, based primarily on written sources, the “Xianyun”were a large-scale society with highly concentrated power that lived in an area that stretched from the Hetao (bend of the Yellow River) to the upper Yellow River Valley.The Xianyun were organized around coherent social units with a shared cultural tradition and background,laying the foundation for them to reconcile with each other to fight the Zhou together. “Xianyun” was probably a self-claimed title, and bronze inscriptions suggest that the Zhou called the Xianyun the “Rong,” indicating that it was a warlike group (Li Feng 2006:142–45).
^Goldin, Paul R. "Steppe Nomads as a Philosophical Problem in Classical China" （页面存档备份，存于互联网档案馆） in Mapping Mongolia: Situating Mongolia in the World from Geologic Time to the Present. Penn Museum International Research Conferences, vol. 2. Ed. Paula L.W. Sabloff. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania. 2011. p. 225-226; p. 237, no. 22
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