Utigur is the name used by Procopius Caesariensis and his continuators Agathias and Menander in the 5th and 6th centuries to refer to the Bulgar-Huns of Onoguria, the Eurasian steppes north-east of the Black Sea and east the Don river.[1]
The ancestors of the Utigurs represented the eastern half of the Hun Empire, and were ruled by descendants of Attila through his son, Ernakh. One of the titles used by Utigurs was recorded as Sulifa(苏李发) to designate the Turkic title Elteber, from Pyn. Xielifa (苏李发). In the mid 6th century some Utigur groups were conquered by the Eurasian Avars and became known as the Kutrigurs, while the remaining (eastern) portion retained the Utigur ethnicon. Later under Sandilch, the Utigurs allied with the Byzantine Empire against their Kutrigur relatives and the Avars.
In the early 7th century, a Utigur Khan named Kubrat defeated the Avars and reunited the Utigurs and Kutrigurs into an empire referred to as "Old Great Bulgaria". After Kubrat's death his empire was divided between his sons. Some Kutrigurs, led by Kubrat’s second son Kotrag, migrated to the confluence of the Volga and Kama rivers and founded a Khanate known as Volga Bulgaria. The last of the Utigurs had settled in Pannonia (modern Syrmia) by April 677. The majority submitted to the Avar Kaghan, though some rebelled moving to Pelagonia under the leadership of Maurus (nicknamed Kuber meaning "rebel"), while the Utigur Khan Asparukh had led a portion of Bulgars into Moesia, to establish the state which would become modern Bulgaria.