The name of Karaim determines the Karaim religion and the identity of the ethnical minority with the Kipchak - Turkic origins and language. In Poland Karaims are settled for over six hundreds of years and their national origin is same as Lithuanian and Crimean Karaims. Today Karaims are the smallest ethnic minority in Poland.
The name of KARAIM in Karaim language Karay (the plural Karaylar), and in European languages Karaim (Russian and Polish), Caraime (French), etc. - is derived, as is at present agreed by almost all the investigators, from the Hebrew stem kara "to read". This form in Hebrew Karai and in plural Karaim means literally "reading" that is to say "acknowledging only the authority of Reading of the Holy Scripture of the Old Testament". Both the substance of the Karaim religion which actually does not acknowledge any other authority but the Holy Scripture, and - on the other hand - the meaning of the stem kara as in the Islamic loanword from the Arabic term Koran in the meaning "reading, lecture, Holy Scripture of the Muslims," seems to point out to such an etymology.
Contemporary Polish Karaims consider themselves to be descendants of the Kipchak -Turkish tribes who formed the Khasar kaganate (the region between the Caspian sea and Dnieper estuary). Khasar's kaganate, spread over southern territories of contemporary Russia, in 9th century being at its blossom, was famous for its religious tolerance. Karaim missionaries reached the kaganate in 8th - 10th c. and passed their faith to some Turkish tribes (Khasars, Kipchaks-Kumans, and others), living in the southern steppes of Russia and Crimea. Common language and religion united these tribes as a nation for a long time; the name of religion became ethnonym.
These tribes were later divided into tree main groups, one remaining in Crimea. The emigration of another group to Galicia continued over a longer period beginning in the 13th century at the time of Mongol invasion. The third group left for Troki (Trakai) at the end of 14th century.
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