The Udmurts are a people who speak the Udmurt language. Through history they have been known in Russian as Chud Otyatskaya (чудь отяцкая), Otyaks, or Votyaks (most known name), and in Tatar as Ar.

Most Udmurt people live in Udmurtia. Small groups live in the neighboring areas: Kirov Oblast and Perm Krai of Russia, Bashkortostan, Tatarstan, and Mari El.

The Udmurt language belongs to the Finno-Ugric family.

The Udmurt population is shrinking; the Russian census reported 637,000 of them in 2002, compared to 746,562 in 1989.

The Udmurts have often been discribed as an extremely red-haired and light-eyed people ((for example, see http://www.udm.ru/history.html), and there have been claims that they are the "most red-headed" people in the world . Additionally, the ancient Budini tribe, which is speculated to be an ancestor of the modern Udmurts, were described by Herodotus as being predominantly red-headed.