WResurrección María de Azkue was an influential Basque priest, musician, poet, writer, sailor and academic. He made several major contributions to the study of the Basque language and was the first head of the Euskaltzaindia, the Academy of the Basque Language. In spite of some justifiable criticism of an imbalance towards unusual and archaic forms and a tendency to ignore the Romance influence on Basque, he is considered one of the greatest scholars of Basque to date.
WLouis Lucien Bonaparte was the third son of Napoleon's second surviving brother, Lucien Bonaparte.
WCharles-Félix-Hyacinthe Gouhier, comte de Charencey, was a French philologist.
WKoldo Mitxelena Elissalt was an eminent Basque linguist. He taught in the Department of Philology at the University of the Basque Country, and was a member of the Royal Academy of the Basque Language.
WRaimundo Germán Olabide Karrera, S.J. was a Basque Jesuit priest, linguistic and translator. He authored a complete translation of the Bible into the Basque language.
WJosé María Sánchez Carrión is a Spanish linguist, specialised in Basque language, sociolinguistics and historical linguistics. He is an associate member of Euskaltzaindia since 1983. Despite being the best known local academic proponent of reversing language shift measures, he has never held a stable university post in the Basque Country.
WHugo Ernst Mario Schuchardt was an eminent German linguist, best known for his work in the Romance languages, the Basque language, and in mixed languages, including pidgins, creoles, and the Lingua franca of the Mediterranean.
WRobert Lawrence Trask was an American–British professor of linguistics at the University of Sussex, and an authority on the Basque language and the field of historical linguistics.
WJosé Luis Álvarez Enparantza, better known by his pseudonym Txillardegi, was a Spanish linguist, politician and writer from Spain. Born in San Sebastián, he did not learn the Euskera until the age of 17, but came to be considered one of the most influential figures in Basque nationalism and culture in the second half of the 20th century.
WChristianus Cornelius Uhlenbeck was a Dutch linguist and anthropologist with a wide variety of research interests. His published work included books and articles on Germanic and Balto-Slavic languages, Sanskrit, Basque, and the Blackfoot language of North American Indians. He served as a lecturer at Leiden University.
WJulio de Urquijo e Ibarra, Count of Urquijo (1871-1950), in Basque self-styled as Julio Urkixokoa, was a Basque linguist, cultural activist, and a Spanish Carlist politician. As a Traditionalist deputy he twice served in the Cortes, during the terms of 1903-1905 and 1931-1933, though the climax of his political activity fell on the late Restoration period. As a scientist he was the moving spirit behind settting up numerous vascologist institutions, especially Revista Internacional de Estudios Vascos (1907) and Sociedad de Estudios Vascos (1918). Himself he specialized in Basque paremiology and bibliography. He opposed academy-driven unification of Basque dialects and preferred to wait until standard Basque emerges naturally.
WWentworth Webster was an Anglican clergyman, scholar, and collector of folk tales of the Basque Country.
WMikel Zalbide Elustondo is a Basque linguist and sociolinguist.
WKoldo Zuazo is a Basque linguist, professor at the University of the Basque Country and specialist in Basque language dialectology and sociolinguistics.
WYuri Vladimirovich Zytsar was a Russian-Georgian linguist, specialist in the Basque language. He was one of the founders of both the Soviet as well as the Georgian school of Bascology. He graduated from the Leningrad State University Department of Spanish philology in 1950. After studying in the post-graduate studies, he defended his candidate's dissertation on "The Relation of Native and Romance Elements in the Language of Basques." Zytsar then taught at the universities of Oryol, Kuibyshev and Tbilisi. He has been credited with founding the Soviet (Russian) school of Basque studies; in his research, he paid special attention to Basque-Caucasian/Kartvelian language parallels, publishing dozens of articles on the topic.