Madai

Madai ( or ; "Name means::middle land") was the third son of Japheth according to.

Descendants
Y-Chromosomal Haplogroup H.

The Medes
The peoples of Madai first dwelt in northwest Iran and were known as the Medes. They later merged with the descendants of Elam, Medan, and Midian to form the Achaemenid Empire. The first known secular reference to the Medes is in an inscription of 837 BC about the Assyrian king, Shalmaneser III (c. 858-24 BC).

The capital of the Medes was known as Hag matana  in Persian and, in Greek, Ecbatana (now modern Hamadan in Iran). They were called Ma-da-ai and Amadai by the Assyrians and became associated with the descendants of Medan who invaded their country from the west. Thus the names Madai and Medes were used interchangeably, with the Medanites formed the ruling class.

According to researcher C.M. White: "the empire of the Medes is often referred to in textbooks as the Amadai-Mada-Medes empire. (Madai, Midian, and Medan were closely associated with each other). The Amadai were descendants of Madai who were subject to the Medanite Medes, the ruling class of the Empire. The tribes of the Median Empire were: the Busæ, Paretaceni, Struchates, Arizanti, Budii, and Magi. Some were descended from Medan, others from Madai."

His descendants are mentioned in, ; , ; , and. According to the Book of Jubilees (10:35-36), Madai had married a daughter of Shem, and preferred to live among Shem's descendants, rather than dwell in Japheth's allotted inheritance beyond the Black Sea; so he begged his brothers-in-law, Elam, Asshur and Arphaxad, until he finally received from them the land that was named after him, Media. Medos, and his mother Medea, were also reckoned to be the ancestors of the Medes in classical Greek mythology.

The Kurdish people still maintain traditions of descent from Madai. Madai is also the name of the deified ancestor of the Kachin or Jingpo people, according to the indigenous Kachin religion. The Kachin are a people of Myanmar (Burma) and neighboring areas speaking a Sino-Tibetan language.