The name for the multinational republic comes from the name of its indigenous people, the Yakut. The Yakut formed an ethnic unity comparatively late, when Tungus- Manchurian herdsmen and protoyakut tribes had already settled on that territory. Living on the land with severe climate conditions, the Yakut formed an ethnic unity with one language, and called themselves sakha. Tungus-Evenk people used to name the Yakuts "Yako" and transferred this pronunciation to Russians whom they met before the Yakut. Russians named the Yakut "yakolskiye liudi (yakolskiye people)". Gradually phonetic changes formed the modern name of the nation.

The first meeting between the Lena Yakut people and groups of Russians occurred in the mid seventeenth century. Tygyn, toyon (prince) of the Khangalassky Yakuts, granted some territory for Russian building-sites. The Lensky Ostrog (Lensky Stockade) - future city of Yakutsk - was founded by Russian Cossack sotnik (lieutenant) Pyotr Beketov from the Enissey river. The 25th of September, 1632 is the date of the first stockade construction. In August, 1638, the Moscow Government formed a new administrative unit - Yakutsky uyezd - with a center in Lensky stockade. That is how a very distant "small town" became the center of huge territory under the command of the Moscow government.

Russians established agriculture. The members of religious groups who were banished to Yakutia in the second half of the nineteenth century, made a progressive impact on the agricultural development of the region. Skoptsi, dukhobors, and old-believers started to grow wheat, oats, and potatoes. Fur trade established commodity-money relations, that developed in the seventh decade of the eighteenth century after the abolition of the fur trade tax. 

Industry and transport began to develop at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century. This was also the beginning of geological research, mining, and local lead production, and the first steam boats and barges arrived. Industrial development was linked to the traditional trades of the peoples of Yakutia. Explorers noticed the high skill of yakut carpenters and joiners, jewelers and tailors. From the ancient times the Yakut used timber, leather, as well as iron, bronze, copper, silver, tin, lead, and gold. They knew casting and metalsmithing. Mammoth tusk carving is still popular. 

In 1922 former "Yakolskaya land" was proclaimed the Yakut Autonomous Soviet Republic and in 70 years i.e. in 1992 it became the sovereign Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) as a part of the Russian Federation with its own elected President. 

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