eto pismoto ot sci.lang. A Laci gledam se e namyrdal v diskusijata bez da kazva absoljutno nishto po syshtestvo. Zashto izobshto se obazhda togava? Vassil ****************** Newsgroups: sci.lang From: ybg@world.std.com (Yusuf B Gursey) Subject: bulgars / turkic Date: Mon, 21 Aug 2000 14:20:11 GMT Organization: The World Public Access UNIX, Brookline, MA On Sun, 20 Aug 2000, Vassil Karloukovski wrote: (via e-mail) > ... > could you comment on the derivations of some (supposedly) Bulgar names/ > words from one Karachaj-Balkar page? - > http://www.geocities.com/Tokyo/Pagoda/7675/chapt5.html > > I have somewhat summarised them here: > > 1. "...Indeed, there were the ancestors Khazars among the Hun tribes, > calling themselves Basils ("Bas", head; "il" or "el", people--that is, > the ruling people)." > > my comment: do they have the "Barsils" in mind? If so I thought it comes > from "bars" (snow leopard, etc.), ? a totem animal?. possibly, but see pritsak "the slavs and avars" p. 404. it's barzil with -z-, not -s-. pritsak inteprets it as bar*ch* -il. bar*ch* a hunnic tribal name < wara:*ch* or wara:z. he gives his article harvard ukrainian studies 2 (1968) 261-262 as a reference. this would make it a turkified (or hunnified) iranian name. > 2. "In written sources, Huns get identified with Scythians and > Kimmerians, > "and specifically compared the so-called "King Scythians". Such an > identification is supported by the fact that the ethnonym of Scythians > "As-kishi", or its stem "as" is retained in written sources, especially > the old Georgian documents, in the Huns' name as "ovs", "os"." > this may just mean that they lumped various steppe peoples together. > 3. "...Huns were organized in a strong political formation in Northern > Caucasus already in III century, and, by the words of Procopios of > Caesarea, Huns led by Bazuk ("Bazik"--stout, powerful) and Ambazuk > ("Embazyk"--the most stout, powerful) held the Darial passage in > Transcaucasus in V century." this sounds like the wrong variant (z as oppsosed r) of turkic, but I don't know teh etymology of either the karachai word or the usual interpreation of the hunnic word. > 4. "...We suppose that Oghondor-Bulgarians were some Turk tribes living > on the river Orkhon and later assimilated by Bulgarians. > Duchi-Bulgarians > are read by some authors as Kuchi-Bulgarians. In this case their name > means the Turk tribes living on rivers Ku (Swan) and Chu. It might be > the tribes Ku-kishi and Chu-kishi, i. e. "people from Ku and Chu". " > > my comment: curiously, one (of the many) suggestions of Dobrev is that > these "Onghondor-blkar", also known as "vh' ndur Bulgar", "u-n-t-t-r", > the Unogundurs, is from vhn-darja, Wakhan-darja (the river). The whole > Armenian passage does says that the four branches/tribes were names > after > rivers: or unknown to the authors, the rivers were named after the tribes. the tribes have very believable and rather obvious -r turkic etymologies and from what we know of their composition were turkic or partially turkic for the onoghurs (magyar and turkic). ku (or kug~, swan) is a tribal totem in turkic (see current south siberian turkic). its direct russian translation "lebed" also appears in the eurasian steppes. > "[to the north of the Caucasus] live the peoples Turk and Bulgar > (Bulgark), who are named after the local rivers: Kupi-bulgar, Duchi- > bulkar, Oghondor(Olhontor)-blkar - the immigrants and Chdar-bolkar." > > Kupi- and Duchi- (Kuchi-) - from Kuban and Dniestr (Kocho). So the other > two could be also from rivers - oghon-dor and ch-dar, with "-dar" > ending. > a likely plural or collective ending. > 5. "Some authors relate the name of Bulgarian tribe "Utigor" to the > ethnonym of Digorians, who, by the words of Oriental scientists Rashid rather medieval ethnographers and historians. I'll have to look up th etymology of digor. > ad-Din and Makhmud of Kashgar, were a branch of Oguz Turks. In the where in kashgari or rashiduddin does he refer to? have to look it up. > "tsocking" dialect of Karachai-Balkarians and Digor languages, the > word Chdar would sound as Tsdar (or Star, Stur). But this word means > "big" (as in the name of a Digor settlement "Stur-Digora"--Big Digora). > So, the name Chdar-Bulgaria must means "Bulgaria Major", which is have to find the etymology of this word (not turkic?) > equivalent to "Ullu Malkar", i. e. Great Malkar (Great Balkaria)." > > 6. "The name of one of the Hun branches and Bulgarian tribe Kuturgu > has left its trace in Balkaria, in the name of one of the most old > settlements of Chegem canyon, G|d|rg|. The name of Huns Masaha has > remained as the name of Misak, a legendary hero and the ancestor of > some Balkarian patronymic divisions." ... "The word "Malkar" > equivalent to the name "Balkar" refers to inhabitants of Cherek > canyon only, for the inhabitants of other canyons. Besides, some > linguists assert that the language of Bulgarians is of the > "tsocking" type, like the Balkarian dialect of Cherek canyon." > > 7. "The name of Bulgarian king Asparukh means in Karachai-Balkarian asparukh is very likely an iranian name, but also found in old turkic. > "Proud", "Majestic" (derived from "ospar"). In Danubean Bulgaria, there > are, for example, such hydronyms as Kam-chai (Kamchia), which means > "river Kam". A similar river name exists in Upper Chegem. In Bulgaria, > there is a settlement called Karnovat, which corresponds to the name > of an old Balkarian settlement in upper reaches of Cherek, Kurnaiat. > The name of Karachai settlement Mara coincides with the name of a > Bulgarian country. Also, the name of Bulgarian country "Karachala obasi" see clauson p. 5. the karachai word is a late medieval loan from mongol (obo) meaning "heap of stones". oba (clan, families living in a single tent) is og~uz (turkish), ova (plain) is said to be peculiar to osman turkish. karachala(r) is perhaps qara*dj*alar (karacalar - "the blackish ones"). BTW is this possibly a turkish translation of "kosovo polje" (plain of the balckbirds)??? one has to know what is precisly refered to. > means "Karachai graves". There are quite a lot of such facts." > > my comment: haven't heard of this "karachala obasi" in Bulgaria. Aren't > they referring to some Ottoman Turkish name? About Kamchija I am not > sure. > Its older name, also a name of tributary I think now is "Ticha", > attested > in a 8-9th c. stone inscription. So isn't Kamchija Ottoman Turkish as > well? qam*ch*I (kamc,I) is "whip" in turkish / turkic. there is nothing to indicate an archaic (hunno-bulghar) loan, but then not all words do in fact have that indicator. > Aslo I can't say anything about "Karnobat" althought it looks Latin to > me > (?from Carbone?; "Karvunska zemlja" (Karvun land) indeed appears in one > 11-12th c. apocriphic legend and refers to Dobrudzha, with widely spread > limestones.) > > 8. "A very important Bulgarian-Karachai parallel is that Asparukh > Bulgarians > called the place of their first settlement on Danube "Eski-Jurt", i. e. > old > native land. This is exactly the name of the settlement founded by the > legendary Karachai ancestor Karchi in the upper reaches of river Archiz. > " > > my comment: never heard of "Eski-Jurt" concerning Asparukh. The > Byzantine > sources have "Ongl/Oggl" for the area between the Danube delta and the > surrounding rivers. It is alternatively derived from the Slavic "ong@l" > (angle, corner) with the old nasal "on" ("@g@l" in modern Bulgarian) or > from the Turkic "agyl", an enclosed space (?). perhaps slavic. turks call it bu*dj*aq (bucak) which translates it. > > > Generally my question is are these legitimate derivations, i.e. from the > correspodent, right branch of Turkic, the r-Turkic? Or could some of > them > be words from the modern Karachaj/Balkarian but which are isolated, > peculiar local remains of some previous "Bulgar-like" Turkic? this does not seem to catch anything specifically hunnic. obviously, through various sources, one can find things in common with bulgaria and karachay-balkar. what is mentioned here sounds inconclusive at best. finding hunnic influence in kar.-balk. is better methodology than comparing kar.-bal. with bulgarian. however, many have linked the karachay-balkar with hunno-bulgaric - khazar. one has to look for fine points: like "$evet" for saturday (influence of jewish khazars). possible similarity of balkar / malkar with "bulgar". there are a few archaic turkic words, presumabely of hunno-bulgar origin in (iranian) ossetian. menges believes in the khazar karacahay connection. kar.-bal. language like the turkic karayim (who are in fact descendants of the khazars) language are descendants of the coman language. excepyt for the chuvash, the hunno-bulghars retaining turkic speech have been qypchaqized. kazan tatar and bashkir are also qypchaq languages with a very strong bulghar substratum. as far as "attila" mentioned in the text, it seems to be germanic - latin, but a hunnic original may underly it (see pritsak). nevertheless, the turkic origin of the european huns is very likely (see "the world of the huns"). > > I hope the text was not too long for you. > > Thanks in advance, > Vassil