42 replies to this topic

[armeniangirl83]

Why are ending all the Armenian surnames on -ian/-yan???
:confused:

[Berj]

Though "yan" or "ian" in Armenian doesn't mean "son" in English, it is "son"'s equivalent in Armenian.
Lot of languanges use this for surname making. In Scandinavian it is "sen", in Arabic "abu", "ibn" or "ben" (like Osma Ben Ladden ), in Jewish "bin", in Turkish "oghli" or "oghlu", in Georgian "dze", in Russian "ov" etc.

In Armenian "yan" is a also used to indicate belonging.

There are also other endings in Armenian surnames, like "unts", "ents", "uni" "akan", though rarely used. "Uni" and "akan" in history have been the endings of noble famiily names like Artsruni, Bagratuni, Gnuni, Kamsarakan, Arshakuni, Gardmanakan, Syuni, Marzpetuni, Pahlavuni. Historians calim that "uni" comes from Armenian "unenal" meaning "to own". "akan" and "unts"/"ents" also indicate belonging. Garvarents, Gyurjyants, Bakounts, Sevouts etc.

[armeniangirl83]

thanks!!

[Harut]

ending "tsi" was also very popular in the past, which indicated the birthplace of the person. Narekatsi, Khorenatsi, Shirakatsi, Aygektsi, Yerevantsi ,.......

[Taguhi]

Maybe some of you know something about my family surname Areshyants. I was told that my grangrandgrandfather was a very nobility and important person in Armenia. This surname is not popular and I personally heard only about two profesors in Yerevan with surname Areshyan but our is Areshyants.
Help pleaseeeeeeee !!!!!!!

[nairakev]

armeniangirl83,
"ov" in Russian doesn't mean "son". In Georgian son "shvilo", that's why many georgian names are "shvili".
Actually Mashtots, Gosh, Amatouni are also armenian names. And ther is no "yan" in the end. Good question I never tried to find out. My family name isn't with "yan" end either. But I'm Armenian by my origins.

[Harut]

i personaly don't think that it's nasseccary to have a last name ending on "ian" or "yan" to be a real Armenian.
in fact, i'd like to have a last name with different ending, like "tsi". my favorite. i'm going to change my last name to "Yerevantsi".

but in other hand it's kind of helpful, specially in Diaspora. it helps to keep the Armenian identity.

[ThornyRose]

Question:
I've wondered how far back this business with surnames goes. What community in the world was the first to really use surnames and took care to upkeep them, etc.?
What about Armenians? Does it have something to do with Christianity? Did every family have surnames or was it mostly nobility, before that?
I've also wondered when and why you started having Armenian surnames specifying profession: Bardakjian, Pastermajian, Kalayjian, Baliozian, etc., in Turkish. I don't think we Turks question these when we hear of them.

[ May 31, 2001: Message edited by: Thorny Rose ]

[aurguplu]

dear everybody,

re armenian surnames: the ending "ian or yan" probably is not armenian. it is very likely to have been the persian plural ending -an or -yan originally.

it did not mean "son of" but meant something like "the joneses, the millers". in fact the russian suffix -ev, ov is also a plural ending by origin. the same goes for german, a suffix in the form of von xxxen means from/of the xxxs. in italian many surnames end in -i, this is also a plural ending.

the fact that many of such surnames have the initial component in turkish - like demirdjian, deukmedjian, zildjian, pastermadjian etc. - indicates that they were originally vocational designations. (incidentally, the term vocation means "calling" in latin, meaning how one is called, like mike the smith etc.)

ottoman turks had this habit of suffixing turkish words with persian endings, and this formation is particularly common. it originally designated a specific professional group or members of a guild or religious sect.

you are in a better position to check this out, but as far as i know there are no really very old armenian surnames that end in -ian or -yan. that suffix appears to belong to the period after the arrival of the turks.

i hope this has been of some help.

regards,

[MJ]

"yan - ian" is quite common in Sanskrit, and most likely it originates from Sanskrit. Its meaning is equivalent to the meaning of the suffix "ian" in English.

[aurguplu]

dear mj

sanskrit is a sister language of persian (they both form, together with their various descendants, the indo-aryan branch of indo-european), and a distant relative of armenian, so it is possible that the same suffix appears there, too.

moreover, the oldest records of sanskrit occur not in india, nor in pakistan, nor in afghanistan, no i iran, but in ... anatolia! in the form of equestrian training instructions and religious terms (like deity names mitra, varuna etc.) in some very early hittite texts. these were the mitanni.

but as far as i know, they -ian surname suffix is originally the persian plural ending and was affixed to vocational designations to denote either a member of a certain guild or members of a family who practised a certain profession. i thought it dated from the ottoman times, but i may be wrong in that.

i know that the other people in the ottoman empire didn't use it as a surname-forming suffix, and i don't really know why. maybe they had other suffixes, or chose other types of surnames

regards,

[aurguplu]

dear hovik,

may i humbly point out that i have an m.a. degree in oriental studies from oxford. i am not a professional historian, but i have some of the formation, i guess.

the parthians and persians are practically the same thing "parthian" is an older form of "persian" if i am not mistaken. they are all iranian-speaking peoples who have been in the region since almost the beginning of the 1st millennium BC. (i.e. three thousand years). armenians must have arrived (the language, at any rate) sometime between 1200-800 bc from southeastern europe, what is now romania probably. they must have been a part of the "sea peoples" which included the phrygians. in fact, it was oncethought thta the phrygians were the direct ancestors of the armenians, this view is today largely abandoned.

regards,

[aurguplu]

dear hovik

the thing about phrygians in thrace is correct. it is also correct that exactly where they came from is unknown. the indo-european guys who had come to thrace ae believed to have come from southeastern europe, just northwest of thrace.

it is thought they must have been in anatolia some time 1200-800 bc, because you have hittite in armenian. well, you have hittite in turkish, too, so this probably doesn't amount to much.

the "european" origin of the armenian people may be a matter of doubt, but the indo-european origine of the language isn't. the language forms a separate group in indo-european with no known close relatives. the phrygian language, the most likely candidate for ancestry of armenian, is too little known and what little is known is very different from armenian, because the latter was reduced to writing about a thousand yaers after phrygian went extinct. the thing that makes armenian linguistic history so difficult is the very strong influence of the unrelated caucasian languages (ancestors of georgian, lezghi, dagestani, abaza, avar etc.). this influence caused the sound system of early armenian change out of all recognition, so scholars have a tough time reconstructing early armenian. imagine that erku is the same word as two in english, due in italian, dia in greece, dva in russian!

also, it has tons of material from persian and other languages in it, especially vocabulary, to the extent that when it was first analysed in the 19th century it was thought to be an iranian dialect. its independent nature was revealed a good deal later.

it may have been not too distant from albanian and the extinct thracian, though.