armenian-seljuk parallels in architecture

[aurguplu]

arpa,

 

i give you the honour of being the master chekishtirer (that last bit is english).

 

1. the "o" in the first syllable comes there from the fact that the root is "yoğur-". now o/u and ö/ü can be interchangeable in the first syllables of some bisyllabic turkish words: gözel/güzel, yörümek/yürümek, yoğurmak/yuğurmak. the first examples of the first two are anatolian, whereas the first of the third pair is istanbul türkçesi.

 

dairy products throughout most of the known world must have developed independently pretty much the same way. after all the raw material is the same (cattle/sheep/goat milk) and many of the things done to churn it must have originally been associated with the way they were stored. for instance, many peoples store milk and butter in bags made from cow gut linings, and there is some enzyme/yeast that turns the milk into cheese or yoghurt, which are forms of curdled milk, anyway. so the europeans and other guys (and you) might perfectly have invented the process on their own, but ours is from central asia. this is a bit like discussing who first invented shish kebab.

 

2. i was joking with my pastermein, pastermesis you don't seem to have got it. anyway, basturma was originally raw meat covered with some hot spice to preserve it and put under the saddle (hence the name). it had the great advantage of holding out for very, very long (the spices) and being eminently portable. the method of transport was also the method of preparing it. of course we got a bit finer in anatolia when we alighted from our horse and settled down, and now it is made in barrels (and kayseri is most famous for it).

 

3. "yogh" is armenian for oil? my god, what about our "yağ" (it does come from central asia, this one: i'll check it tonight). i suggest you check the etymology (may be it was originally with l, like aghtamar originally being altamar (my keyboard doesn't have the slashed l or the dotted l but i hope you know what i mean)).

 

cheers,

[Arpa]

Thank you for the honor. I will try and stretch things worthy of my title. I am the master stretcher in more ways than one. My maternal ancestors had the surname of Chekij-ian. The prevailing wisdom is that they were named for something having to do with "chekij/hammer", I rather think it is not chekij but chekiji, i.e. puller, bone setter, chiropracter. Chiekiji-ian, not Chekij-ian

 

I will take each of your points separately and clarify.

[aurguplu]

arpa,

 

so we shall change your surname to "çekiştiricibaşıyan (american spelling, if they can: chekishtiridjibashian)"? my god, this has been a long one: agglutinative language! what will you do with such a surname in the usa, where they shorten everything down to one or two syllables? "chekian"?

 

cheers,

[aurguplu]

arpa,

 

by the way, some roots common to turkic and armenian may in fact be common to indo-european (of which armo is a member) and turkic, in a greater linguistic phylum called "eurasiatic" or (in a slightly different version) "nostratic". the two theories, both quite similar actually, maintain that indo-european, uralic, altaic, korean, japanese, the paleosiberian languages and eskimo-aleut are genetically very distantly related. the eurasiatic version is defended in stanford linguist joseph greenberg's "the eurasiatic language family" (the book is available from barnes and noble) and the nostratic by a few russian scholars. both also maintain that kartvelian (south caucasian) and afroasiatic (hamito-semitic) are also related to this group, but perhaps at a greater remove.

 

i myself had discovered a number of turkic roots very similar to indo-european which could not be explained away as borrowings or chance resemblances. i was encouraged to see that some serious scholars also entertain the possibility. i am planning to return to academia in one or two years' time, and do research on the subject.

 

meanwhile i leave you with the nightmare of the possibility that we may - linguistically at least - be very, very distant cousins indeed (about 8,000-12,000 years ago).

 

good night sleep tight have nice dreams.

[aurguplu]

something else came to my mind:

 

years ago i had sleepless nights and cold sweats when i discovered that the armenians called themselves "hye", as the oghuz tribe to which the ottomans belonged (and to which i also belong on my mother's side) is called "kayı" (approximately pronounced "quh-yeh").

 

"kayı" is reported to mean "strong" in turkish (it is a hapax legomenon as far as i know). what in your knowledge does "hye" mean?

 

cheers,

[TigrannesIII]

Ali,

 

Silk Road. That's all I can think of. It could have worked both ways, too.

[TigrannesIII]

Ali,

 

Armenians call themselves 'Hye' coming from the name Haig, the father of Armenia. Does that help? We were calling ourselves 'hye' long before the emergence of Turkic tribes in Central Asia, just in case you're trying to draw some similarities or what not.

 

Could you please tell me what factors led you to accept the Genocide? I need to do some educating this weekend.

[Arpa]

=======

Yes, "yogh" is Armenian.

I will write about Aghtamar separately since we have to talk about the L and the GH connection.

I have written about the L connection and I remember one of our correspondents express amazement and skeptism, (was it Azat?) who when learned that the L as we know now is a relatively new sound in our Alphabet, that some time ago we did not have the L sound as we know now, that our L was kind of a guttural L more like the gh. They had asked that if that was so then we would have pronounced Lucine/Lousin as ghusin. True. However during those times we did not use "lusin" as a proper feminine name, nor did we call the moon "lusin", we called it "mah" just like the Persians still do and we called anything less than a full moon "mahiK" (little moon). We still do. The symbol on the Turkish flag is "mahik yev astgh/ay(ayca) yildiz" (crescent and star).

Yogh is Armenian, not Turkic. It is found in most all IndoEuropean languages, I will list only a few. Oil in Eng., huile Fr., olio Latin/ Italian, oleo spanish and so on.

We use many variations, I mentioned this before, yegh, yugh, yagh, yogh, etc. But one will not find the monograph under these topics. One has to look up the original Armenian spelling of "iugh" (ini hyun ghat)...skip, skip, akip....

"borrowed from an extinct Mediterranean language that was preserved in the Latin as "oleum/oliva" and the Greek "elaia"....

As to the Turkish "yagh"; "The (Arm.)colloquial "yegh" has found its way into many other languages, most particularly into the Tatar dialects. There is a rule in the Tatar languages that the "e" sound must not precede a consonant, so the "e" was modified into an "a", hence the Turkish "yagh" from the original Armenain "yegh".

I have also in the past alluded that in some formal Turkish circles the proper word for oil seems to be "shehim"(from the Arabic "shahm"), however, if I am not wrong the latter rather refers to animal fat while "yegh/yagh" is vegetable oil. BTW. "charp" is the Armenian word for animal fat.

Also consider words like "yaghlik/hankercief", "yaghji/oil trader"(Yaghjian?).

PS. I also have access to many Turkic Altaic words that have derived from the Arm. "yegh". Some of them may not be readily recognizable such as the Altai "yu'", Kirghiz "jau", Yakut "aga" etc.

Note. In one of my posts my "yogh" ended up as "yoghi". Obviously a typo. It is "yogh".

[Arpa]

Ali asks if "aghtamar" is in fact the Armenianized variation of the Turkish "al-tama", i.e al=white and tamar=vein based on the transliteration of the Latin L into Armenian GH.

I had aired this item before, with some additions and deletions.

 

Ú²ÔÂ-²Ø²ð, INVINCIBLE FORTRESS

AGHT-AMAR, HAGHT-AMAR, INVINCIBLE FORTRESS

I typed the Armenian. The English translation, as you

will see is by the author below, I found it on the internet.

There may be many translations, I found this to be poetically executed

yet litarally true to the original just as in spirit.

A word about the spelling. Poetic license is a

forgivable sin, therefor we will forgive Hovannes for spelling it to fit

his purpose. Although the Island is known as Aghtamar the

master bard, who is equally loved for his wit, spells it as

aKH-Tamar and he leaves it to the readers'imagination.

Of course, we know that the romanticised poem is just

that, romanticised, just as it is highly romantic.

================

AKHTAMAR

 

²Ê²زð

 

Hovannes Tumanyan

1891 Yerevan -1995

IRMA SAFRAZBEKYAN compiled the book

 

AKHTAMAR

 

Beside the laughing lake of Van

A little hamlet lies;

Each night into the waves a man

Leaps under darkened skies.

 

He cleaves the waves with mightly arm,

Needing no raft or boat,

And swims, disdaining risk and harm,

Towards the isle remote.

 

On the dark island burns so bright

A piercing, luring ray:

There's lit a beacon every night

To guide him on his way.

 

Upon the island is that fire

Lit by Tamar the fair;

Who waits, all burning with desire,

Beneath the shelter there.

 

The lover's heart-how doth it beat!

How beat the roaring waves!

But, bold and scorning to retreat,

The elements he braves.

 

And now Tamar the fair doth hear,

With trembling heart aflame,

The water splashing-oh, so near,

And fire consumes her frame.

 

All quiet is on the shore around,

And, black,there looms a shade:

The darkness utters not a sound,

The swimmer finds the maid.

 

The tide-waves ripple, lisp and splash

And murmur, soft and low;

They urqe each other, mingle, clash,

As, ebbing out, they go.

 

Flutter and rustle the dark waves.

And with them every star

Whispers how sinfully behaves

The shameless maid Tamar;

 

Their whisper shakes her throbbing her

This time,as was before!

The youth into the waves doth dart,

The maiden prays on shore.

 

But certain villians, full of spite,

Against them did conspire,

And on a hellish, mirky night

Put out the guiding fire.

 

The luckless lover lost his way,

And only from afar

The wind is carrying in his sway

The moans of:"Ah, Tamar!"

 

And through the night his voice is heard

Upon the craggy shores,

And, though it's muffled and blurred

By the waves' rapid roars,

 

The words fly forward-faint they are-

"Ah, Tamar!"

And in the morn the splashing tide

The hapless yough cast out,

 

Who,battling with the waters, died

In an unequal bout;

Cold lips are clenched, two words they bare

"Ah, Tamar!"

And ever since, both near and far,

They call the island Akhtamar

 

Translated by V. Rogov

=============

The following is by me;

The origin of the name "Aghtamar" has been the subject

of many debates. It may be opportune to mention here that Aghtamar is

the Island and not the cathedral upon it. There are several structures on

the Island, the most famous of them being the church of Holy Cross,

Sourb Khach.

The Island of Aghtamar is one of the several islands,

albeit the largest and the best known. It is part of a quartet of

Islands, the others being Lim, Ktoutz and Arter.

 

First the ridiculous.

The Turks call the Island "Ak Damar"(during the Ataturk linguistic purges all sounds that were deemed to primitive and savage were removed from the Turkish language, therefor the sound of "KH" as in "khach" was replaced with either plain K or H, khach became "hach" and "khyar" became "hyar"), to make it soubd like "white vein/artery". Even more ridiculous is the notion that Mt. Masis, Ararat, is the "mountain of pain" as it is known as Agri Dagh in the Turkish. The latter is nothing but a turkification and

corruption of the alternate Armenian name Aghori/Aghori Ler. This is

corroborated by the still discernible ruins of the Village of Aghori at

the foot of the Mountain.

Some time ago I had advanced the theory that

"Aghtamar" may have been a variation of the original name of the

temple (church) "aghot-a-mayr", the "mother of prayer"

and that the island was known by the main structure. I admit that the preceeding takes quite a stretch of imagination. Yet, if the Turks would call our sacred mountain the "Mountain of Pain" and get away with....! Why can't we?

However, on further reading, I may have stumbled on a

better theory. While searching the Aremnian etymological

dictionary, trying to find the connection of "aght",

it all became clear. "aght" is a variation of the

word "haght". We commonly use the word as in

"haghtel", to win, to vanquish. The root word, "aght/haght" is of

original Armenian, via Urartian to mean "big", "high", "brave",

"powerful". We know that the Latin "L" transliterates to "gh" in the

Armenian, therefor consider the Latin word

"alt/altus", as in "altitude" or "exalted". Chancellor

Adenaur would have been happy to know that his

nickname would be Ter Haghte in Armenian (Der Alte).

As to the second part of name "amar". The word has

connection to the modern Arabic/Persian, probably original

Aramaic. It means "to build", "building". Even the

Turks use it. They call Sinan the Architect

Mi'mar Sinan to mean "builder". One variation of the

word in Armenian makes even more sense, "amrotz" in Armenian

means "fortress/fortification". Another common word that we

often use is "amour" to mean "firm", "strong", the connection

here is hard to miss. Not to forget that "aght/haght" also implies

"invincible" (although in common usage we sometimes use it in its

redundant form- "an-haght". Put the two together- "aght-amar" and you get

"invincible-structure/building". It is attested that

Aghtamar has been a fortress island going back to antiquity therefor we

will dwell on the fact that the appellation is none other than

"[h]aght-amar" i.e. "invincible fort[ress]".

[aurguplu]

arpa,

 

i wasn't asking if aghtamar was the armenianised version of any turkish "al tamar= red vein". in fact, if some turk had told me of such a connection i would probably leave my mouth alone and laugh with some other part of my body.

 

the thing is i have several western works on things armenian, where aghtamar is spelt altamar (in some with l slashed, in other with l with a dot underneath). to the best of my knowledge, l slashed is used to transliterate "dark l" in linguistics, which is a like the l in "fall" rather than the l in "flew" (british pronunciation).

 

i may conjecture here a wild guess that if the original spelling was altamar rather than aghtamar, then the legend "akh tamara" might have been coined later on to explain the name (eponymous), but to attempt to find a turkish explanation for aghtamar as from al tamar would be a bit like finding a turkish "etymology" for niagara (the turkish "etymology" that was found was "ne yaygara". i don't know whether this was intended as a joke even then, but some turkish "etymologies" are almost as funny).

 

anyway, in brief, it has never occurred to me that aghtamar/altamar could ever have a turkic etymology.

[aurguplu]

tigrannesiii,

 

yes, this is very possible. the silk road was in place by roman times and in all probability before that, and the flow of goods and ideas was not always one-way: the greek meander motif made its way into china in the centuries b.c., and the romans are known to have had factories and other installations as far east as malaysia.

 

let me tell you of a rather curious discovery that was made in aegean turkey about one or two decades ago:

 

the ancient greek ruins that dot the place are full of various ornaments in the forms of swirls, meanders etc. the dresses of the turkmen nomads that abound there are also full of different but visibly similar ornaments. of course, when the similarity was discovered, it was naturally supposed that the turks who had come later, had borrowed the ornaments to be seen on the greek monuments that were exposed above the ground here and there. then it was discovered that the same motifs were found further east in anatolia, and even further east in azerbaijan and as far as turkmenistan. no large scale eastward movement of turks after their arrival into anatolia is known, and people were puzzled quite a bit.

 

then of course, the mystery was solved: the bactrian greeks! they had penetrated as far east as afghanistan, and established cities there (there is a place in afghanistan, ay khanoum (a turkish name as you can see) which has been dug out, and is a greek site). they of course took the motifs they found there and left quite a bit of theirs there as well. when the turks came in a few hundred years later (we hadn't yet permanently settled there until a bit later), they took some of those motifs, and of course some of those turks made for anatolia a few centuries later, and today you have two very different interpretations of the same set of motifs side by side!

 

history is fascinating.

[aurguplu]

1. i know the above explanation re the origin of "hay", also, another explanation that finds favour with the archaeologists/specialists of ancient languages is that it derives from something like "hayk'" (can't get the exact transliteration on this keyboard) meaning "hittite". this is quite possible, as the greeks in byzantine times were calling themselves "romaika" after the roman empire, and anatolian turks were calling themselves "rum" after the same empire. if the armenians ever were in a confederation where the hittites were the bosses, then they could have been called by the same name as well. i understand "hayasa-", "hayk" and a few other versions are pretty old.

 

2. what factors led me to accept the genocide:

 

a) my family has played a role in turkish affairs for quite a while now, including before, during and after 1915, and i was exposed to "alternative" versions of history very early on.

 

the wet nurse of a member of our family had lost two sons in the "kıyım", as a senior member of my family had told me.

 

c) a member of my family, when he was a teenager, had had to travel from some place in anatolia to istanbul (or was it vice versa?) in 1915-1916. their cart was stopped by the chetes en route and all males ordered to get out. they were then told that no turkish adult male shall pass that gorge without first killing an armenian. that member of my family was about 12 at the time, so he was saved. several others were not that lucky: they were taken behind the hill and some time later two shots were heard. then they were sent back to the cart and the cart was allowed to continue.

 

one of these unlucky ones was a senior member of the CUP and a party ideologue. he did not open his mouth all the way to their destination.

 

d) my (english) arabic tutor at oxford, whom i have always been very fond of, used to make jokes about the armenian genocide with other tutors in front of me saying things like "when the germans organised it for them".

 

a, b, and c are confirmations of killings rather than the genocide. many turkish families have similar stories to tell, and the killings themselves have never really been denied. what was denied was that the whole thing was a state-engineered attempt to specifically eliminate, or drastically reduce the armenian nation in turkey. d was an eye opener, and it led me to read a bit more on it while abroad (those days it wasn't advisable to nose about asking for things armenian in turkey), and of course, several salient facts emerged:

 

i) there were some 18 million people in anatolia in 1914, some 1.3 million of which (by our own account) were armenian. after the war, there were 12 million people in anatolia, some 70,000 of which were armenian. looks like something pretty bad has happened to the armenians, doesn't it?

 

ii) the turkish parliamentary archives were then closed from 1915 onwards. if you had something to hide about the foundation of the republic, 1919 at the earliest would be a more likely date. why 1915?

 

iii) armenians in turkish history books make a brief appearance in WWI, when they betray us in favour of the russians, kill us, and then disappear. no word before, no word after. a bit enigmatic. makes you ask for more info.

 

iv) i don't know how early i acquired it, but like most turks, i knew from very early on that "something very bad" had gone on between the turks and the armenians, and therefore the two peoples had an invisible wall between them. even turkish children as young as six are to some degree aware of this "something very bad".

 

well, how i came to accept the genocide. i had had to accept a number of ugly facts in life, some about people i knew, others about my nation, others about other things. i have a tendency to stop as soon as i realise that whatever intellectual exercise that i am doing is self-deception/wishful thinking etc. you had 18 m people, 1.3 m of whom were armenian. today you have 70 m people, 70,000 of whom are armenian. if you put it this blunt, i.e. call a spade a spade, you can't ecsape the conclusion that it was a genocide.

 

of course you cannot "prove" or "disprove" that it was a genocide, as authenticated first hand documents are not there (the archives of the CUP are lost and orders at any rate were very probably oral). but there comes a point when you realise that the genocide explanation is far more plausible and simpler than anything that the establishment makes up.

 

i can tell from my own experience that the best way to make a turk accept the fact is to make expose him to three versions of the story (armenian, turkish, third party: german is best). the more you try to force it upon them, the more they will feel compelled to deny because he will feel that he personally is being charged.

 

another factor is the land claims business. the main reason why turkey keeps denying the whole thing is the land claims, and as long as the persist (or are tied to the genocide claims) the future of the issue is bleak. the overwhelming majority of turks have no doubt whatsoever that the genocide claims are just a scam to take half of turkey away, and then the kurds will come along, then the greeks, and it will be sevres. it is extremely important to understand this, as many turks don't just make this up as a way to evade the genocide issue, but genuinely believe it, and let's face it, the armenian side habitually ties one issue to the other.

 

if you got some educating to do, perhaps the best advice i can give you is always to keep in mind that the other side really believes what he says. don't say something like he is lying, but rather that he has got his facts wrong. put the facts before him and then ask him what he thinks happened. i had put my facts before him and arrived at the genocide conclusion on my own.

[aurguplu]

arpa,

 

during the linguistic purges of atatürk it was the arabic and persian vocabulary that was the main target. the "primitive sound" kh does not occur in istanbul turkish, the basis of our official idiom. it is there in inner and eastern anatolian dialects, which always had had a low status anyway. there was a letter denoting "kh" in the ottoman script, which was used to render the arabic "kh" and the persian and turkish "kh" IN WRITING. these were pronounced as "h" as istanbul turks deem the "kh" sound as gross. "kh" probably fell from istanbul pronunciation by the 18th century (as contemporary european renderings of urkish pronunciation of the time, and evidence from poetry, indicate).

 

we lost two sounds thanks to the language reform, the closed "e" (the "e" between dark "e" and "i", and the barred "i" (the "i" between "i" and "ı"), but that is more because of these anatolians having little notion of linguistic niceties rather than any concerted action on the part of the government.

 

and i think the "mountain of pain" was a joke and not a theory ever held seriously by anyone.

 

cheers,

[aurguplu]

As to the Turkish "yagh"; "The (Arm.)colloquial "yegh" has found its way into many other languages, most particularly into the Tatar dialects. There is a rule in the Tatar languages that the "e" sound must not precede a consonant, so the "e" was modified into an "a", hence the Turkish "yagh" from the original Armenain "yegh".

 

arpa,

 

i happen to know some tatar (both crimean and kazan) and there is no such rule there. "e" sometimes changes to "i" but 1) this is recent, and 2) it has not got something to do with consonants in general.

 

what do you mean by "tatar languages" by the way? there are only two extant ( crimean and kazan) and one extinct (kuman), and they are part of the kipchak group of turkic languages, together with bashkir, kazakh, karaim, karachay-malkar and nogai. ours (turkish) is oghuz, together with azeri, kashgai, khorasan turkish, and turkmen. the two groups separated about 1,000-1,500 years ago.

 

cheers,

[aurguplu]

tigrannesiii,

 

i forgot to add:

 

there are references to the killings being part o a genocidal plan in the turkish literature of, or concerning, the period, written as memoirs (one example i can come up with is the "zeytindağı" (mount of olives) of falih rıfkı atay). as far as i know there is quite some evidence in such works written by turks that the state was behind the killings one way or the other.

 

take care,

[bellthecat]

The slashed "l" is simply a phonetic representation/translitteration for a sound that is similar to the "ch" in the German "Bach" or Scottish "loch" but with a little bit of an "r" sound added. It is absolutely nothing like the "L" in "fall". It is also not a sound found in modern Turkish, hence the "Turkified" spelling "Akdamar" (although the Kurds around Lake van still seem to pronounce it correctly, regardless of how they spell it).

 

Although it is spelt Aght'amar in many books, I prefer Acht'amar since that more closely resembles the correct pronounciation.

 

The "gh" spelling probably came about because the first writer to describe it in detail (Lynch - 1895) was English educated, and the first writer to write about it academically (Nicole Thierry - 1960s) was French - both races (like Turks ) are notoriously uwilling to pronounce foreign words correctly. Bachman (1913) who was German, spells it more accurately as "Achthamar".

[bellthecat]

The correct name in Turkish is Agri Dagi. During the 19th century (and, presumably, earlier) this was the name of the entire mountain range stretching as far west as Kagizman.

 

Is it likely that this entire range is named after an insignificant little village on the southern slopes of Ararat? I do not think it is.

 

In addition, "painful" is a correct description for the tortuous tracks that once crossed over these mountains when compared to the more gentle passes over other ranges in the region. During the 19th century, European travellers mention even more ridiculous names for mountain passes in Turkey, like "camel tiring pass" or "trouser ripping pass"!

 

So, probably the current name for Ararat was derived from the old name of the entire mountain range, and the name of the mountain range is perhaps derived fom the characteristics of the routes over it.

 

Steve

[Twilight Bark]

Much has been said in the forum since I started my latest "silent period", and I have resisted the temptation to comment. But silly etymology for place names has a special place in my heart for some reason.

 

While we don't really know the origin of Agri (pronounced approximately Agh-ruh), we can be pretty sure it has nothing to do with pain. The mountain does not need to be named after the village. The village could have been named after the mountain. Or both could be named after a diety or some such. Also, just because the namesake village was small in historical times does not mean that it was insignificant in prehistoric periods. If you can prove that Armenians had a good reason to name their village in ancient times after a Turkish word for pain, then you might have a case. But you don't.

 

And lastly, the mountain name "Agri" and the word "agri" meaning pain are pronounced with the stress put on different syllables. In the mountain name the stress is on the first syllable, whereas in the word meaning "pain" it is in the second syllable. If the mountain were named after "pain", the stress would be at the end of the word.

 

TB

[aurguplu]

PS. I also have access to many Turkic Altaic words that have derived from the Arm. "yegh". Some of them may not be readily recognizable such as the Altai "yu'", Kirghiz "jau", Yakut "aga" etc.

 

arpa,

 

how on earth do you derive kirghiz altai and yakut (for god's sake, yakut!) word (and one a basic part of the vocabulary) from an armenian word? have the armenians ever been east of the caspian in any numbers, and why would these guys use an armenian word for "fat" (that's what it originally meant: anything lipid) when they had plenty of fat around them in the form of sheep?

 

besides, i expect your comments on the eurasiatic/nostratic stuff i had posted earlier on.

 

cheers,

[aurguplu]

re orenag/örnek:

 

i think the following is plausible to some degree:

 

since orenag can be derived from an armenian root, and örnek from a turkish one, it might be that there were originally two independent words, the armenian orenag and the turkish örnek. the meanings appear to have been slightly different, if "orenag" originally meant something like "rule" and "örnek" originally mean something like "textile pattern" the meanings were vaguely alike, and people bilingual in turkish/armenian started to use them interchangeably. örnek is found as far east as kazakh and uighur, and means textile pattern there (something woven), and it has a perfectly fitting turkish etymology (ör-enek). i find it a bit hard to conceive that the kazakhs would import an armenian word for an activity that they had pursued for millennia (weaving) which looked just like the word they would have coined from a turkic root if they had cared to!

 

i think the two different origins and then parallel existence theory is the least implausible: there are a few such instances between unrelated languages that had lived side by side.

[nairi]

It's always hard to tell how people used to pronounce words 800 years ago, especially if there are no recordings. Guesses are that many Armenian words that now have a clear /l/, uvular /r/ or /x/, used to have a voiceless /l/, as in the Welsh "ll". Whether this is true or not, no one should be surprised that transcriptions of words such as Akhtamar are very varied today (especially if we take idiolects and allophones into account).

[bellthecat]

Who here is saying that Ahkori village was named after the Turkish word for pain? No-one, as far as I can read. Arpa is saying that Agri is probably a corruption of the name Akhori, and I'm saying that there is probably no connection between the name Agri and Ahkori, so I don't quite get your point that I should prove there is!

 

The key point is that Agri was a name used for the entire mountain range, not just Ararat. Akhori probably always was the largest settlement on the Northern slopes (I said Southern earlier, my mistake) of Ararat - but there always were far bigger and more important places that were also near to that range, so if the Agri range is named after a place, why pick a remote and unimportant place like Akhori?

 

But, isn't stress is the least standard and the easiest thing to vary in the pronounciation of a word? And is something very liable to change over time or distance? Who knows how the locals pronounced the word Agri several hundred years ago.

[aurguplu]

tb,

 

re the accent: in turkish, accent is one of stress, and it usually falls on the last syllable, especially of nouns. but place-names never have accent on the last syllable, there the syllable typically moves to the penultimate position (if it is on the antepenultimate, then you have reason to doubt the word's turkish origin).

 

for instance, kurtuluş means "salvation" in turkish, and the accent is on the last syllable, but kurtuluş with the accent on the first syllable is the name of the quarter where a number of armenian families still live.

 

taksim with stress on last syllable means "division, allotment", taksim with stress on the first is the name of the taksim square in istanbul.

 

steve,

 

slashed l represents a "w"-like sound in polish which originally developed from the slavic dark "l". it is also used to transliterate the russian and turkish dark l (like in russian ja padal (i fell) or turkish aldım (i took)). to the best of my knowledge it is also used in IPA and the north american transliteration systems. if it is used to transcribe some other sound in armenian, which may of course be, then this is completely independent from its normally accepted international usage to transliterate dark l.

 

(mind you, "gh", kh" etc, might also have evolved from dark l, which is entirely possible and documented in a number of cases).

[aurguplu]

steve, tb,

 

the overwhelming majority of mountain names in turkey (as well as other place names) are non-turkic in origin, but have acquired a turkic-looking garb in pronunciation and spelling terms over the centuries. it would be abit fuile to look for a turkish origin of an armenian name for a mountain that has been their symbol for three thousand years. the name of the mountain is either armenian or kurdish (or urartian or georgian), but i would be very surprised to learn it to be turkish.

 

or, maybe "agri" is a recent name, and until comparatively recently, it was called by another name. i don't know.

 

cheers,

[Twilight Bark]

I understand the point about shifting the stress (as a practical means to distinguish between the ordinary usage of the word and as a proper noun). That would be necessitated by daily life in a city. However, can you provide similar examples where mountain names are involved? I am not asking rhetorically.