Berj Posted May 10, 2001 Report Share Posted May 10, 2001 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. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
armeniangirl83 Posted May 10, 2001 Author Report Share Posted May 10, 2001 Why are ending all the Armenian surnames on -ian/-yan??? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
armeniangirl83 Posted May 11, 2001 Author Report Share Posted May 11, 2001 thanks!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Harut Posted May 11, 2001 Report Share Posted May 11, 2001 ending "tsi" was also very popular in the past, which indicated the birthplace of the person. Narekatsi, Khorenatsi, Shirakatsi, Aygektsi, Yerevantsi ,....... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nairakev Posted May 31, 2001 Report Share Posted May 31, 2001 quote:Originally posted by 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. 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. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Taguhi Posted May 31, 2001 Report Share Posted May 31, 2001 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 !!!!!!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Harut Posted June 1, 2001 Report Share Posted June 1, 2001 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. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ThornyRose Posted June 1, 2001 Report Share Posted June 1, 2001 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 ] Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MJ Posted June 15, 2001 Report Share Posted June 15, 2001 "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. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted June 15, 2001 Report Share Posted June 15, 2001 But whom did we get it from? from Indians? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aurguplu Posted June 15, 2001 Report Share Posted June 15, 2001 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, Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted June 15, 2001 Report Share Posted June 15, 2001 quote: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. 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. I also had heard that the suffixe 'ian' was of persian origine. Iranians offen use it as a suffixe for surnames.May be people with a historical background may enlighten us.If you are hinting that the use of that suffixe is due to an ottoman habit, I don't agree. No other ethnic group than armenians use it in Turkey. Other armenians who lived outside the ottoman empire(in Iran for example) use it too. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aurguplu Posted June 18, 2001 Report Share Posted June 18, 2001 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, Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted June 18, 2001 Report Share Posted June 18, 2001 As far as I know armenians used the 'ian' suffixe well before turks arrived in Asia Minor ). Noble names like Mamikonian are the proof that we were using it before the Ottoman or any other turkish state was established in Anatolia. If we took it from others it should be from Parthians rather than from Persians right? Any historian around? By the way can some tell us if Parthes ethnically belonged to the same group as Persians that is are they just another dynasty from the same ethnic group or is it a different one? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aurguplu Posted June 18, 2001 Report Share Posted June 18, 2001 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, Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted June 18, 2001 Report Share Posted June 18, 2001 Thanks.But I had heard that there are also historians who question the 'european' origine of armenians. I remember having talked with a person holding a history degree from Armenia who told me the exact place where they arrived in Anatolia from is not known. I don't know. I also read some stories saying that armenian presence was signalled among phrygians(in Thrace)...Is it enough to say that they come from Romania? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted June 18, 2001 Report Share Posted June 18, 2001 just want to tell you that ian or yan is not in Sanskrit. Indeed the language of Mittani south of Van lake had the most similarities with Sanskrit. Sanskrit is thought to be imported from somewhere from Central Asia or much more to the north, to northern India. Dear taguhi Aresh or Arash is the legendary hero in Avesta who with bow and arrow througing made the border between the settled Iranians and nomadic Iranians (Turanians = scythian tribes) he himself died of too much putting energy in it. the border became someehere where now Syr Darya is.Also river Arax (Araxis)I suoppose is named after Aresh . The ending -ts after ian or yan I have noticed in more Armenian surnames. PS. I just asked from my wife;In Persian, -i means belonging to something, adjective and- an is one of options of plural making. so ian or yan as end of a surname means those who belong to someone, decendent of someone.Also moslem Iranians have often surnemes with ian or yan endings. [ June 18, 2001: Message edited by: Tornado ] Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aurguplu Posted June 18, 2001 Report Share Posted June 18, 2001 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. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted June 18, 2001 Report Share Posted June 18, 2001 OK I let our specialists answer if they want to.However let me point out that the tons of foreign words we have may be small when compared to your many tons of foreign words in the turkish language...They say the core of the turkish language is made of 1000 words the rest being of persian arab and more recently english french and many other languages of unrelated origines I would think we have more than that in the core of our language. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted June 18, 2001 Report Share Posted June 18, 2001 I meant less foreign words in the core of our language. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
armeniangirl83 Posted June 18, 2001 Author Report Share Posted June 18, 2001 dear everybody, thanks Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted June 18, 2001 Report Share Posted June 18, 2001 quote:Originally posted by aurguplu:dear hovikalso, 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.Not an Iranian dialect but a separate language. Iranian is a subgroup of the Indo-European languages, it is more than Persian only. Also Kurdish in Turkey belongs to this group. Ossetian is also an Iranian language, but an East Iranian language.From the language of the Phrygians we don't know much. another hypothesis say that the Indo-europeans who came to Armenia were Cymmerians. Still the origins of the Armenians is debated, but something is for sure, Armenian is an Indo-european language. Whether or not it is cathegorized within the Iranian subgroup. This subgroup is the most close to Armenian, also after christianity there came many Greek words into Armenian. It is also common belief that the Caucasian languages, have had their influences in the making of the modern Armenian language. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Berj Posted June 20, 2001 Report Share Posted June 20, 2001 Dear Ali, One of the most important historic references about the Armenian surnames is the Order of the Court ("Gahnamak" in Armenian) of the Arshakouni Armenian Kingdom which dates back to 4th century. The document is kept in the Matendaran ancient manuscipt depository in Yerevan. The document is the listing of the Armenian princes, dukes and counts. It includes Armenian surnames with "ouni", "akan", "yan", "etsi" endings. The Arshakouni Kingdom also had a separate document called "Zoranamak", the order for millitary, which was a listing of quotas of reqruitment by each princedom, county.Some of the surnames: Siouni, Kamsarakan, Mamikonyan, Vanadetsi, Varandyan, Mardpetouni, Khorkhorouni, Gnouni, Bagratouni etc. Most of the surnames end with "ouni", which was the ending of the surnames of the nobility. The ending "yan" bacame popular and known to history when, in result of decay of old noble families, the gentry came to power. So in 10-11th century the Armenian nobility already included many families with "yan" ending, like Orbelyan, Proshyan, Zakaryan. The Turkish components of the Armenian surnames are result of the Turkification of the region. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted June 20, 2001 Report Share Posted June 20, 2001 Gahnamak= periodical, report, Zoranamak= force report or better said report of the warriors. The same words in Pahlevi (a Middle West Iranian language. I bet many would come to say that these are Sanskrit, Greek, or even latin word. Nope. These are words of pure AngloSaxon origin,actually these resembles a language in central Texas , where all people are Christian and very white and very European. This language have had a lot of influences on Armenian, but also on Persian, and Paklevi, Greek and Sanskrit. I hope now by fabricating this theory I will be known as a great and tolerant guy But the hell no. I am not playing this inferiority complex game. Well look at basques, ven though they are in Europe, they make fantasies about that they come from caucasus, Himalya or a lsot continent Please get real [ June 20, 2001: Message edited by: Tornado ] Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Berj Posted June 20, 2001 Report Share Posted June 20, 2001 Tornado,"Gah" is throne, not "period". Gahnamak is - court-list or smth. similar. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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