about surnames...

[Guest]

quote:

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Originally posted by Berj:
Tornado,
"Gah" is throne, not "period". Gahnamak is - court-list or smth. similar.

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Well thank you I will check this out, Actually I reffered to it because in the Avestan litterature Ahura Mazda has created the world in 6 Gahanbar while the seventh Gahanbar he took a break. This version is more realistic than the semitic one which says 6 days rather than 6 periods.

[Guest]

My question is not about surnames but about names:

Does anybody know the origine of Dikran(Tigran) what it means or where it comes from: Is it derived from Tigris? Or is a parthian name(as I read somewhere). I had also heard 'Vikram' among indians...

[Shirag]

Hi dear people,

sometime I read that "Dikran" it means: fighter with arrow.

And I bet that comes from pahlevi or parthian.

That's all that I can say...

[Taguhi]

Tornado jan,

Thanks a lot for the information. I've never heard about this hero Aresh or Arash. Where can I find something more about him?

[Guest]

quote:

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Originally posted by Taguhi:
Tornado jan,
Thanks a lot for the information. I've never heard about this hero Aresh or Arash. Where can I find something more about him?

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Dear Taguhi. the story of Aresh or Arash is documented by Ferdowsi in new Persian. But Ferdowsi has used older sources, which Movses Khorenatsi has also used. There has been a Pahlevi Khodaynamak . But possibly there are more ancient sources, and I think this story is also written in Avesta, (pre-Zorostrian litterature which is adjusted after Zarathustra's life into the same religion)

PS. Ferdowsi located the Armenians, in the same land from the ancient times, and clearly names the Medians, Georgians, and another Caucasian peoples, and Scythians(although he calls them Turanian and Sarmathian, which were not Turk of course).
So I don't know about the older sources, but there is Ferdosi's translation in English availabe online. Also there is Ferdowsi in Russian and Armenian, but I don't know if they are online or not.

********************************************
I can't say it for sure but I think that Tigran comes, from sharp, The Scythians with sharp hat were called Saka TIGRA Xauda by themselves and by the Persian chronicles. So I will not wonder if Tigran is from the smae root of Sharp. Obvously these were the names which were put at thoseand were indicator of their courage and military capability. Similar is (Y)ervand which is from Aurvant in Avestan , and Arvand in Scythian and ärvänd ( I have been told by friends to make distinguishes between ä and a in Persian .today many people use ä , so why not me) in new Persian, which all means strong and fast.

[aurguplu]

yepp tornado that is what i had meant. when linguists first examined armenian, its indo-european nature was obvious, but the massive amount of persian in it made them think it was an iranian dialect. i think it was either later in the 19th century or earlier in the 20th that it was understood that it constituted an independent branch within indo-european with no known close relatives. so i am afraid you are wrong in saying that it is to iranina that it is closest within indo-european: it appears that it is almost equally distant to all the rest. some isoglosses (=greek for same word), like alopis in greek and alues (sorry dont have the right fonts) for "fox" connect it to greek, another independent branch with no known close relatives, but that's about it. when people who spoke proto-armenian first moved into anatolia sometime between 1200-800 bc, they must have encountered both the hittites and further east the urartians (and later the hurri). it was a moot point whether they had moved from the east (caucasus) or west (thrace) into their present homeland, but i think most people think it was from the west together with the phrygians.

the caucasian languages had a huge influence on armenian, and as a result of this, the sound system of the language changed out of all recognition. frankly speaking i think that if a single line of armenian from the eighth century bc were extant, no living armenian who was not a linguist could even recognise it as armenian.

in lay terms, armenian is basically an indo-european language spoken with a very thick caucasian accent, and since these speakers never learnt it properly (the grammar is quite different) and could not be bothered to learn the vocabulary (so much of present-day armenian vocab is caucasian) armenian is of marginal use in indo-european language reconstruction (dont be offended, linguists love o make that sort of joke if you will with all languages, including their own).

as for ossete, i thought it was a north iranian language. ossete is commonly held to be the direct descendant of scythian. kurdish, yes, but kurdish today is a blanket term for a number of related north iranian dialects, and probably not a valid term in the strictly linguistic sense.

regards

[aurguplu]

they are wrong.

no-one really knows how many root lexemes (fancy linguist term for word) turkish has, since it is a family of languages that started to divide into daughter languages sometime during the first millennium bc, more than a thousand years before it was reduced to writing; but i myself have seen several thousand roots that predate the arabo-persian period. there is also a very early layer of chinese loanwords, some tokharian, some sanskrit, some tibetan, some old iranian (sogdian etc) and some paleosiberian.

the further back you go in time the more difficult it becomes to distinguish between native and borrowed vocabulary.

there is also an interesting theory, which has recently been revived by the stanford linguist joseph harold greenberg that most languages of eurasia belong to a single vast superfamily which he calls eurasian. it includes indo-european, uralic (finnish, hungarian and samoyed, among others), altaic (turkish, mongolian, and manchu-tungus), korean, japanese, ainu, the paleosiberian languages (gilyak, chukchi, ket, kott etc) and eskimo-aleut.

i have examined the published part of his theory, and, despite some flaws, found it sound (i myself had noticed the vast number of similarities between turkish and indo-european that simply didn't go away when i was a student).

regards,

[Berj]

Dear Ali,

What is the reference you use to come to conclusion that Urartu was not the Ararat Kingdom which existed on the Armenian Plateau from 860bc to 590bc and was succeded by Ervandouny Armenian Kingdom in 560bc.

Thanks

[aurguplu]

dear berj,

i wasn't aware i had come to such a conclusion, in fact it wasn't my point. as i am writing this off at the office, i have my history & archaeology books at home and therefore cannot check offhand.

for all i know, it may be the same kingdom. what i was referring to was the language, and there i think i am on pretty firm ground. some people did move to the area at about that date and destroyed the hittite kingdom. these are referred to as the sea peoples in hittite annals, and phrygians (muski) are part of that group. since armenian is not a member of the anatolian subgroup of indo-european (which includes hittite, luwian, lycian, lydian and palaic), it must have come in a separate wave. as far as we know, hittite is the oldest indo-european intrusion into anatolia, and it is probably futile to look for earlier ones since indo-european is likely to have been a linguistic unity in the third, or at the earliest fourth, millennium bc.

herodotus tells us that phrygians were the ancestors of the armenians. but then again, he told us many things that we now know not to be true. the chief problems here are 1) the fact that phrygian linguistic remains are scant, and 2) there is a thousand years between the first appearance of phrygian and the first writen records in armenian. phrygian remains are written in a language that was long dead by the time they were written (it was a ritual language), and sharply formulaic: "if you rob this tomb may you go to hell" kind of stuff. imagine that all you know of english is the texts that accompany these internet messages containing dalai lama wisdom and the admonision that if you send them to six people you'll get all you want, and if you don't, you'll lose all you have! so phrygian texts don't give you much of a clue about the details of the language. most linguists saw it as a language somewhat related to the ancient thracian tongues (which would make them related to the mother tongue of alexander the great) but one of my reference books (by macqueen) says that phrygian is basically a member of the hittite-luwian subgroup. i find this most confusing and would not comment on it until i saw the data behind the claim. if this is the case then who were the sea peoples and where did they go?

the second problem is much deeper. earliest recorded armenian is very recent: 4th century ad. by then you guys must have been in anatolia for more than a thousand years. the proto-armenians must have destroyed and overtaken the urartu and the hurrians, for their language does not survive (it was probably related to georgian, cherkess, laz etc) and yours sounds like an indo-european tongue spoken by a caucasian.

i do not know what the armenian historians say about this subject. my references are western scholars: there is a heavy presence of germans, followed by the english-speakers (english and american) and the french. i would like to know more about what the russians wrote. i usually do not use turkish sources on the issue (there aren't many in the first place, and what little there is tends to be secondary, not primary, material).

please bear in mind (must be obvious by now) that i am a language maniac, and there are other factors that help shape an ethnicity, although i think language is the most important. what i say about languages must be extended onto other fields with caution.

also, a word on names: ararat is obviously a sequel to urartu. but so is hittite to hatti (hatti was the name of the indigenous people of anatolia prior to the incursion of the hittites). identity of name does not necessarily mean identity of ethnicity. anatolian turks used to call themselves "rum" in classical ootoman times, the designation that the greeks had used for themselves. of course, it originally meant "a roman". one must be very careful when equating a name with an identity.

i hope this has been of some help.

regards

[ June 21, 2001: Message edited by: aurguplu ]

[Guest]

Dear Ali.

 

As I know Armenian is never been thought to be a dialect. But the ethnonym Ar,or Air in Avesta is both found among Armenians, Medians and Persians and the Scythians, and the facts that the languages are too close, even if you through away the possible loanwords, they are still very close. And also the fact that Ararat has the same root of ethnonym, it is very likely that these were an Indo-european Aryan tribe clsoe to the Median, Persian and scythians or other Iranian tribes. Also a Theory of an Armenian ethnologists suggests that these people were connected to the Cymmerians, which were a Scythian East Iranianspeaking tribe coming from north southwars to transcaucasia and eastern Anatolia, and fought the assyrian empire. much earlier than the Medians, Persians did.

[Taguhi]

Tornado jan,

Thanks!!!!!!!

[Guest]

quote

i myself have seen several           thousand roots that predate the arabo-persian period. there is also a very early layer of chinese loanwords, some tokharian, some sanskrit, some tibetan, some old iranian (sogdian etc) and some                    paleosiberian.  

 

Ali,

 

I don't know about these sophisticated explanations but I only look at facts:

 

the modern turkish judiciary language is stuffed with arabic words

the economy language with arabic as well as english and french words

the daily language used by medias is the same

 

If your language is so rich in original words why not using them. By the way central asian republics use more arab words than you do and the purification of the language seems to be done at the expense of impoverishing even to an illiterate like me, as the new derived words seem to be derived from the same original words

 

I remember a turkish guy telling me 'I don't care whether I use english or french or another word what I really need is to express myself properly' yeah why not

[aurguplu]

dear tornado

with all due respect, i am compelled to elaborate the points you made and disagree with a few of them:

1. a dialect is a language. in linguistic usage, two idioms (politically correct term to call a speech variety if you don't know if they are independent languages) are dialects of a single language if they are mutually intelligible to a high degree (over 60%. it has been found that people the world over tend to use a language as a common means of communication if they can understand slighty over 60% of it. if the number falls below that, they tend to look for an interpreter, or learn the other party's language). two idioms that are not mutually intelligible are called separate languages. now this changes the linguistic map of many countries dramatically: the chinese "language" becomes a language family of at least half a dozen languages, the same goes for italian, german, arabic, and a number of other languages. on the other hand, swedish, norwegian and danish end up as a single language, as do czech and slovak. anatolian turkish, azeri, kashgai (in iran), khorassan turkish and turkmen turn out to be dialects of a single language, but the extent of azeri moves much further west all the way to east-central turkey, in fact, about two to three hundred kms from my hometown ürgüp!

now the term "dialect" was also used in the past to disparage an idiom. if you said about an idiom that it was a dialect of some other idiom, you implied inferiority of one and superiority of the other. this is, of course, not a scientific approach. the notion of superior or inferior (or developed and less well developed) languages is as valid as the superior races theories. i hope they will have disappeared by the end of the 21st century. so much about dialects.

2. all the languages that you listed (except armenian) are iranian, which means they were one and the same language at about 1000 bc. that language is usually called iranian, or aryan. a few centuries before that, this language was the same thing as the ancestor of sanskrit: they were dialects of one another.

armenian, on the other hand, is a very distant cousin to these, and its occurence in the same region is largely an accident of history. armenian's closest relatives must have been the extinct thracian tongues, may be (distant possibility) albanian, in anatolia may be phrygian, and, anmongst the other indo european languages, ancient greek (but greek is further apart). most of the elements that are common to iranian and armenian are cultural loans either direction.

3. cimmerians: to the best of my knowledge, almost nothing about the cimmerian language is known. i know that people see indo-european speakers in them, i don't know on what grounds. it may be archaeological. some archaeological traits are diagnostic of indo-europeans: certain burial types, sword types, pottery types etc. but i am not in a position to argue.

4. i would be careful when equating the "ar" in "armenian" with the ethnonym "ar" in avesta. as far as i know, it is generally accepted in preclassical history that the term "armenian" derives from "arminiya" in akkadian (a semitic tongue) which means "highland, mountainous places". if this is correct, then the term was originally a geographical and not ethnic designation. you should also remember that the armenians have almost always called themselves hay (hye as you write it), and they were called by their neighbours the georgians as "sa-mekhi" the "mekhi" part is reminiscent of the "muski" of the hittites (the phrygians) . also, there is a region called mysia in western turkey, and another called moesia in thrace. both names were recorded to denote the same people in antiquity (that's what the greeks wrote). since this is the place where the phrygians are thought to have migrated from, and the location of the two regions appear to be in line with the migration route, the possibility that the original ethnonym of the armenians was something like "muski, mosgi" is very high. the term "hay" might have something to do with the name "hittite", and the term "armenian" may be a geographical designation.

5. ararat is a corruption of urartu. i don't know what urartu meant, and in what language, but i know that it was related to the later hurri, and that both were related to the caucasian languages of today (georgian etc). so i do not think that "armenian" and "ararat" have anything to do with eachother, etymologically speaking.

since i am writing all this without my primary reference material at my disposal, there may be inaccuracies. but on the whole i think that this is what the scientific community thinks.

i hope this has been of some help.

regards,

[aurguplu]

hovik

of course the modern judiciary and economic languages are stuffed with french, persian and arabic words. if they weren't, people would understand them!

now have a look at the way my country is run. would you want people to understand what is really going on if you were the one who was running it?

cheers,

[Berj]

Dear Ali,

Thank you for your answer. First let me give you the chronology of Kingdoms of Armenian origin on Armenian Plateau which is used in Armenian historiography.

Ararat Kingdom or Urartu 860bc – 590bc (lets assume its not Armenian)
Ervadouni Kingdom mid. 6th century bc – 191 bc
Artashesian Kingdom 189bc- mid. 1st century ad
Armenianised branch of Parthian Arshkounies 190s-428 (the first Parthian king in Armenia Arshak 1st was inthroned in 66)
Bagratouni Kingdom 885-1041

The Cilician Armenian Kingdom which existed from 1075 to 1385 was situated out of the area of the initial origination of the Armenian nation.

Now, lets go back to the Urartian language. Until now nobody knows how it sounded. The studies of Urartian language in Soviet times (mainly by Boris Piotrovski) have only some limited results, one of which was the decription of Urartian consonants. The vowels of Urartian language are largely unknown. Urartians were using Assirian, Hurrit and image characters. The consonants have been decripted by comparative study of toponyms in Urartian and Assirian cuniforms, were they appear to be alike. However the vowels are different. So, for example the word “Urartu” appears as “R-R-T-” in decripted Urartian, Assirian and Hurrite cuniforms. And the the scientists who decripted the Urartian cuniforms use the Assirian vowels to read it. That’s how it became “Urartu”.
I want to bring your attention to other interesting factors. The famous Behistounian Wall incarving (520bc) of the Achemenian King Darius 1st, which was written in 3 languages (ancient Farsi (Avestan), Aramean and Assirian) mentiones "Arminia" in the Farsi text, "Ararat" Kingdom in Aramean text and "Urartu" in Assirian text at the same place in the sentence were Darius says that the king of that land Yervand pays him tribute. The King Yervand that Darius mentions is the first king of the Yervadouni Armenian Dynasty, refered as Yervand Sakavakyats in Mouses Khorenatsi’s (an Armenian historian of 5th century) The History of Armenia. The life of Armenia during the Yervadouni Kingdom is described in amasing details by Ksenophone (a famous Greek historian) in his writings “Kyuropaedia” and “Anabasis”. He describes the tax collection system of the Yervadouni Kindom, garrisons of the cities, the agriculture. He mentions that the people of King Yervand’s land spoke one language on the whole territory from the north-west shores of lake Urmia to the banks of Euprates river. By his desciption, Yervandouni Kingdom was a well organised state, and was one of the main adversaries of Achemenian Persia. Isn’t it interesting that the Yervandouni kings managed to organise a state (the people of which spoke one language) on the same territory of Ararat Kingdom (which fall in 590bc under the attacks of Skithians and Medians) just in some 60-70 years. I strongly doubt that Urartu fall under attacks of the same tribe that formed the Yervandouni Kingdom and I advocate that Yervandounies had the same cultural and ethnic background as the Urartians and that they were just a successive dynasty.



The theory of phrigians being the ancestors of Armenians is based on the legend of Yason and the argonauts by Strabo. He says that Armenians are named after Armenios, who was in the group of argonauts. By the way, during the conquests of Alexander the Great Greeks wrote similar stories about the ancestors of Persians. The theory of movement of Indo-European tribes the from Balkans to Anatolia contradicts the reseaches on the Melting Period.



Once I mentioned that Georgians call Armenia SomHETTI, and the parts of Georgia populated by Armenians JavaHETTI AND KaHETTI. I’m interested if Georgians use HETTI in other toponyms. Some Georgian speaker would help.

Thanks again,
Regards

[ June 22, 2001: Message edited by: Berj ]

[Harut]

the first Armenian Arshakouni king was Trdat the first. with the support of his brother, the king of Parthia, Vagharsh Arshakouni, he becomes the king of Armenia in 54 AD.

[ThornyRose]

OK, I guess I can post this now.

 

**************

 

I have some thoughts about the influence of Arabic and Farsi in Turkish.

 

While it is true that we have undertaken re-Turkification of our language (to the point where our language is “more Turkish” than the rest), I do not feel that much resentment about it, and I certainly do not find the existence of Arabic and Farsi embarrassing. Consider: the British were not the neighbors of the Latins and the Greeks, except for being ruled briefly by the Romans, although the full-scale introduction of Latin words came much later. The British never wrote their documents in Greek and Latin. They never had court literature in these. Even so, you see many loanwords. How many sentences can you utter in English without a single word that doesn’t definitely trace back to Latin or Greek, given Old English is definite, distinct, and recorded? Very few. This is not so with Turkish with respect to Arabic and Farsi, although it is definite that there are loanwords from other languages, granted. Turks were neighbors of the people who spoke the corresponding languages. Mind you, though, it was the court that had the heaviest influence of these two – not so (or as much so) for the language of the peasantry, who have until even today preserved words of Turkish thought to have become extinct over a century ago (related to me by a teacher of mine in high school – a Turkology major, and she claims to have gone out there into the rural parts for “field work” . This may be due to the fact that the Anatolian Turks were largely illiterate for ages. Whether we should be thankful for that or not, I do not know.

 

Is English the poorer for it? No. Was Old English a heathen language? I highly doubt it. So, why all this banter about Turkish, ignoring the fact that most of us don’t understand Ottoman Turkish today? I can understand it if it comes from a Turk (inferiority complex?).

 

Turks abandoned their own writing. And they did travel huge distances to get from Mongolia to Anatolia and the Balkans. That is indeed a big deal. Even so, I can find myself understanding a few words of the Orkhon Inscriptions. That is a big deal, too.

 

Loanwords should have added to our wealth, but instead they were used as substitutes. Ali Shir Nevai complained about his contemporaries’ attitudes towards their mother tongue. Alas, nobody heeded him. That was cultural suicide. Is it up to us to make up for it? I do not know.

[Berj]

Harut,

The first Arshkouni ruler of Armenia was Arshak. But my date was wrong. He came to Armenia in 34ad not 66ad. He was placed to rule Armenia by Pathian king Artavan 3rd and was his elder son.
Trdat 1st is regarded as first Arshakouni king in Armenia because he got his crown from Neron the Emperor of Rome and was recognised by him.
But the Armenian Arshakouni Dynasty started approx. in 190s when the Parthian king lost his right to place his candidate on the Armenian throne, after discontent from the side of Armenian nakharars. After that time the thone was being inherited by the king's elder son. And also, this was the time when Armenian Arshakounies began to conduct their policies independant from Parthian kings will.