Aykestan

[Stormig]

Aykestan was a pre-1915 district in Van.

Reminds one of aygi, aygu, aygegorts, don't it?

[bellthecat]

The "Ayk" i'd guess just means Haik, ie. Aykestan = "district of the Armenians"

[Stormig]

Nope, not really. That district is supposed to have had a lot of orchards and such. Aygi, aygu, and aygegorts mean park, (of) orchard, and gardener, respectively. Just a thought.

[Harut]

like stormig said...

aygi (ayki, wa pronounciation) means garden.

aygestan (aykestan) - meaning land of gardens, in this case, of orchards.

[ED]

Reminds one of aygi, aygu, aygegorts, don't it?

yes, you can say that also, but when you refer to the person who takes care of the Aygy. Aygi That would be Aygepan

[nairi]

I'm thinking oak. Eik and Eiche are oak in Dutch and German respectively, both pronounced approximately as ayk.

 

[Arpa]

Aykestan was a pre-1915 district in Van.

Reminds one of aygi, aygu, aygegorts, don't it?

Indeed it does.

Stormig, why did you spell it as AyKestan, and not AyGestan? It must have been from a weatern Armenian source.

===

Aygestan, yerkir drakhtavayr,

Du mardkayno tseghin orran.

 

The above is a paraphrase from the song Hayastan Yerkir Drakhtavayr.

"Hayastan, land of paradise,

You, cradle of the human race."

 

I cannot find reference to an Aygestan in the Van region. There are (were) two other Aygestans though. One is in the south of Ganja/Gantsak, in the region pf Khanlar, formerly known as Ablah. In 1969 it had a population of 442, all Armenian. The other is in the region of Artashat about 20 km south of Yerevan, in 1970 it had a population of 2131.

Both villages were/are mainly agricultural with their most important crop being..... you guessed it.... vineyards/vintage. Aygestan is compound descriptive term that simply mean "land of (grape)vines", i.e. wine country. So, if Bordeaux and Napa Valley were Armenian lands they would be known as Aygestan. :)

 

In the western vernacular aygiprimarily refers to vineyard and other words are used to describe gardens and orchards of other crops. I had known this as a matter of custom and I was not really surprised to see that Ajarian confirms it. In his own words; "Ardi hayereni mej arevmtyan grakanum "aygi" pahel e ir bun nshanakutyun@, isk arevelyan grakanum nshanakum e @ndhanrapes "partez", inchpes qaghaqayin aygi, busabanakan aygi yvln". (In modern Armenian, in the western literary language "aygi" has kept its original meaning, while in the eastern it is used to describe garden in general such as city-garden (park) or botanical garden.)

 

Then it goes to state that "aygi"is a native Armenian word that originally meant "vort" (as in vortatunk, grape vine), and that the word is in turn based on "ayg" which simply means "khaghogh/grape". I will spare its kinship with other languages except that it is found in the Latin as "uva". The "i" ending attached to "ayg" to distinguish the tree from the fruit is not unusual considering words like "kaghn-i/oak" and "tsiran-i".

 

Above we saw the words to "Hayastan/Aygestan erkir drakhtavayr", and we said that aygi is exlusively (should) is used for vineyard. In the Armenian language there are several words for garden, orchard;

 

1. Aygi....

2. Partez which is common with the Persian word "firdaus" and appears in Europe as "paradise/paradiso".

3. Drakht, from the Pahlavi "draxt" which simply means "tree", it is still used in that sense in modern Persian.

4. Edem/yedem, often used in combination of "yedemi partez". There is an Armenian village in the Fresno area known as Yettem. In most of the European languages the word is "eden", note the "n" ending v the "m" ending in the Armenian. The reason for this is that the word is originally from the Arabic 'aden that was passed to the Hebrew and from there to the Greek where it was slighly corrupted to "adem/edem". The Armenian was derived from the latter, Greek while most other languages borrowed it from the Hebrew with the "n" ending. The original Arabic word is supposed to mean "garden of pleasure".

Note. Some may want you to believe that the Armenian word "edem" is derived from the main inhabitant of of the Garden of Eden, namely Adam. No! See above derivation.

 

PS. In the light of the above, does it mean that Aden the port city of Yemen is named to mean paradise?

Edited May 18, 2004 by Arpa

[Harut]

so, where was Vartan Aygektsi from?

 

http://www.digilib.am/texts/vardan_aigektsi/

[nairi]

According to The Heritage of Armenian Literature (Vol. II), he was born in the Armenian village of Marata in the province of Tluk, Assyria. He was educated in the monastery of Arkakaghin in Armenian Cilicia and was eventually ordained a priest. He pursued his career as a preacher first in Amid (Diyarbakir) and then in his native province. In 1208, for an unknown reason, he was obliged to leave his office, and two years later he settled for good in the convent of Aygek, from which his surname, Aygeksti, is derived.

 

See here (first column on the left, no. 2):

 

http://www.virtualarmenia.am/armavir/map/maplist_armavir.htm

 

Ayg, btw means: 1) dawn, horizon; 2) beginning; 3) youth.

 

Aygekut or Aygeqagh: (noun) the picking of the grapes in a vineyard, or the picking of fruits in a garden/orchard/etc.

 

I'm guessing that aygek may be an obsolete form of aygekut.

[Stormig]

Indeed it does.

Stormig, why did you spell it as AyKestan, and not AyGestan? It must have been from a weatern Armenian source.

Thank you, Arpa. More like, there was a Western source, further consolidated by descendents of people from that district writing it with a K.

[Arpa]

Very good Nairi.

I did deliberately leave out that usage of the word to mean dawn so as to not overburden the subject at hand, even if I did intend to get back to it.

I knew you would notice it.

Yes "ayg" does mean dawn, morning. Even though it is seldom used as is, the more commonly used forms are "tsayg"(night), i.e until morning, just as "tserek" means day, i.e until "yereko/evening", and many others. I found this interesting that the morning star is also known as "tsaygastgh". Another interesting word, among others is "ayguts" which is the funerary ritual the morning after the burial. (brings to mind the visitation of Mary and her entourage at Jesus' tomb). I found "egbarev/egparev" kind of amusing. It is the custom of the newlyweds and the musical band climbing on top of the roof to greet the dawn with song and dance. Arevapasht?? :)

According to Ajarian the root has not been definitely established but judging from further uses one would conclude that the original root would be "eg" as in "eguts", tomorrow. To illustrate this he further invokes the German word "morgen" which meams both morning and tomorrow.

 

As to Aygek, it was a monastery about 70 km west of Marash in Tongala. According to this source at the present there are two Catholic churches at the site that are surrounded by... you guessed,.. vineyards.

 

Yes Vardan, the preacher, fabulist and social critic was born in the Armenian populated village of Marata in the Dluk region of Assyria, hence one of hist nicknames Maratatsi. Also known as Amtetsi, from Amit (Malatia). During 1198 he was invited to the coronation of Levon II, but later on, as Nairi indicates above, he is forced to leave for unknown and mysterious reasons, subsequently ends up at the convent of Aygek in the Toskh Valley of the black Mountains that was didtinguished by its high emphasis of viticulture.

As we said above his self exile to monastic life is not explained but one could conclude why considering some of his sermons, fables,letters and social commentary. At a certain point he took on the aristocracy, landlords and the business people and berated them viciously. In his sermons he would condemn the sins of the day and the atmosphere of corruption, attacking the feudal lords, the merchants, the money lenders as usurers, cheats and loan sharking respectively. He would expose how all of the above were depriving the widows and orphans, how they were using common people as laborers without adequate compensation, how the money lenders were robbing the people, and how the merchants were adulterating their merchadise as the jeweler and goldsmith was cutting their gold and silver with common metals aand underweighing, how the dairy merchant was diluting his milk with water just as the wine merchant. Even though he would scold and berate the perpetrators and threaten them an eternal life of suffering in hell, even though he would castigate the sinners he would never instigate the victims to an uprising and confrontation, on the contrary he would still advise them to stay calm and pursue their labor what come may. Not to forget that he would also find fault of corruption and usery with the clergy and hierarchy, how they were avaricious, greedy and materialistic and would not show any compunction depriving the poor faithful, illustrated in his work "Gogh kahana ev ayri" he writes how they would steal the widow's cow and hide it in the church on the altar behind the curtains.

 

No wonder he had to move as many times as he did!!

 

PS. Yes Nairi, aygek could very well be an abbreviation of "aygekut", harvest. Would you also consider the possibility that it may be a form of "aygik", small vineyard?

[nairi]

PS. Yes Nairi, aygek could very well be an abbreviation of "aygekut", harvest. Would you also consider the possibility that it may be a form of "aygik", small vineyard?

I guess Aygekit is another form of aygekut. Or else I thought aygeq: many vineyards/gardens. Could that be a possibility? A bit strange for a q to become a k, but knowing Armenians, anything is possible... Maybe "the coming of dawn" or "the coming of grapes"? Combination ayg and yek. Sounds more plausible than aygeq.

[Arpa]

Very good Nairi.

I did deliberately leave out that usage of the word to mean dawn so as to not overburden the subject at hand, even if I did intend to get back to it.

I knew you would notice it.

Yes "ayg" does mean dawn, morning. Even though it is seldom used as is, the more commonly used forms are "tsayg"(night), i.e until morning, just as "tserek" means day, i.e until "yereko/evening", and many others. I found this interesting that the morning star is also known

Just to dispel nd anticipate another confusion;

Above we said that the root for "ayg" as in dawn/arshaluys seems to be "eg" corroborated by such words as "eguts/tomorrow". More often than not the latter word is spelled with the 7th letter E even if in some instances, more comonly in some regional vernaculars it is spelled beginning with the 5th letter E/YE(ch), Now that I think about it I suspect that this fact eluded Ajarian when he presented the case as being spelled with the 7th letter. One may be tempted to ascribe this to Soviet orthography where the 7th letter has all but diappeared, it is doubtful that Ajarian was affected by it as in other cases where the 7th letter is involved he does use it, and that the major part of his work was before sovietization.

To further anticipate a debate that "eg" spelled with the 7th letter has already been trademarked, so to speak, to mean "female". This further asserts that "eg" as the root of "ayg" was/is spelled with the 5th letter mainly based on Ajarian's postulate that the 7th letter was not originally intended to be pronounced as E as erku but somewhere between it and I. In other words, when in doubt whther a word is spelled with the 5th or the 7th letter consider this. All words that have the 7th letter E will cahnge to I in declension. Some examples and the most common- ishun mets@ akhor@ mortsanq :)- esh becomes ishu and ishuk, eg becomes igakan, ser -sirakan/sirayin as opposed to serr, sex, gender which stays as serrakan/serrayin, shen becomes shinakan/shinarar, shek into shikaher(flame/red-hair) and ser as in race, seed(serm) and as in cream stays as ser no matter what usage, men (sole/one) becomes minak/miayn/miyaynak etc.

Go ahead and argue that therefor "ereko" as in evening should also be spelled with the 7th letter since it turns into iriknamut/iriknayin/irikun...

Good point!!!

Which brings to mind another word that may be a subject (no pun intended) of debate is "irakan/true". No irav/irakan/iravunq are not derived from er converted to ir in declensions. Irav, irakan etc. are based on "ir" more commonly used as (plural)"irq" (kharbertsis and sebastatsis don't use "ban"[word] to mean "thing". they use "ir/irq") to mean thing, object therefore irav, iravatsi and irakan basically mean "objective" i.e based on fact.

 

Hey Gams! Why do we call lawyers "iravaban" since they are the furthest from being irav/truthful and iravakan/objective. :)

[Arpa]

I guess Aygekit is another form of aygekut. Or else I thought aygeq: many vineyards/gardens. Could that be a possibility? A bit strange for a q to become a k, but knowing Armenians, anything is possible... Maybe "the coming of dawn" or "the coming of grapes"? Combination ayg and yek. Sounds more plausible than aygeq.

Nairi! You devil!

Once again you caught me... ahem.. with my briches down:)

Not really since I was compsing this item as you wrote it.

It did occur to me that kut, to harvest had to do with kat (milk) and kit as in havkit(egg).

In fact if one would look up "gut" in the Armatakan it refers one to "kit", under which all the words that contain kut/kat/kit are treated as having "kit" as a base. Btw, Ajarian does not even treat "kat" as in milk but his monograph for "kat" is treated as the root for "katil/drop". Does this mean that kat as in milk is based on tha fact that it "drops" from the cow? :) No! It seems like all the forms to mean harvest be it kut as in aygekut, kat and kit are all based on "kit". Btw, he also has "aygekit(q)" (I didn't know this) as a substitute to "aygekut". We further read, besides explaining "havkit" dzu/egg) as "havu kit" and milk as "kovkit". Let me back pedal a little bit and mention that Ajarian also indicates "kut" may also be the original base of "kit". Confused? So am I. Some other interesting words that derive from the rootword are "ktel/to milk", "kteghen/dairy" (among which egg, butter, cheese and matsun etc.), "ktan" as in "ktan kou" *** dairy/milk cow and "ktots" the month of September (undersatandably).

 

***You will notice that I spelled cow as "kou" and not "kov" since in classical orthography the word is spelled ending in hyun which at one time was meant to sound like the English W or at best, the Latin U considering that we used it in combination with ayb to give the sound of O as in "aur/or/day". Further, chicken/hen is more correctly spelled ending with the hyun as well to sound like haw (like the English "how") which begs the question if the hav which gererically means bird is in kinship with the English word "fowl". H and F are interchangeable, consider "fereshteh" and "hreshtak" among others.

 

So! Nairi! Can we also use aygekit in place of aygekut, and at the risk of laying, another egg :) hau-kut instead of hau-kit? :)

[nairi]

We've pilgrimaged from Aygestan to havi kat and havi khelq I guess we might as well continue

 

Hav of course also means ancestor. Apparently it also means uncle. I found this here:

 

Uncle comes via Anglo-Norman uncle and late Latin aunculus from Latin avunculus `mother's brother, maternal uncle' (source of English avuncular) This was a diminutive noun derived from the prehistoric base *aw- `grandparent,' and it has relatives in Latin avus `grandfather,' Welsh ewythr `uncle,' Polish wuj `uncle,' Armenian hav `uncle,' etc.

 

http://66.102.9.104/search?q=cache:Mc1wQQu...+armenian&hl=en

 

I don't have the right sources with me now to look into this further, but it got me thinking. I'm wondering how "hav" and "hen" are related. Also "aqlor" and "cock" (no need to get offensive ). I might check out the library one of these days and see. We know that most farm words are all related via Proto-Indo-European, I'm just wondering how the phonetic changes took place. Grimm's Law doesn't seem helpful when it comes to Armenian.

 

As for harvest, I'm surprised the word doesn't exist in Armenian. It sounds so Armenian... Maybe I'm looking in the wrong place, or maybe I'm thinking of hamest, another word that we're not worthy of

[Arpa]

We've pilgrimaged from Aygestan to havi kat and havi khelq I guess we might as well continue

It's allright as this thread is under the subject topic of Language.

 

It is beyond me though when a thread about the fable/legend of Noah's ark turns into a theological debate about believeing and not believing in God. The reason I stopped responding to those inane arguments when my indignation about caricaturizing God in such inane stories as the Flood which is totally counter to His dignity and His laws of physics that He Himself devised became a test of faith. Faith in what? KIndergarten stories?

Enough said!!

As to how chicken/hen becomes hau/hav, generically to mean bird, consider "avis/avian/avery" and even the French word for airplane "avion", flyer.

 

I have to look into the "hav" meaning uncle.

[Arpa]

As for harvest, I'm surprised the word doesn't exist in Armenian. It sounds so Armenian... Maybe I'm looking in the wrong place, or maybe I'm thinking of hamest, another word that we're not worthy of

Harvest= hundz, berqhavaq, berq. (The latter from ptgh-a-ber/fruitful).

 

Rmemeber Varouzhan's

 

"Hunzq k@ zhoghvem magaghov...

Lusnyak@ yars e,

Akos akos man galov.

Sirats@s hars e"."

 

Thank you for helping me learn a couple of more words.

Yes hau/hav does mean grandfather.

In fact Ajarian has three entries, all spelled identically as hau/hav.

We already showed how it mean bird.

 

First let me get the third one out of the way.

 

The third entry for "hau" is supposed to mean "skizb", "tsayr" as in beginning and edge. At the end we will see that it may indeed mean edge but... with a twist

It is supposed to be a native Armenian word, seldom used as itself. It is supposed to be in common with the Greek "pavu" or "pau" which in turn was borrowed into the Latin and appears as "pausa" i.e dadar/rest, verj/ending.

As indicated above, even though in the Armenian it is commonly used as skizb/beginning it is in fact edge, the other edge, the end.

 

As to Hau/hav to mean grandparent, more often used as the male one. Soukiasian does say, and as expected they spell it with Vev ending, it means pap, mets hayr, jojpap.

Ajarian lists it as a native Armenian word fron proto-IE "auo", which appears in the Latin as "avus" as grandfather and "avia" as grandmother.

Now that I see this it all makes sense that in the English "aval" means "relating to a grandparent or grandparents". I have known this word mainly to mean grandmaternal.

 

Shut me up now!!

Tell me to go tend to my cockle shells and silver bells! Not to forget the pretty ladies in a row! :)

[nairi]

As to how chicken/hen becomes hau/hav, generically to mean bird, consider "avis/avian/avery" and even the French word for airplane "avion", flyer.

Silly me. I didn't even think of that one. Thanks!

 

And speaking of Noyan Tapan, what about havatq? Were our gods chicken? Or just the people? Sorry, I couldn't resist that one

 

Anything on hav being uncle? Thanks for looking up the rest. Don't you just love reference books? You look up one thing and you ending up learning 10.

 

And speaking of edges, is hav also this?

 

http://www.armeniaweek.com/may242002/photos/farming_2_s.jpg

 

You know the little "paths" where the seeds go to be covered with sand. (Note that the picture is of an Armenian farmer ).

 

Vay indz, vay qez Not only has this become a havi bun, but I bet the cooked chickens are laughing too Time to tend the garden.