Turkic Peoples – Name Etymology
Posted by Sjur Cappelen Papazian on November 30, 2013
The first known mention of the term Turk it was applied to a Turkic group was in reference to the Göktürks in the 6th century. A letter by Ishbara Qaghan to Emperor Wen of Sui in 585 described him as “the Great Turk Khan.” The Orhun inscriptions (735 CE) use the terms Turk and Turuk.
The Chinese Book of Zhou (7th century) presents an etymology of the name Turk as derived from “helmet”, explaining that taken this name refers to the shape of the Altai Mountains.
Previous use of similar terms are of unknown significance, although some strongly feel that they are evidence of the historical continuity of the term and the people as a linguistic unit since early times. This includes Chinese records Spring and Autumn Annals referring to a neighbouring people as Beidi.
There are references to certain groups in antiquity whose names could be the original form of “Türk/Türük” such as Togarma, Turukha, Turukku and so on. But the information gap is so substantial that we cannot firmly connect these ancient people to the modern Turks.
According to Persian tradition, as reported by 11th-century ethnographer Mahmud of Kashgar and various other traditional Islamic scholars and historians, the name “Turk” stems from Tur, one of the sons of Japheth (Turan).
Tūrān iis the Persian name for a region around Central Asia, literally meaning “the land of the Tur”. As described below, the original Turanians are an Iranian tribe of the Avestan age. As a people the “Turanian” are one of the two Iranian peoples both descending from the Persian Fereydun but with different domains and often at war with each other.
In fact according to the Shahnameh’s account, at least 1,500 years later after the Avesta, the nomadic tribes who inhabited these lands were ruled by Tūr, who was the emperor Fereydun’s elder son.
The association with Turks is also primarily based on the Shahnameh’s geographical account where Turkification of Central Asia was partially completed during that time.
Tur/Turaj (Tuzh in Middle Persian) is the son of emperor Fereydun in ancient Iranian mythology. In the Shahnameh, he is identified with the Turks although culturally, there is no relationship between Turanians of the Shahnameh and the culture of ancient Turks.
In 19th century and early 20th century discourse, now obsolete, Turan was primarily an ideological term designating Altaic and Uralic languages.
According to the assumptions of the Turkologists Peter Golden and András Róna-Tas, the term Turk could be rooted in the East Iranian Saka language.
However, it is generally accepted that the term “Türk” is ultimately derived from the Old-Turkic migration-term “Türük” or “Törük”, which means “created”, “born”, or “strong”.
“Tùrk” would find a suitable Turkic etymology, being conflated with the word tùrk, which means one in the prime of youth, powerful, mighty” (Rona-Tas 1991,10-13).
It seems hard to avoid the conclusion that the Tùrks, per se, had strong connections with — if not ultimate origins in — Irano-Tocharian east Turkistan.
They, or at least the Ashina, were migrants to southern Siberia-northern Mongolia, where we seem to find the major concentration of Turkic-speaking peoples.
There are a considarable number of Tocharian and Iranian loan words in Old Turkic — although a good number of these may have been acquired, especially in the case of Soghdian terms, during the Tùrk impérial period, when the Soghdians were a subject people, an important mercantile-commercial element in the Tùrk state, and culture-bearers across Eurasia. It also should be noted here that the early Tùrk rulers bore names of non-Turkic origin.
Turukkaeans (Turukkum, Turukku) were an ancient near eastern people in the northern parts of Mesopotamia during the Bronze Age. In particular, they inhabited the Urmia basin and the valleys of northwestern Zagros Mountains. Turukkum appears to have consisted of a group of kingdoms whose populations were of mixed stock, perhaps predominantly Hurrian but with significant Semitic components.
The Turukkaeans were long considered to be a semi-nomadic tribal people who repeatedly raided the cities and kingdoms of northern Mesopotamia. But according to Eidem and Laessøe, evidence provided by the Shemshara archives indicated that Turukkum was made up of a number of polities with a relatively complex political organization and systems of noble lineage sharing territorial power.
The kingdom of Itabalhum seems to have been the most important of these polities. Itabalhum (Itab/pal) was an ancient kingdom of the Turukkaeans in the middle part of the Bronze Age. It is located in the northwestern parts of Zagros mountain region.
The kingdom was attested in the texts of Shemshara (Shusharra). As viewed from Shemshara the Turukkean kingdom of Itabalhum appears to be a peripheral polity, with a largely Mesopotamian material culture.
The Turukkaeans were a constant threat to the security of the Old Assyrian kingdom during the reign of Shamshi-Adad I (1796 – 1775 BC) and his son and successor Ishme-Dagan. The name of Hammurabi’s 37th year records his defeat of Turukku.
The etymology of Turkey (Tur-ki-a), or Turukki (Tur-uk-ki), but it can also come from (Tu-ru-ki) – Tocharians (To-cha-ri-ans). Togarma, son of Gomer, brother of Ashkenaz (Indo-Iranians) and Riphat (Indo-Aryans) answering to Armenia, and Ar-ma (Armenia), but also Tocharians (Tok-ar-ians), from Toka (tu-ka), Sanskrit for tribe or race. Togarma, also answering to Armenia from To-ka, Sanskrit for tribe or race, and Ar-ma (Armenia). At the same time Armenians comes from Aram, son of Shem.
The Tocharians or Tokharians (/təˈkɛəriənz/ or /təˈkɑriənz/) were inhabitants of medieval oasis city-states on the northern edge of the Tarim Basin (modern Xinjiang, China). Their Tocharian languages (a branch of the Indo-European family) are known from manuscripts from the 6th to 8th centuries AD, after which they were supplanted by the Turkic languages of the Uyghur tribes.
Some scholars have linked the Tocharians with the Afanasevo culture of eastern Siberia (c. 3500 – 2500 BC), the Tarim mummies (c. 1800 BC) and the Yuezhi of Chinese records, most of whom migrated from western Gansu to Bactria in the 2nd century BC and then later to northwest India where they founded the Kushan Empire.
The Kushan Empire was an empire in South Asia originally formed in the early 1st century CE under Kujula Kadphises in the territories of ancient Bactria around the Oxus River (Amu Darya), and later based near Kabul, Afghanistan.
The Kushans spread from the Kabul River Valley to defeat other Central Asian tribes that had previously conquered parts of the northern central Iranian Plateau once ruled by the Parthians, and reached their peak under the Buddhist emperor Kanishka (127–151), whose realm stretched from Turfan in the Tarim Basin to Pataliputra on the Gangetic Plain.”
The Kushans were one of five branches of the Yuezhi confederation, a possibly Tocharian, Indo-European nomadic people who had migrated from the Tarim Basin and settled in ancient Bactria.
Turkic Peoples – Name Etymology
Dienekes’ Anthropology Blog: On Tocharian origins
Cradle of Civilization 
Leave a comment