Cool site; too bad it doesn't have those Turkish placenames written with Turkish spelling (though I'm sure the English orthography is easier to understand for the majority of readers. "Buyuk Anafarta" and "Kuchuk Anafarta" should be "Büyük Anafart" and "Küçük Anafarta," respectively. It only stood out to me because I immediately recognized 'küçük' as a loan from Persian کوچک (kuchak, meaning small), which makes me wonder if 'büyük' is an indigenous Turkish word, or if it's derived from Persian بزرگ (bozorg, meaning big).
Posted by Eskandar Jabbari at August 29, 2006 04:56 AMGood question. The Old Turkish word was ulugh, so büyük could well be a borrowing, but it doesn't look much like bozorg. Anybody know the history of the word?
Posted by language hat at August 29, 2006 08:25 AMI'm not sure küçük is a Persian loan. A search for "small" (the link is too big, and I don't know how to put it in here in a tidy manner) has thrown the following (I'm skipping the usual suspects and including only Siberian languages):
Khakassian: kǝčǝg
Oyrat: kičü
Yakut: kuččuguj
Dolgan: kuččuguj, küččügüj
The root is certainly there.
Another search - for "high" - has these:
Proto-Turkic: *bEdü-k
Altaic etymology:
Meaning: 1 big 2 high
Russian meaning: 1 большой, крупный 2 высокий
Old Turkic: bedük 1 (Orkh., OUygh.)
Karakhanid: beđük 1 (MK, KB)
Turkish: büjük 1
Tatar: bijek 2
Middle Turkic: bejik 1, 2 (Abush., Sangl.)
Uzbek: bujuk 1, 2
Uighur: büjük 1, 2
Sary-Yughur: bezɨk 1
Azerbaidzhan: böjük 1
Turkmen: bejik 2
Khakassian: pözǝk 1, 2
Shor: mözük 2
Oyrat: bijik 2
Halaj: bidik/büdük 1
Tuva: bedik 2
Tofalar: bedik 2
Kirghiz: bijik 1
Kazakh: bijik 1
Noghai: bijik 1
Bashkir: bejek 1
Balkar: mijik 1
Gagauz: bǖk 1
Karaim: büjüḱ 1
Karakalpak: bijik 1
Kumyk: bijik 2
You can run a search for yourself:
http://starling.rinet.ru/cgi-bin/query.cgi?basename=\data\alt\turcet&root=config&morpho=0
I's say the direction of borrowing was opposite.
Posted by juha at August 29, 2006 04:07 PMCertainly looks like it! Here's the page with 'small' (scroll down) and here's the one with 'big' (and that's a very useful site - thanks).
Posted by language hat at August 29, 2006 08:07 PM