Stachowski, Marek

Jagiellonian Univeristy Repository

European ‘Balkan(s)’, Turkic ‘bal(yk)’ and the problem of their original meanings

613European Balkan(s), Turkic bal(yk) and the Problem of Their Original MeaningsMarek StachowskiJagiellonian University, PolandSince most European students of Turkic linguistics start their university training with a course of Turkish they first learn that the Turkish word balyk ‹balık› means ‘fish.’ It therefore stands to reason that they feel most surprised when they are told in an Old Turkic course that balyk means both ‘wall’ and ‘town, city’ in Old Turkic. One can hardly understand how three meanings as different as ‘fish’ and ‘wall’ or ‘town’ are expressed by one and the same word, and thus the idea immediately suggests itself that at least one of these words is probably (or certainly) borrowed into Old Turkic from a foreign language that is apparently unknown to the student. Besides, there is only one possible phonetic association, that with Turkish bal ‘honey’ but this does not seem to make much sense.Also a look into ÈSTJa II does not solve the problem. First of all, the difference between Turkic balyk ‘wall; town’ and bālyk ‘fish’ (ÈSTJa II 59) is somewhat artificial. One cannot see why the former word should be read with a short vowel if, in the Arabic script, only one attestation without elif (i.e. ‹bliq›) and as many as six notations with elif (i.e. ‹bāliq› ~ [twice:] ‹bālq› for bālyk, ‹bāliḫ› ~ ‹bālḫ› for balyh, and ‹bāliġ› for balyg) are adduced in ÈSTJa. Of course, a graphematic argument cannot be considered conclusive; nevertheless, this proportion does not suggest the reading with a short -a-, as opposed to bālyk ‘fish.’ Rather, one is tempted to posit a long -ā- in both words. But, then, the question arises whether we have to deal Kim Juwon and Ko Dongho eds. Current Trends in Altaic Linguistics: A Festschrift for Professor Emeritus Seong Baeg-in on his 80th Birthday. Seoul: Altaic Society of Korea, 2013.614    Current Trends in Altaic Linguisticswith polysemy (bālyk ‘1. wall; town; 2. fish’) or homonymy (bālyk 1 ‘wall; town’; bālyk 2 ‘fish’). Because the vowel length in these words can be also secondary (see [1] and [4] below) we are going to write just ‹a› and to ignore the question of vowel length in what follows.Three ideas suggested by four scholars concerning the origins of balyk ‘fish’ have been published hitherto. The oldest is by László Rásonyi who connected this word with the verb balk(y)- ‘to shimmer, glimmer, twinkle.’ Èrvand V. Sevortjan is absolutely right when dismissing this explanation as morphologically well nigh impossible (ÈSTJa II 60) since a derivative of balk(y)- would have been *balkyk rather than balyk. Martti Räsänen (VEWT 61b) does not, in fact, suggest any solution at all because his reconstructions *baluk or *balyk say nothing about the original structure and meaning of the word (in essence, they do not even convey any real information about its original phonological make-up) and the rapprochement of the Turkic word with both Kalmuk balγă zaγăsn ‘eine Fischart; ? Brassen’ and Manchu falu ‘eine Art Brassen’ does not help a Turkologist in any way. The third etymology was first suggested by S. P. Tolstov (1947; cited after ÈSTJa II 60) who thought of a connection of balyk ‘fish’ with words like bal or bar ‘water reservoir, esp. one of stagnant water on swampy and clay soil.’ È. V. Sevortjan picked up this idea, pursued it with further examples (e.g. Kazakh dial. bal ‘small ditch’ ~ balgy ‘foam, scum’; Azeri dial. balax ‘sedge at a pond or stream bank,’ Yakut baltyj- ‘to churn up water,’ Kirghiz balčylda- ‘to squelch in water’) and concluded that a nominal-verbal root *√bal(-) must have existed in Proto-Turkic whose nominal variant is represented by Kazakh dial. bal ‘small ditch’ (ÈSTJa II 60). The problem, however, is that the verbal variant *bal- is not reflected as such in any Turkic language.As for balyk ‘wall; town,’ a popular opinion is that this is a derivative formed from a word for ‘clay.’ In ÈSTJa II 59 a word bal ‘clay’ is admittedly adduced, probably attested in Saryg Uyghur (the notation in ÈSTJa l.c. is not entirely unambiguous) but it seems to be a hapax. On the other hand, the standard words for ‘clay’ are balyk and balčyk in Turkic, both clear derivatives of *bal whose meaning must, indeed, have somehow been connected with ‘clay.’European Balkan(s), Turkic bal(yk) and the Problem of Their Original Meanings    615Clauson (1972: 335sq.) does not give any etymology at all for either of these words, this being unfortunately a standard situation rather than an exception in what he has called an etymological dictionary.For Turkic bal ‘honey’ Clauson (1972: 330a) says “[i]t is generally agreed that this is a very early l.-w. fr. [= loan-word from] some Indo-European language, dating fr. [= from] a period when m- was so unacceptable as an initial that it was replaced by b-.” This is generally a correct report on the state-of-the-art although nobody knows when this mysterious “period” began and, what is even worse, when it ended, because even Russian words borrowed into Siberian Turkic languages – a process that began only in the 17th century – were sometimes subject to the m- > b- change (cf. Russian matrác ‘mattress’ > Tuvinian matrās ~ batrās id. [Schönig 2002: 263]) but also a reverse change of b- > m- is known (e.g. Russian peč’ ‘oven’ > Tobolsk-Tatar müts id. [Anikin 2003: 448]). And this means that nobody can establish the terminus ante quem of the borrowing of the Indo-European word for ‘honey’ into Turkic, so we have no grounds to say this was a very early loanword.Worse still, what Clauson (op. cit.) says in the remainder of his entry is in no way acceptable: “The closest IE parallel is Latin mel; the Sanskrit form is madhu.” First of all, Latin mel and Sanskrit madhu are two different words so that madhu cannot just be viewed as a Sanskrit variant of Latin mel (cf., e.g., Smoczyński 2007: 382). Besides, the Proto-Indo-European form is generally reconstructed as *melit (> Hittite militt-, Greek méli, -tos id.) whereas Latin mel, mellis ‘honey’ goes back to Proto-Italic *meli. The origin and the exact mechanism of the emergence of Latin mel are still unclear and in dispute (de Vaan 2008: 370). At any rate, both the geography and the chronology of a Latin or even a Proto-Italic influence upon Proto-Turkic cannot be possibly viewed as self-evident; on the contrary, it requires proof. However, Clauson does not elaborate on this idea at all.In addition, nobody seems to have ever explained why Proto-Indo-European *-e- should have been changed into Proto-Turkic *-a-.All in all, against this background, the Indo-European origin of Turkic bal ‘honey’ appears more than highly questionable.616    Current Trends in Altaic Linguistics*     **My own opinion on the etymology and interrelations of the words presented above can be put as follows:[1]  Turkic bal ‘honey’ is a genuine Turkic word whose protoform was *bal (or, maybe, *bāl, if the notation ‹bāl› in the Arabic script in 11th century Turkic comparative dictionary by Mahmud Kashgari is to be taken literally; compare, however, Turkmen bal, not *bāl; see also [4] below). Its modern meaning ‘honey’ is secondary, the original one being rather *‘mud, clay; thick, gluey and kneadable substance.’     The word bal produced a few derivatives, and some other words were wrongly supposed, in the history of Turkic linguistics, to go back to bal ‘honey.’ Two such examples are adduced in ÈSTJa II 47, unfortunately amongst correct derivatives and without a clear explanation of their incorrectness. These are: [1a] Hungarian bálmos, Ukrainian bánuš ‘a sort of dish, resembling Rumanian mămăligă’ (although no honey is used in its production) that in reality reflects Turkish bulamaç ‘puree, mash, pulp, porridge’ < bula- ‘to roll in flour; to stir, mix’ (Stachowski 2012: 194) and [1b] Rumanian bali(e)mez ‘a very heavy howitzer’ < Turkish balyemez id. < German Faule Metze, an ironical name of a heavy howitzer in Brunswick (Kissling 1951: passim); if this Turkish word was connected with bal ‘honey’ the word balyemez would have literally meant ‘it does not eat honey’ – indeed, a weird name for a howitzer, one is inclined to ask what it is that is distinguished from a howitzer solely by the fact that does eat honey.[2]  One of the derivatives of *bal is Turkic balčyk ‘mud’ with its +čyk suffix forming diminutives that have both the standard meaning ‘small X’ and a less frequent one: ‘quasi X.’ Thus, the etymological meaning of balčyk ‘mud’ was approximately ‘quasi bal,’ that is something resembling a thick and gluey European Balkan(s), Turkic bal(yk) and the Problem of Their Original Meanings    617substance.[3]  The Turkic word for ‘wall; town’ is generally adduced as balyk or, sometimes, also baluk or balyg, at any rate, as a bisyllabic word. Mahmud Kashgari, however, attests also a monosyllabic variant balk, typical of the pronunciation of some Oghuz tribes (ÈSTJa II 59). Even if he criticizes it as incorrect we should reckon with the possibility that the vowel in the second syllable is secondary, i.e. *bal > *balk > balyk. This is, however, somewhat uncertain because an epenthetic vowel would generally be expected to become a moveable one (as, for instance, in Turkish oğul [acc. oğlu, not *oğulu] ‘son’ < Proto-Turkic *ogul < *okl < *ok > Oyrot, Tuvinian uk ‘progeny, offspring’) which is not the case with balyk ‹balık› (acc. balyğy ‹balığı› not *balgy). Thus, the protoform of this word may tentatively be suggested as *bal(y)k *‘wall made of clay’ > ‘1. wall(s) > 2. town,’ its etymological-morphological meaning being something like *‘clay-thing.’[4]  For Turkic balyk ‘fish’ I would like to suggest that the word originally concerned the tench or some other species preferring waters with muddy or clayey bottom. This meaning was generalized over the course of time, a process due to migrations of the Turkic peoples that made more and more fish genera known to them.     The fact that Turkmen bālyk and Kyzyl-Khakas pālyx point both to a long vowel in the first syllable (cf. [1] above) does not prove much because Turkic low vowels often tend to lengthening before syllables with -y- or -i-. Thus, the vowel length can be secondary in both examples, particularly in view of the fact that the length in Turkmen bālyk is not corroborated by the short vowel in Turkmen bal ‘honey.’In short: The Proto-Turkic word *bal ‘mud; clay; thick and gluey substance’ produced three derivatives (*balčyk ‘mud’; *bal(y)k ‘wall; town’; *balyk *‘(?) tench’ > ‘fish’) and then changed its meaning into ‘honey.’However, before the semantic shift of Proto-Turkic *bal took 618    Current Trends in Altaic Linguisticsplace one more derivative must have come into being, namely *balyk *‘swamp(land), marsh’ > *‘swampy forest.’ It was the latter meaning that formed a semantic basis of a new derivative: *balyk+an > balkan ‘wooded mountain(s)’ (this is the traditional translation but a collective meaning like *‘mountains with swampy forests’ is probably more correct), and this derivative lives on even today in the internationally known geographical term: the Balkan(s) (Eren 1987: 118 sq.).ReferencesÈSTJa II = Sevortjan È. V. 1978. Ètimologičeskij slovaŕ tjurkskich jazykov (Obščetjurkskie i mežtjurkskie osnovy na bukvu «B»). Moskva.VEWT = Räsänen M. 1969. Versuch eines etymologischen Wörterbuchs der Türksprachen. Helsinki.Anikin, A. E. 2003. Ètimologičeskij slovaŕ russkich zaimstvovanij v jazykach Sibiri. Novo sibirsk.Clauson, G. 1972. An etymological dictionary of pre-thirteenth-century Turkish. Oxford.Eren, H. 1987. Balkan adının kökeni. – Türk dili 429. 113-124.Kissling, H. J. 1951. Baljemez. ‒ Zeitschrift der deutschen morgenländischen Gesellschaft 101. 333-340.Schönig, C. 2002. Anmerkungen zum b ~ m-Wandel in den modernen Türksprachen. – Hau en schild I. et al. (eds), Scripta ottomanica et res altaicae, 257-275. Wiesbaden.Smoczyński, W. 2007. Słownik etymologiczny języka litewskiego, Wilno.Stachowski, M. 2012. Ein neues Wörterbuch der türkischen Lehnwörter in Balkan- und Karpa tensprachen und ukrainisch bánuš ‘Maisbrei.’ ‒ Studia etymologica cracoviensia 17(2012). 191-197.Tolstov, S. P. 1947. Goroda guzov. – Sovetskaja Ètnografija 1947/3. 71-75.de Vaan, M. 2008. Etymological dictionary of Latin and the other Italic languages. Leiden – Boston.Marek StachowskiInstitute of Oriental StudiesFaculty of PhiologyJagiellonian University in Kraków, POLAND<stachowski.marek@gmail.com>

European Balkan(s), Turkic bal(yk) and the problem of their original meanings

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