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Sakha autonym origins
Topic Started: Jul 15 2017, 07:52:27 PM (270 Views)
ren
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"The origin the name of Sakha is not clear, therefore much debated. The name "Yakut" is thought to be a Russian corruption, through Evenk (yako - a stranger), of their self name "Sakha"."
Could it be from the Saka/Scythians?
Any clues?
Edited by ren, Jul 15 2017, 07:53:13 PM.
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Ebizur
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ren
Jul 15 2017, 07:52:27 PM
"The origin the name of Sakha is not clear, therefore much debated. The name "Yakut" is thought to be a Russian corruption, through Evenk (yako - a stranger), of their self name "Sakha"."
Could it be from the Saka/Scythians?
Any clues?
In Sakha (Yakut) words that have been regularly inherited from Proto-Turkic, */j/ (y) > /s/ while */s/ > zero in the environment before a vowel. /x/ (kh) descends from an earlier */k/ ~ */q/, which were allophonic variants of a single phoneme (*/k/ occurred before non-back vowels, while */q/ occurred before back vowels). Therefore, if the Yakut endonym, Sakha, is assumed to have been inherited regularly from Proto-Turkic, we must expect it to descend from an earlier *Yaqa. Sakha means "bow" or "gun" (the Turkish cognate is yay "bow"), and -Vk ~ -Vq is a Turkic diminutive suffix, so an original semantic similarity to Iranic Sugda, Saka, etc. (i.e. Turkic "Little Bow" vs. Iranic "Shooter") is not implausible, but cognacy is. (In other words, the Yakut ethnonym might be a calque of an ancient Iranic ethnonym or vice versa, but the two ethnonyms cannot be genetically related.)

On the surface, Yakut looks like a Mongolic plural form of an earlier *YaqVn. Yakın is a Turkish word for "close, near, neighborhood, vicinity; relation, akin to; friend, friendly; connection, connected; near future; approximate" (i.e. it is semantically similar to Chinese 近 and 親), so it could be a Mongolic plural of a loanword from a Turkic language, something like "the Voisins" if -s were not also a plural-marking suffix in French. However, the Sakha word for "neighbor" is ɟukāx (the Sakha also have another word that they use to mean "neighbor" or "guest," but it appears to be a Mongolic loanword), and "near" is chugas, both of which seem somewhat similar but not regularly related to Turkish yakın since Proto-Turkic */j/ (y) should become /s/ in Sakha. (On a tangent, one might mention that the most well-known Ainu name for the Japanese people is sisam, which literally means "neighbor(s)," from the reflexive or intensive form of sam "(by one's) side, vicinity." They also called the Russians hure sisam, i.e. "red neighbor(s)." The Ainu appellation has been borrowed by the Nivkhs with the meaning "Japanese." Calling one's own group "(real/good/proper) people" and other groups "neighbors," "enemies," "bad ones," etc. seems to be common in northern Asia and America.)

The Yukaghirs also referred to the Sakha as yoqod or yaqad; the ethnonym has even been fossilized in the Yukaghir term for "horse," which is a compound that literally means "Yakut domestic.reindeer" (in which the second morpheme means specifically "domestic reindeer" as opposed to "wild reindeer"). Meanwhile, the Sakha call the Yukaghir ɟükēbil, which they follow with the word uota "fire; light" to mean "aurora borealis, northern lights" (literally, I suppose, "Yukaghir fire/light"). (By the way, Mongols call Koreans solongos "rainbows.")

I do not know the etymology, historical usage, or current semantic range of Evenk yako, but offhand I would consider it likely to be in origin a form of the same ethnonym as "Yakut," "Yoqod/Yaqad," "Sakha," etc. rather than a common noun meaning "stranger."
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ren
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Thanks. That was probably very helpful in eliminating "Sakha" as a descendant name from "Saka".
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Ebizur
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For your reference, here are some correspondence sets:

Yakut /x/ vs. Turkish /k/:
xas-/kaz-/to dig
xaar/kar/snow
xaan/kan/blood
ınax/inek/cow
bıhax/bıçak/knife

Yakut zero vs. Turkish /s/:
en/sen/thou
ağis/sekiz/eight
uu/su/water
üüt/süt/milk
ık-/sık-/to squeeze
arağas/sarı/yellow
uulaax/ıslak/wet

Yakut /s/ vs. Turkish /j/ (like English "y" in "yard"):
suol/yol/road, way
salaa-/yala-/to lick
sette/yedi/seven
sarsın/yarın/tomorrow
sıttık/yastık/pillow
sıl/yıl/year
suox/yok/not
sıa/yağ/fat, grease, oil
sulus/yıldız/star
saŋa/yeni/new

Yakut /s/ vs. Turkish /z/:
toğus/dokuz/nine
muus/buz/ice
kııs/kız/girl, daughter
tuus/tuz/salt
sulus/yıldız/star

Yakut /s/ vs. Turkish /ʃ/ (like English "sh" in "shine"):
bies/beş/five
tiis/diş/tooth
taas/taş/stone
kıs/kış/winter

Yakut /s/ vs. Turkish /ʧ/ (like English "ch" in "church"):
is-/iç- [iʧ-]/to drink
as-/aç- [aʧ-]/to open
aas/aç/hungry
üs/üç/three
balıksıt/balıkçı/fisherman

Yakut /h/ vs. Turkish /ʃ/:
ihit-/işit- [iʃit-]/to hear
kıhın/kışın/winter
kihi/kişi/human, person

Yakut /h/ vs. Turkish /ʧ/:
bıhax/bıçak/knife

Yakut /h/ vs. Turkish /z/:
uhun/uzun/long, tall
bihigi/biz/we

As you can see, the */s/ of the Proto-Turkic form has disappeared even in the Yakut reflexes for the second-person singular personal pronoun, water, and the number eight.
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black man
The Right Hand
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I won't claim to have read the two essays by Ushtinskiy in detail. I just took a short glimpse at them and could have misunderstood one or the other statement... As follows, just my superficial impressions... Feel free to correct me if I'm mistaken...

Ushinskiy and Alekseeva asscociate Sakha people with Manchu-Tungusic expressions like "Sakhalin". In such a case the expression in such a case possibly referred to people who were hunter-gatherers or people who lived in a dark, northern country or simply people who lived beyond the Amur river. And it would be in accordance with local or regional oral tradition which refers to hunter-gatherers in the Lena valley as "Sakha", too.

Alternatively, Ushinskiy points to the idea that saka could have meant "deer" in ancient Iranic language. And since there are similar endonyms to the southwest of the Altai region, Turkic-speakers might have assimilated Iranic-speakers there. That kind of region would be in accordance with the identification of the Segenut people of Buryat oral tradition with the Sakha. If so, the Sakha could have attacked (Buryat) Ekhirits together with western Mongols and the alternative Sakha endonym "Uraangkhai-sakhalar" might have something to do with actual ancestry in many Sakha. However, Buryat legends themselves might have portrayed the ancestors of the Sakha as foreign invaders because of conflicting territorial claims. Even more, "Segenut" appears to be etymologically closer to "tsagaan" than to "Sakha" or "Saka".

Apart from that, the Sakha are to the northeast of the Sayan region. And the Khakass are among those Turkic-speakers who are geographically closer to the Sakha than both southwestern Turkic-speakers and western Mongols are. That said, the (Khakass) Sagai could have their endonym from the Yeniseian-speakers who once lived in their region, too. If so, Sakha, (Khakass) Sokhkhy and (Khakass) Sagai could be associated with sangai, which means "squirrel".

Sources:
Ushinskiy 2013: "Этнонимы саха и якут"
Ushinskiy and Alekseeva 2016: "Эвенки и саха"
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Ebizur
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black man,

None of those hypotheses strikes me as being very plausible. In regard to ethnonyms referring to the Sakha people, initial /j/ (y) predominates; it is only the Yakuts in particular who call themselves "Sakha," whereas everyone else calls them Yakut, Yaqad, etc. Therefore, I would prefer an etymology that posits an earlier form *Yaqa as would be predicted by comparison of the modern Yakut language with reconstructed Proto-Turkic.

However, that does not necessarily mean that the etymon from which the ethnonym has developed is an "authentically" Turkic etymon. As long as it has been borrowed into the ancestor of the Yakut language prior to the occurrence of relevant sound changes (i.e. */j/ > /s/, */q/ > /x/), the source etymon could be a loanword from any other language. In that connection, I would mention Manchu yaha (charcoal, coal). Your idea of linking the name of the Yakuts with the concept of "black" might be sensible from the perspective of the Wu Xing (in this case, the phase of Water/Black/North/Winter/Mercury), and a semantic shift from "charcoal" > "black" is not implausible, but the form of the "Yakut" ethnonym (as opposed to Sakha specifically) is rather (para-)Mongolic. A connection with Manchu sahaliyan "black" and the name of the island that is a borrowed form of that word (i.e. Sakhalin) is less plausible because of one of the regular sound changes that I have noted in my previous posts (i.e. Proto-Turkic */s/ > zero in Yakut). The Yakuts would have had to borrow an unsuffixed form of the root, which has not been used as such in any historically recorded example of the Manchu language as far as I know, at some time after the sound change from Proto-Turkic */s/ > Yakut null had been completed.

In my opinion, it is more plausible that the ethnonym of the Sakha/Yakut has a similar origin as the name of the Zakhchin. Mongolian zakh (collar; band; hem; edge, outer limit, margin, periphery, fringe, circumscription, confine, outskirts, border, bound, brink; market, bazaar) appears to be at the root of the Mongolian ethnonym Zakhchin (< *ZaqVtin), a name used for a group of Oirats who inhabit some parts of western Mongolia at present. As for the initial /z/ of the Mongolian word, please note that words shared in common between Turkic and Mongolic (probably because of a loanword relationship) often show a correspondence of Turkic */j/ (which would become /s/ in Yakut) to Mongolic */z/: cf. Turkish yürek [jyɾɛc], Yakut sürex [syɾex], Mongolian zürkh [zyrx] "heart." (In the case of Mongolian zakh, an origin as a loanword from Proto-Turkic or an ancient Turkic language is likely, so Sakha would be directly descended from an authentic Turkic etymon within the Yakut language, whereas Yakut would be an old Turko-Mongol hybrid form.)

By the way, an autonym of the so-called Dolgan people, who speak a language very similar to that of the Yakuts, is Haka. This is cognate with Yakut Sakha (/saxa/). It seems likely to me that Proto-Turkic */j/ has, in the ancestral language of the Dolgans, undergone a series of sound shifts similar to medieval Spanish (Castilian).
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black man
The Right Hand
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Thanks, JCA. So the oral tradition (according to which there were "Sakha" hunter-gatherers) to which the author refers is probably from the Sakha themselves. Then taking a look at their oral tradition and those of their neighbours as for such demonyms (Sakha and Yakut) would be the next thing someone interested could do, couldn't it?
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