JOURNAL OF EURASIAN STUDIES

January-March 2011 JOURNAL OF EURASIAN STUDIES Volume III., Issue 1.
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linguists, even though they may be of exact match. 35 There can be no better proof that this word is related
to the Hunnisch language than the fact that next to the Turkic, Mongolian, Hungarian languages it can be
found in the old Bulgarian as well, where in the form of ‘itzig’ it means ‘saint’. 36 In Sanskrit it means ‘good’,
‘well-doer’, ‘friendship’, ‘good action’, ‘good will’. 37
Horde, the capital of the supreme king
In ancient times among the Central and Inner Asian people the word ‘horde’ was a very important
term. In Clauson’s dictionary the word ‘ordu’ is a Mongolian loanword to the Turks with the meaning
royal home and palace. The horde was a center for the tribal leader, and later for the khagans, or supreme
kings. Uchiraltu thinks that the word can be found among Huns, as the Chinese recorded: ‘yu-tu’. For the
early Turkic peoples 'orta' meant ‘medium’, ‘center’. 38 The Russians still use it as ‘gorod’. 39 The word for
town is pronounced as ‘ghordas’, therefore it can be connected to the Horde. So it is doubtful that some
Hungarian toponyms ending in ‘-grad’ would be of Slavic origin, but rather we should consider it as the
heritage of the Huns. Uchiraltu connects the Horde with the ‘yurt’ (accommodation, a round tent), which
meant the same center, but later became a name for family ‘house’.
Milk
Uchiraltu reconstructed the Hunnish word ‘dong / tong’, with the meaning of ‘milk’, and explained its
relation to the Mongolian ‘sün’ or milk. He also noted that in the Eastern Mongolian gorlos dialect the
word for milk is ‘tun’ or ‘tün’, because they used ‘t’ instead of ‘s’. This data may be important for the
Hungarians as well. Gábor Bálint de Szentkatolna guessed parallels between the Mongolian and
Hungarian ‘milk’ but he could not find completely convincing explanation of how they relate to each
other. Uchiraltu now provided the explanation. Indeed, the Hungarian Czuczor-Fogarasi etymological
dictionary provided something valuable: ‘milk’ in the Szekler dialect is ‘té’. In the Central Asian Chagatai
language we find the word ‘sai’ which has relationship to the above mentioned Hunnish expression. 40 The
Chagatai language contains many words, which can be found in archaic Mongol. According to the
etymological dictionary the word ‘milk’ in the Hungarian language is an Iranian loan-word, and comes
from the ancient Iranic verb ‘dhayati’, which means ‘sucking’. It is also associated with the word for nurse,
as the nurse and breast milk are closely linked. The Mongolian data also shows a similar agreement, as
the word ‘number’ means ‘milking’ and ‘full’ means ‘twice suckled lamb’. I am not a linguist, but because of
the high degree of similarity, I believe that both the Iranian and Mongolian forms may be related to the
Hungarian, which means that this word also goes back to a common source, i.e. the Huns. This is all the
35 The Hungarian word ’hit’ is an unknown word for some Hungarian linguists. The ancient Turkic and Mongolian languages
contained the beginning h’ sound, that is why the ancient form could be ’hid / hit’.
36 Dobrev, 2006. 347.
37 Éva Aradi’s information. Regarding the Indian words we must regard them as ancient Scythian and/or Hunnic heritage.
38 Clauson, 1972. 203.
39 Clauson, 1972. 203.
40 TESz III. 876.
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