Names of Cereals in the Turkic Languages - Wydział Filologiczny UJ

arleyhordeum l.Barley was one of the first domesticated cereals in the world. The oldest grains of spelt arethought to be nine thousand years old, and have been found in Jarmo, Kurdistan fromwhere it probably originates. Its cultivation had spread westwards from this region aroundthe 5 th millennium BC, to Mespotamia, Egypt and elsewhere.Domesticated barley (Hordeum vulgare) is believed to have originated from the eastern partof the Central Asian Centre, from where it spread West and South-West, i.e. to India, Persia,Mesopotamia, Syria and Egypt, and later to Greece and Italy (4 th c. BC) and even further.The area between Siberia and the Pacific is now used for the cultivation of barley, butthe plant was only introduced there in the 19 th c.Compared to other cereals, especially to wheat which is equally old, or perhaps evenolder, barley has very few varieties: 29 species, including 16 stable, but they already existedin the second half of the 4 th millennium BC. In the ancient world, barley was very popular;almost every higher culture cultivated it.Names for ‘barley’ are most uniform in the Turkic languages. Almost all languages havethe word arpa, and all the other names only have a very limited range. Interestingly, barleyis quite often identified or confused with oats, and while Tel. sula ‘barley’ < ‘oats’, all theother examples of this confusion display just the opposite direction of development. Thisis understandable given the chronology of domestication of these two cereals – cf. commentaryon julaf (point 2), and arpakan and harva ‘oats’, and footnote 1.forms:apa → arpaarba → arpaarbaj → arpaarpaarpä → arpaarpaganarpagān → arpaganarpakan → arpaganarva → arpaarvaj → arpalanguages:Az.: arpaBlk.: arpaBrb.: ašBšk.: arpaasaš → aserpe → arpaharva → arpajačmeńköčeköže → köčenečimien → ǯehimiennehimien → ǯehimienńečimien → ǯehimienCom.: arpaCrm.: arpaCTat.: arpaČag.: arpańesemen → ǯehimienorpa → arpasulaša‘īrtak-takurpa → arpažesemen → ǯehimienǯehǯehimien → ǯehimienǯesemen → ǯehimienČuv.: orpa, urpaGag.: arpaKar.: arpaKarC: arpa