0021-1818_islam_98-1-2-i-259

100 C. Edmund Bosworth
It is also relevant for our purposes here to note two recently-published further
titles on Turkish onomastic that the present writer was unable to take into account
for his two earlier articles on Turkish names of early Ghaznavid history.
In the posthumous work of the Turkish historian Faruk Sümer (d. 1995), Türk devletleri
tarihinde ¸sahıs adları, the author records names occurring in the sources
from the time of the first Türk empire to that of the Mamluks and the pre-Ottoman
sultanate Anatolian beyliks, sometimes, though unfortunately not very often,
with etymological explanations. 4 But above all, we now have, thanks to the editorial
labours of Imre Baski and the patronage of the Denis Sinor Institute for
Inner Asian Studies at Indiana University, Bloomington, the long-awaited Onomasticon
turcicum of the late László Rásonyi, based on some 60,000 entries and
their explanations gathered together by this scholar over several decades but
which declining health, increasing blindness and death in 1984 unfortunately
rendered him never able to publish; this monumental work replaces the bare list
which we previously had of some 25,000 names furnished by Baski, A preliminary
index to Rásonyi’s Onomasticon turcicum, Debter – Deb-ther – Debtelin. Materials
for Central Asiatic and Altaic Studies 6, Budapest 1986. 5
There thus emerges the particular richness of Turkish onomastic, sc. ethonyms
or tribal names and anthroponyms or personal names; virtually every
Turkish vocable seems capable of being utilised here. Works such as those mentioned
above enable us to trace the development of this onomastic from the
time of the diplomatic and commercial contacts of the Byzantines with the first
Türk empire in the sixth century (the material here being magisterially studied
by Gyula Moravcsik in his Byzantinoturcica, East Berlin 1958, especially Vol. II,
Sprachreste der Türkvölker in den byzantinischen Quellen) and the period of
the Orkhon inscriptions up to the nineteenth century (and perhaps one should
extend this into the twentieth century and note Kemal Atatürk’s requirement of
European-style surnames and family names for citizens of Republican Turkey,
which has resulted in some imaginative name creations).
Name-giving has always played an important role in human existence,
often accompanied by special ceremonies and celebrations, and amongst many
peoples – certainly amongst the Turks – it may be considered as an aspect of folk
4 I am grateful to Professor Carole Hillenbrand (Edinburgh University) for first bringing this
work to my attention, and to Dr Benedek Péri (Budapest University) for procuring me a copy of it
from Turkey.
5 Again, my thanks to Dr Péri for sending me a copy of this last work. For more detailed discussions
of recent developments in Turkish lexicographical and onomastic studies, see Bosworth,
“Notes on some Turkish names”, 299–302, and idem, “Further notes on the Turkish names”,
443–5.