Wednesday, August 14, 2013

KARTVELIANS IN CRIMEA

About 500 years after Herodotus Strabo places the Georgi people in Crimea. At a close look the land proves to be highly Kartvelian.

First of all, it's the very Southern point of the peninsula, that has extraordinary concentration of kartvelisms, which, we must say, shouldn't have preserved at all after waves of Greek, Tartar and Russian occupations with total renaming of the toponyms every time.

The key place is a village of Katsiveli, which clearly comes from the Kartvelian word კახვი [katsvi] - seaberry - formed with the help of the adjective suffix -el.

To prove that seaberry is typical for Crimea, here is a quote:

"...Not far from Sudak... there were blossoming wonderfully the bushes of seaberry, which the Crimeans for some reason call 'lokh'...".
http://novaya.com.ua/?/articles/2009/06/16/164752-15

Actually, the berry was called seaberry for loving the sea coasts since the sea salt keeps off the competitive plants, in the shade of which the seaberry can't grow:

"...it is largely confined to sea coasts where salt spray off the sea prevents other larger plants from out-competing it...".

And Katsiveli is situated exactly on a sea coast.

Next to this village there is another one named Mukhalatka. A remarkable toponym that has both the Kartvelian toponymic suffix -at and Kartvelian root 'mukh' meaning 'oak'. Are there oaks in Mukhalatka? Yes, of course:

"... It is significant that the patriarchs of Downy Oak-trees with trunks of 5-5.5 m around are rising now mainly in areas of forest parks of the Southern coast of Crimea: in Tesseli, Foros, Molas, Mukhalatka, Yasnaya Polyana, Livadia, Oreanda, Upper Yalta, Nikitsky Botanical Garden ... ".

To nail it down, let's recall the village of Mukhleti that existed in XIX century in Kuareli district of Georgian Kakheti. By the way, Crimean Mukhalatka in the same XIX century bore a name of Mukhlatka, which brings it even closer to Mukhleti.

And the third toponym in this place is the mount Pilyaki next to both villages. In Kartvelian language the word ფილაკი [pilaki] means 'a small plate/slab'.

These are not the only Kartvelian toponyms in Crimea. Over Balaklava there is a mount named Asketi, which can be translated literally from Kartvelian as 'the land of aski'. The root 'aski' is present in several words: ასკილი [askili], dog-rose (from it we can assume that 'aski' used to mean kind of 'thorn'); ასკეხი [asketsi] - hundredfold; or even ასკვითია [askvitia] - Scythia.

On the Southern coast you will find a famous resort of Alupka, which used to be called Alubika, clearly relating to Alubes, the key Kartvelian nation in our research (see the corresponding entry).

A famous and long spit in the East of the peninsula - Arabat Strelka - contains a clear Kartvelian (Laz) toponym of 'Arabat(i)' - 'the land of Arabes'. We know that Arabes in their conquest reached some 'Slav river'. So, why not assume an Arabe outpost in Crimea that supplied Cafa with coffee and bore that wonderfully Kartvelian name?

                               Sudak. Crimea. Photo of Kartvelian History & Language Research Center

Some Crimean sites on Ptolemy's map produced Kartvelian surnames, like in case of Tarana - Taranashvili and Lagira - Lagirashvili:


But the most fantastic is the case of Satarche (see the following entry...).

No comments:

Post a Comment