Kok Turks (Ashinas) were Turk or Mongol?

[ceyhun82]

Besides, straight vocabulary comparisons can be rather useless. Other grammatical features of Orkhun Turkish are closer to Siberian Turkic languages than to, say, Turkmen.[/quote]


I guess you are from siberia . Thats greet. Cos i know that many of old turkic inscription's found there, that known as yenisey inscriptions. But according to the orkhon inscription(kültegin) we know that oguz tribes had close relations with Göktürks, nowadays oguz's are scattered in several countries like türkmenstan,iran,Azerbaycan,turkey. I said similarity of word that was my mistake .cos in that article wrote about using scale of first 224 word of orkhon ins. not similarity . Many of used terms in orkhon ins. Still are used by türkmens.

[H. İhsan Erkoç]

Orkhon Turkic was closest to todays Yugur (Yellow Uyghur) and southern Siberian Turkic.

Bilgekagan, that is not possible, the Qarluqs were different from the Gokturks, but the Chinese sources associated the Qarluqs with the Gokturks. Maybe the Qarluqs were a break-off from the Gokturks. But the Ashinas were surely not Qarluqs, there are no evidences for that.

[hjernespiser]

Hehe, ceyhun. No, I'm not from Siberia. I'm just someone interested in Tuva and the language. Thanks to Ihsan for articulating what I could not last night, specifically that it's the southern Siberian Turkic languages.

[Ardavarz]

By the way what do you think about the ethnonym "Türk-Sir budun" from Tonyuquq's inscription? (This is a bit away from the topic but maybe it will contribute to the problem.)

Is it possible that "Sir" is related to the people of Seres of the Western antique authors? Their country - Serica - is identified as East Turkestan/Xingjiang. They were the providers of silk for the West, hence sericum is "silk" in Latin (I think the word "silk" itself could have come from this name too). Thus maybe the predecessors of Ashinas have lived once in East Turkestan.

Or maybe it has something to do with the name of Syr Darya ("River of Syrs" or Sirs in Persian)? Maybe this tribe has given its name to the river. This seems to concur with that legend of the origin of Ashinas from a Western Hunnic prince and a she-wolf somewhere in Middle Asia.

[H. İhsan Erkoç]

I am not sure about that. It is still unclear if Sir was an ethnonym or if it was a title/nickname of the Gokturks.

[ceyhun82]

Ihsan and my other friends ! you know that we have another pronounciation for Gokturk's royal family name that is Asena. this pronounciation used by turkish leaders , historians or politicians that include Ziya Gok Alp , Nihal Atsiz and ... . in chines source we see that and many of scholares read it as Ashina. but in the old turkic inscriptions there is now evidence about Gokturk's royal family name. what reason we can show for these ? which of them can be correct ?
saygilarimla.

[H. İhsan Erkoç]

A-shi-na 阿史那 is the name written in Chinese sources; Asena was an outdated French rendering of that Chinese version. Because early Turkish Central Asian historians relied on translations from French, they got this form and it stayed in Turkish historiography.

This name does not exist in any of the Old Turkic texts as far as I know.

[ceyhun82]

Tank you very much ihsan, it was an important question for me. But What mode of transcription we can have in turkish for that? We know that tujue is chinese form of türük term in old türkish,what we can show for Ashina as you.

[H. İhsan Erkoç]

I have no idea Klyashtornyj proposed it to be the Tokharian word Assana (not sure about the exact transcription) meaning "Blue" but that doesn't seem to be very possible at all.

[Ardavarz]

If Ashinas were related somehow to Bulgarian dynasty of Asen (12th-13th century) as some scholars assume (via Khazars or Kumans perhaps) we can look for hints in various renderings of their name:

Old Church-Slavonic: Asen', Asan' also Ase^an' and Ōse^an' (the latter suggests that initial A was long since it usually tends to become labialized in such position like f.e. in Tatar and Persian).

Greek: Asan

Latin: Assanus, Assanius, Assen, Azen.

[Temüjin]

there's no 'Z' in latin though...

[H. İhsan Erkoç]

I thought Asen would be related with Old Turkic Äsän meaning "Goodness, health, etc."

[Ardavarz]

It might be. The main problem is rather if Asen is the same as Ashina?
I think it's not unlikely assumption.

[H. İhsan Erkoç]

Hmm I don't know, but I also don't think it's much possible.

[ceyhun82]

I think Türkolog's must fucus on this matter. Cos it is the family name of peoples that had ability to peresent their nation by using the name of Türk for 1st.