Origin of the name of River Chu

[H. İhsan Erkoç]

What is the origin of the name of the River Qu in Yedisu (Semirechie)? Is A. Zeki Velidî Togan correct in connecting it with the Shu, the legendary Turkic ruler recorded in Mahmûd of Kâshghar's dictionary as someone living at the time of Alexandros III (Alexander the Great) and fighting against him?

[aca]

We should first find out when the name Qu was first time recorded in historical sources, and which people lived in that area at the time.
Also, what was the original Turkish name of that river. According to Talat Tekin (but I'm not sure if it was him or someone else; I have to check this) the name of this river in Turkish was Bolchu (You know, Bolchu from Orkhon Inscriptions). Still, some others say that Bolchu was a name of some city.
This is not an easy question.

[H. İhsan Erkoç]

I do not think that Bolchu was Chu. First of all, Bolchu is the name of a place just west of River Irtish, near the lake Urungu. It was not a river.

[aca]

Yes, you are right. (and it wasn't Talat Tekin who sais it was Bolchu - it was someone else, but I didn't have time to search all the books)

So, we need to know when was this word first time recorded in historical sources?

One more thing... does Mahmûd of Kâshghar really say that some Turks lived there at the time of Alexander the Great? Don't you think he is exaggerating a little bit?

[H. İhsan Erkoç]

Well of course that is a purely fictious legend. He tells about the Legend of Ruler Shu, who was the ruler of the Semirechian Turks during the time of Alexandros III. When the news of Alexandros' invasion reached them, these Turks migrated eastwards but some were left behind. When Alexandros arrived, he saw them and said Turk mânand ("[They] look like Turks") so these peoples became called as Türkmen, who submitted to him. Later, some forces of Shu and Alexandros fought a skirmish, in which the warriors of Shu defeated Macedonian skirmishers; after one Turk warrior killed a Macedonian soldier, the Turk's sword also cut the Macedonian's sash carrying his gold. Seeing this, the Turks later named a nearby mountain as Altunqan (Golden Blood). Later, peace was made between these two rulers and Alexandros retreated.

This is mostly a fiction, perhaps bearing the remnants of the memories of Alexandros III's invasion of Transoxiana where he fought with the Saka. Of course, 12-13 centuries later, the Turks borrowed and modified this legend.

[aca]

This is mostly a fiction, perhaps bearing the remnants of the memories of Alexandros III's invasion of Transoxiana where he fought with the Saka. Of course, 12-13 centuries later, the Turks borrowed and modified this legend.

Yes, this really looks like an acceptable explanation.
Also Mahmûd of Kâshghar is showing us his knowledge of Persian language (I think mânand is a Persian word)

If the name of the river Chu (Qu, Shu) was the same in the time of Alex III, then it is highly unlikely that it comes from Turkish language.
But, if this name was for the first time recorded at the time when Hong-nu ruled the region, then it could be of Turkic origin. Frankly, I cannot find any connection between this word and Turkish language. Also it doesn't look Iranian to me

[H. İhsan Erkoç]

It looks very archaic to me. The name Shu does not look very Turkic either; it does not have a meaning first of all, neither Chu

[aca]

I think that the main problem here is that we don't have any written document (like some significant inscription) left by Saka tribes in that area - so we cannot make a reconstruction of that iranian language, and the earliest Turkic dialect known to us is the one from Orkhon river (VIII c.). This means that we don't know how did Turkic languages look like in times befotre Tujue.

Some linguists say that Chuvash language is probably the only trace left of Western Hiong-nu language (I agree with this), but there is a large time gap between Huns and modern Chuvashs - and also a lot of influences of Uralic languages to Chuvash.

The origin of the name Chu remains a mistery, I guess.

[H. İhsan Erkoç]

Actually we know how Old Western Turkic (the so-called "R Dialect" spoken by Oghur Turks) looked like as he have examples from that dialect; however, James Hamilton completely refuses the existence of this dialect in his article on the Uyghurs and Toquz Oghuz. Despite that, I do believe that the Oghurs spoke a separate dialect different from other Turkic peoples.

However, I also think that the Huns did not speak the Western Dialect of Old Turkic, but they might have been influenced from that. To my knowledge, the Hunnic tribes were speakers of standart Old Turkic as opposed to the Oghurs.

Talât Tekin has some nice articles about the languages of the Xiongnu and the Tabghach (Tuoba) peoples.

[aca]

Well, you have mentioned it you self - we have examples of Western Turkic dialect.
Examples can only help us to determine to which family did certain language belong to, but cannot show us the whole and exact grammatical structure of that language. Also languages of the same family can often have almost identical grammer, but a very different fund of words.

I have mentioned that the earliest Turkic dialect known to us is the one from Orkhon river - by this I mean that this is the earliest Turkic dialect that we were able to reconstruct fully (both grammer and a large part of word fund) and this language belonges to VIII century. So, we can, with certain dose of assurance claim that the Orkhon turkic dialect was the same or only insignificantly different in VI century, but we shouldn't go further than that.
As you know, Turkic peoples (presumably Huns) started to migrate westward since the I century, and at least five centuries (between I and VI) is still a period to long for us to say that the language remained the same. I mean, 500 years ago even Anatolian Turkish was not the same as modern Anatolian Turkish.

So, my point is that Orkhon Turkic dialect from VIII c., and dialects of Oghurs and other Western Turkic tribes (and Chuvash for that matter) are only descendants of the same Hiong-nu language that first time appeared in Mongolia several centuries BC. (Rene Grousset is convinced that at the time even Mongolian and Turkic tribes could understand eachothers - his point is that Altaic language family only then separated to Turkic and Mongolian groups - of course we cannot be sure)

Once I have already mentioned one example which shows how language is literally a living thing, that constantly changes and adopts it self to different lands, cultures and way of life in general - I'm sure that you know that Orkhon Turks, Kyrgyzs and Uygurs all spoke the same language in VIII-IX c. (orkhon and Yenisey inscriptions, and Irq Bitig from E. Turkestan), but in 500 years from then, they all developed into three separate languages.

And to conclude this
I didn't see Hamilton's book, but I must say that I also think that there was no separate Turkic language group. The differences in Turkic languages/dialects, i my oppinion, are in fact the result of their constant moves from East to West, and distance, meeting other cultures, and lack of contact between some groups of the same people from one to the other end of certain territory, takes its toll.

[H. İhsan Erkoç]

Well I also think the "Western Dialect" broke off from the main Turkic language body not very long ago as some assume. Because I believe that the Oghurs were nothing but the descendents of the Western Dingling. So it was at most 2,000 years ago that the accent of a group of Western Turkics started to shape slightly different from the ordinary Turkic language. Turkic linguists I have spoken say that the separations of dialects started only after the 9th-10th centuries, with the Uyghur accent of Turfan evolving into a different dialect. It was in the 9th-11th centuries when other Turkic peoples started to speak their own dialects (before that, differences were much lesser, causing us to call them "accents" instead of "dialects"). Chinese sources of 5th-8th centuries also indicate that the accents of different Turkic peoples were very similar to each other except a few locational differences.

By the way, you should find and read Hamilton's article - it's both in Frenc and in Turkish. Eventhough one can not agree fully with his views, it was an interesting read. As students of Central Asian History or Turkology, we are supposed to read and know as many different opinions as we can.

[aca]

Turkic linguists I have spoken say that the separations of dialects started only after the 9th-10th centuries, with the Uyghur accent of Turfan evolving into a different dialect. It was in the 9th-11th centuries when other Turkic peoples started to speak their own dialects (before that, differences were much lesser, causing us to call them "accents" instead of "dialects").

This is a fact which no one can dispute.
So now you see that the thing now called the Main Turkic Language group (separated in Oguz, Qypchaq, Uygur etc. dialects) was developed from Orkhon Turkic of VIII c. The linguists you have spoken to confirmed that, according to the part of your post I quoted.
So I have a question for those linguists - Why do they think that Turkic language, let us say from I to VIII c. did not separate into several dialects? - and why do they think that it started to separate only after VIII c. ?

In my oppinion, they think so because since VIII c. up to these days Turkic is a written language. It means that, since VIII c. we are able to see almost every Turkic dialect's development in written sources.
But before VIII century, there were no written Turkic language, and without standards, language changes by itself.

Your linguists are right when they say that the separations of dialects started only after the 9th-10th centuries, but this is only to be applied to dialects of modern Turkish, Azeri, Turkmen, Uzbek, Uygur, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Tatar, Altay, Tuvan etc - dialects that belong to Main Turkic Group, which started to spread over C. Asia at the time of Tujue, and after that. Also they all came from around the same region - Mongolia.

But what about earlier Turkic expansion (started by Hiong-nu). I'll just remind your linguists that when Tujue emerged for the first time, Turkic tribes have already inhabited a large territory from Hungary in the West to Mongolia in the East. They must have been separated to a number of dialects, according to all lingual rules.

So, I suggest your linguists to make a simple coordinate system whith horizontal line (space) and vertical line (time) and mark on it by simple dot every Turkic migration that happened in history. If they do so, they will discover how did it happen that dialects of the Main Turkic Group remain so similar, and how the language of Chuvashs remained isolated. Also the case of Sakha people can be explained by this graph.

If they don't know how to make this graph, just tell me, I'll be happy to help.

[H. İhsan Erkoç]

Ok, I will discuss this matter with them.

[BAWIR$AQ]

admin said:

Semirechian Turks

OMG, this sounds awful

As a native of Jetisu ("seven rivers") myself, I really ask you to use the Turkic name instead of the Russian one (which, as I said before, was adopted from Turkic).

As for the name of the river, from the Kazak language "Shu" is translated as "noise" - for example, şu köteru - "make noise".

They say that the river got its name because of it's loud noise, as it passes through the mountains separating Kazaks and Kyrgyzes. ...And if you ever had a stop at the Shu train station, you may hear a lot of noise as the train station is almost a big bazaar. It's almost an irony when passengers say "What a noise!" or "What a Shu!"

[H. İhsan Erkoç]

According to the Encyclopaedia of Islam, the name of the River Chu is related with the name of the medieval city of Sûyâb (which is an Iranian name) located near it.