From: e.karloukovski@uea.ac.uk (Vassil Karloukovski) Subject: Re: The Bulgars are Bulgars (Re: Caucasoid Turks/Bulgars) Date: 21 Feb 1999 00:00:00 GMT Message-ID: <7aou42$jj7@cpca3.uea.ac.uk> References: <36ca073a.16343620@news.yale.edu> <36cca3ed.14676934@news.yale.edu> <36ccb13d.18084634@news.yale.edu> <36cdff63.113890525@news.yale.edu> Content-Type: Text/Plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Organization: University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK Mime-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: sci.lang In article <36cdff63.113890525@news.yale.edu>, cluster.user@yale.edu says... >>TURNESI - ‘golden coins’ Turanshi - yellow, golden > >probably turan*dj*i:, turun*dj*i > >turun*dj*, turan*dj* means "an orange", >turun*dj*i:, turan*dj*i: means "orange colored". the closest i found >was a metaphorical name for the sun by steingass as turun*dj*i: zer >(zar = gold, golden). asside from the fact that the -i: sufifx was i:k >in middle persian, somehow I find this explanation as giving "too >colloquial" a name for the coin. well, even in modern (or, say, 19th c.) bulgarian the word for a "gold coin" is zhyltica, from zhylt ("yellow"). So, it could be that the bulgar word TURNESI was just translated in slavic as zhyltica. That wouldn't be unusual because we have another (modern) bulgarian word - zlatka, "marten" (from the slavic zlato, "gold") which is a direct translation from the bulgar (volga bulgar) word for marten, sable pelts - DALA. And DALA in its turn is probably derived from the pamirian word for gold - DILJA, TILJA. This fits well to the documentary evidence that the volga bulgars didn't (initially) mint silver or gold coins, but the pelts of marten or sable were used as money instead (the Caspian codex of B. Zakhoder). The taxes collected by the king were also in the form of pelts (Ibn Fadlan). Regards, Vassil K. >> in one three-lingual (Persian) >> passage, containing the >> Greek, the Slav and the >> Bulgar name of the golden >> coins