From: sarant@village.uunet.lu (Nikos Sarantakos) Subject: Re: Caucasoid Turks/Bulgars Date: 23 Apr 1999 00:00:00 GMT Message-ID: <3720e880.6538676@news.uunet.lu> References: <369E3BE1.5C45@sbu.ac.uk> <77li2j$qi0$1@whisper.globalserve.net> <369F52FE.2B6@sbu.ac.uk> <77rc86$auj$1@brokaw.wa.com> <36A444B3.F3B70F1C@alum.mit.edu.-> <7827sb$269$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com> <36A52D70.9E372DD2@alum.mit.edu.-> <36A556AB.9927BD29@montclair.edu> <36a63533.58309714@news.yale.edu> <7866ud$i9m$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com> <36cdb21e.883120019@news.wxs.nl> <36A7FCC8.79790A6B@earthlink.net> <36d77e23.1000882888@news.wxs.nl> <36a8d455.81661202@news.yale.edu> <78pl3c$84o@cpca3.uea.ac.uk> <36b0dc2f.3434839@news.yale.edu> <78v30o$vl6@cpca3.uea.ac.uk> <36b34d7c.60430113@news.yale.edu> <794e84$4iq@cpca3.uea.ac.uk> <3744d12a.1873763068@news.wxs.nl> <796m95$eq2@cpca3.uea.ac.uk> <375c0ea6.1954957123@news.wxs.nl> <79fo99$qkl@cpca3.uea.ac.uk> <3718c0d8.988421@news.yale.edu> <7fhjus$h91@cpca3.uea.ac.uk> <371e5362.14471999@news.yale.edu> <371fb5a6.150957194@news.yale.edu> Organization: UUNET Benelux (post does not reflect views of UUNET Benelux) Reply-To: sarant@village.uunet.lu Newsgroups: sci.archaeology,sci.anthropology,sci.lang On Thu, 22 Apr 1999 23:54:56 GMT, cluster.user@yale.edu (Cluster User) wrote: >On Wed, 21 Apr 1999 22:53:54 GMT, cluster.user@yale.edu (Cluster User) >wrote: > >> >>apprarently dobrev recently came up with some "pamirian" word CHAR, >>with which according to dobrev until recently (until the 19th c.) >>these people used to denote their highest ruler. he takles this to be >>the origin of tsar. >> >>now car i.e. tsar seems to have a solid latin etymology - from caesar >>- old russian tsesar' (>ts'sar' > tsar'). caesar (in classical latin >>pronounced "kaisar" - hence the german title) became like *ch*esar in >>church latin (hence the italian pronounciation and hence the french >>thus english). >> >>how was "czar" in old slavonic? >> >>I don't believe him. any thoughts? would the early christrian bulghars >>be too proud to merely accpet byzantine "caesar"? or perhaps the use >>of the term by the germans (serbian apparently reffers to kaisar as >>"tsesar") have increased it's prestige? >> > >========================================= > > >to which I recieved the reply from stephan nikolov: > >>The traditional interpretation is: from Latin, since c~ar^ [where ~ stays >>above the the word and is abreviation symbol and ^= the letter "small er", >>the vowel for ending). You will find this title in most Old Church Slavic >>MSS. Most funily, the same form is attested in the Life of Constantine the >>Pholosopher, which is allegedly written by his disciples about 880 in >>Moravia. The problem is that the earliest MS if srom 15th century. Hence the >>title might be a substitute of another one, which is unknown. I personally >>can't imagine Cirillo-Methodian origin of the word: both Constantine and >>Methodios were high ranked Byzantine officials and they would't call the >>emperor (basileus) -- Caesar (c[jas]ar). Precisely in this period the >>emperors of Constantinople were particularly sensitive on the matter of >>titles. >>The same in Bulgaria. The title car^ is the earliest attested in a seal by >>Peter of Bulgaria (927 - 971), dated the middle of the 10th c. In the >>earliest Slavic MSS the same form indicates the Byzantine emperor (12 >>century where the text is taken). If it is the title kaisar (gr for Caesar) >>it would have hardly been translated C ja s a r ^ (abbr. car) in the court >>of Simeon -- who was student in Constantinople, wanted to marry his daughter >>to the emperor and demanded the title basileus(imperator = emperor) for >>himself. The letters of Romanus Lacapenus and Patriarch Nicholas Mystikos >>indicate that indeed, the title basileus [of the Bulgars] was given to >>Simeon and later to his son Peter. Neither Simeon, neither Emperor Romanus, >>neither the patriarch Nicholas, nor the son of Simeon Peter, who was married >>to the grand-daughter of the Byzantine emperor would have mistaken Caesar >>for Emperor. In Latin, precisely in the same period (9th - 10th century) the >>imperial title in the West was Augustus (August) not Caesar. There is something in this questioning of the traditional etymology of Czar, but, on general etymological principles it seems to me hardly possible that a word with such a wide diffusion would have its origin in a Pamirian word or something similarly obscure. I briefly checked Porphyrogennitus on TLG, he is using Kaisar very frequently also for Byzantine emperors. As an aside, the other Slavic word for kings, kral (I believe) is also, I have been told, a loan, from Charlemagne's name -unless this is a legend. Nikos Sarantakos v f