From: cluster.user@yale.edu (Cluster User) Subject: Re: The Bulgars are Bulgars (Re: Caucasoid Turks/Bulgars) Date: 21 Feb 1999 00:00:00 GMT Message-ID: <36d061cc.270137517@news.yale.edu> References: <36ca073a.16343620@news.yale.edu> <36cca3ed.14676934@news.yale.edu> <36ccb13d.18084634@news.yale.edu> <36cdff63.113890525@news.yale.edu> <7aou42$jj7@cpca3.uea.ac.uk> Organization: Yale University Newsgroups: sci.lang On 21 Feb 1999 12:27:46 GMT, e.karloukovski@uea.ac.uk (Vassil Karloukovski) wrote: >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. "marten" and "yellow" to me are a little differnet than "orange colored". marten pelts had exchange value. "yellow" and "gold" are in fact related in persian: zard (yellow), zar (gold) and zari:n, zarri:n (golden). the involvement of the citrus fruit sounds strange to me. the word may be involved as a cognate with a slightly different meaning in east-iranian - don't know. the new (i.e. post-sasani, in view of the absence of -k) persian word by itself does not sound convincing to me. > >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 >