From: e.karloukovski@uea.ac.uk (Vassil Karloukovski) Subject: Re: The Bulgars are Bulgars (Re: Caucasoid Turks/Bulgars) Date: 22 Feb 1999 00:00:00 GMT Message-ID: <7asflk$907@cpca3.uea.ac.uk> References: <36ca073a.16343620@news.yale.edu> <36cca3ed.14676934@news.yale.edu> <36ccb13d.18084634@news.yale.edu> <36cdff63.113890525@news.yale.edu> <7aou42$jj7@cpca3.uea.ac.uk> <36d061cc.270137517@news.yale.edu> Content-Type: Text/Plain; charset=US-ASCII Organization: University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK Mime-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: sci.lang In article <36d061cc.270137517@news.yale.edu>, cluster.user@yale.edu says... >On 21 Feb 1999 12:27:46 GMT, e.karloukovski@uea.ac.uk (Vassil Karloukovski) wrote: ... 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. "Turnesi" must have been the bulgar word for gold coin, it appears in one medieval bulgarian translation of a greek story - "About the monk who sold baskets": an old monk was selling baskets next to a church in Alexandria. Some people required about the price, and the monk said: "Ten numias (sp?)". And next, the bulgarian translator explained the meaning of the greek numia: "The turnes or penenza are called [in greek] numia" ("Turnesa ili penenza glagoljat numija"). Thus, there are reported next to each other the greek, bulg. slavic and bulgar words, "penenza" corresponding to the old slavic "penenz" (coin), preserved nowadays in the polish "pieniadz". Dobrev claims there wasn't an exact parallel found for the bulgar "turnesi" in any other language. The closest he got to were the pamirian (wakhani) TURUNG "orange, reddish" (also the udmurt and the mari names for the coins - turIn, tulImash, probably from an earlier volga bulgar *turnesh). "Turnesi" supposedly being formed in the same way as the ukrainian word for gold - "chervonec" (literally - red metal) from "chervonnIj" (red). Speaking about metals, Dobrev also derives the old bulgarian "chuvenchii" (iron smith) from the persian "chuven" (wrought iron). And the so called in the arabic sources "Silver bulgars" on volga, also "Nukrat bulgars" - from the pamirian word for silver - "nukra". Are these words native to pamirian/persian, or there again will arise some problems with arabic/ turkic parallels? Regards, Vassil K.