A Poor Haystack (Loda) Etymology Between Scholarship and Imagination, An Answer to My Young Colleague Ekrem Gül
Uwe BläsingThe article “Loda Sözcüğü Üzerine” (“On the Term Loda”) written by Ekrem Gül and published in the twenty-fifth volume of the journal Türk Dilleri Araştırmaları (Studies in Turkish Languages) is quite intriguing. In particular, the publication of this article almost simultaneously with the paper on the term “loda” by the author of this review is meaningful. On the following pages, the article penned by Ekrem Gül dealing with the origin of “loda” will be scrutinized under several aspects with a special focus on the thesis that have been put forward. Aim of this review is to reveal and correct, based on scholarly methods, the most significant shortcomings of Gül‘s etymological attempt concerning the historical roots of “loda”.
Acemî Bir Loda Bilim ile Hayal Arasında Etimoloji, Ekrem Kardeşime Cevap
Uwe BläsingEkrem Gül tarafından yazılan ve Türk Dilleri Araştırmaları adlı derginin yirmi beşinci cildinde yayınlanan “Loda Sözcüğü Üzerine” adlı makale, oldukça ilgi çekicidir. Özellikle makalenin bu çalışmanın yazarına ait “loda” sözcüğüyle ilgili yazdığı ilk makale ile aynı dönemde yayınlanması manidardır. Burada, Ekrem Gül tarafından loda sözcüğü üzerine yazılan makale her yönüyle ele alınmış, ortaya attığı iddialar üzerinde durulmuştur. “Loda”nın kökeniyle ilgili bilimsel metotlara dayanarak cevap niteliğinde bir makale hazırlanmış ve netice itibariyle “loda”nın kökeni hakkında Gül tarafından verilen bilgilerin elle tutulur bir tarafının olmadığı, her bir açıklamasına karşı “doğru” açıklamalar yapılarak ortaya konmuştur.
This review article aims to reveal and correct the most significant shortcomings of Ekrem Gül‘s attempt to elucidate the etymological background of Turkish loda ‘haystack’ submitted in his recent contribution “On the Term Loda” (“Loda Sözcüğü Üzerine”). Obviously inspired by the entry loda ‘a heap of grain, wheat which after threshing has been prepared for winnowing’ in the Mamluk-Kipchak language guide Kitāb al-’Idrāk liLisān al-’Atrāk (H. 712/1313) our young colleague searched the Kipchak group for more evidence and stumbled in Armeno-Kipchak upon the noun lodâ ‘boat’. Immediately he argues that both, the haystack term and the boat name could be connected to each other. Against this view we can raise the following serious objections: A. Under semantical considerations a tie between both terms is more than unlikely (boat vs. haystack). B. Etymologically speaking, the boat name is a loan from Ukrainian lodd’a, lod’ja having together with their cognates in other Slavonic languages a clear Germanic background. This information already given by Aleksandr Garkavec in his Crimean-Tatar dictionary (Kypčakskij slovar’ po armjanopis’mennym pamjatnikam XVI-XVII vekov) is also attainable by consulting an Ukrainian or a Russian etymological dictionary. C. Under phonetically aspects loda and lodâ may at the first glance seem to be homophones. But as indicated by the circumflex upon the letter â the preceding consonant is palatalised, thus Crimean Tatar lodâ is exactly representing the term’s Ukrainian form lod(d)’a. As for the attestation in Kitāb al-’Idrāk li-Lisān al-’Atrāk we already showed in our first publication on loda that it does not belong to the work’s regular text, but appears only in the glosses of the manuscript Veli ed-Dīn 2896 held by the Beyazıt Library/Istanbul. The history of this manuscript is relatively unknown. So we cannot determine by which hand and when these additions were made. Since there is no further evidence for the haystack term in a Kiptchak tongue – nor in an old neither a modern one, it is most likely that loda has been added later by an Ottoman hand. Next point in our review is the evaluation of Ekrem Gül’s main theses claiming that loda ultimately goes back to lādan ‘la(b)danum’ which is the fragrant resin of the Rockrose species Cistus ladanifer (western Mediterranean) and Cistus creticus (eastern Mediterranean). Starting point of his discussion is the entry lād in Meninski’s Thesaurus linguarum orientalium Turcicae, Arabicae, Persicae: lād ‘incrustation, plastering of a wall, rows of bricks or turfs in a wall; soft, fine silk (esp. from Hormuz); a fragrant herb, ladanum’; etc. Ekrem Gül, unfortunately, misunderstood this entry entirely, among other things, supposing that the underlying etymon is a single one. Actually, however, we have here – as already indicated by the widely differing semantics – at least three etyma with an absolutely different background: 1. lād I ‘incrustation, wall’, etc. (from a form *lāta- << Iranian *dāta-, PPP of *dā- ‘to erect, build’, etc.; for l-
< *d- cf. Scythian Παραλάται (Para-látay) : Avestian Paradāta- “der Vorangestellte” < *para-dāta-, and in Persian namak-lān ‘salt warehouse’ vs. namak-dān ‘salt cellar or salt shaker’; *lā-na- < *dā-na-= nomen loci, nomen instrumenti). 2. lād II ‘soft silk’ (for Arabic lāẕ, plural of lāẕat). 3. lād III ‘ladanum’ which is – according to Burhān-i qāṭi‘ (1652) – a shortened form of lādan. As such, it is used almost exclusively in the classical Persian poetry (for example in the 10th century by Kesā’i Marvazi; cf. Loġat-nāme-ye Dehḫodā). Not only under semantical (‘ladanum’ ≯ ‘haystack’), but also under phonetical considerations (lād ≯ loda) Bülent Gül’s etymological attempt is untenable.
