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An outstanding Chinese scholar of Central Asian art history and archeology told me that any mention of Tūjué / Tújué 突厥 online or on social media would be subject to censorship by the authorities in the PRC.  Since Tūjué  突厥 is an important early name of the Turks, that makes it hard to do serious, honest research on the history of the Turkic peoples in Chinese.

Tūjué  突厥

Etymology

Ultimately from a form which also gave rise to the name Türk (cf. (Türük)), but the phonetics are difficult to reconcile.

It has been suggested that this is a transcription of Rouran *türküt, a plural of the Mongolic type, composed of *türk +‎ *-üt (cf. Khalkha Mongolian -үүд (-üüd)) (Pelliot, 1915). Pulleyblank (1965) proposed that this is a direct transcription of Türk.

Middle Sinitic (ca. 600 AD):  thwot kjut

(Wiktionary)

In the following paragraphs, we shall see how vital this word Tūjué  突厥 is for the entire history of the Turks:

The Göktürks, Türks, Celestial Turks or Blue Turks (Old Turkic: :, romanized: Türük Bodun; Chinese: 突厥; pinyin: Tūjué; Wade–Giles: T'u-chüeh) were a Turkic people in medieval Inner Asia. The Göktürks, under the leadership of Bumin Qaghan (d. 552) and his sons, succeeded the Rouran Khaganate as the main power in the region and established the First Turkic Khaganate, one of several nomadic dynasties that would shape the future geolocation, culture, and dominant beliefs of Turkic peoples.

Etymology

Origin

The common name "Göktürk" emerged from the misreading of the word "Kök" meaning Ashina, the endonym of the ruling clan of the historical ethnic group which was attested as Old Turkic: , romanized: Türük Old Turkic: :, romanized: Kök Türük, or Old Turkic: , romanized: Türk. It is generally accepted that the name Türk is ultimately derived from the Old-Turkic migration-term Türük/Törük, which means 'created, born'.

They were known in Middle Chinese historical sources as the Tūjué (Chinese: 突 厥; reconstructed in Middle Chinese as romanized: *dwət-kuɑt > tɦut-kyat).

The ethnonym was also recorded in various other Middle Asian languages, such as Sogdian *Türkit ~ Türküt, tr'wkt, trwkt, turkt > trwkc, trukč; Khotanese Saka Ttūrka/Ttrūka, Rouran to̤ro̤x/türǖg, Korean 돌궐/Dolgwol, and Old Tibetan Drugu.

Definition

According to Chinese sources, Tūjué meant "combat helmet" (Chinese: 兜 鍪; pinyin: Dōumóu; Wade–Giles: Tou¹-mou²), reportedly because the shape of the Altai Mountains, where they lived, was similar to a combat helmet. Róna-Tas (1991) pointed to a Khotanese-Saka word, tturakä "lid", semantically stretchable to "helmet", as a possible source for this folk etymology, yet Golden thinks this connection requires more data.

Göktürk is sometimes interpreted as either "Celestial Turk" or "Blue Turk" (i.e. because sky blue is associated with celestial realms). This is consistent with "the cult of heavenly ordained rule" which was a recurrent element of Altaic political culture and as such may have been imbibed by the Göktürks from their predecessors in Mongolia. "Blue" is traditionally associated with the East as it used in the cardinal system of central Asia, thus meaning "Turks of the East". The name of the ruling Ashina clan may derive from the Khotanese Saka term for "deep blue", āššɪna.

According to the American Heritage Dictionary, the word Türk meant "strong" in Old Turkic; though Gerhard Doerfer supports this theory, Gerard Clauson points out that "the word Türk is never used in the generalized sense of 'strong'" and that the noun Türk originally meant "'the culminating point of maturity' (of a fruit, human being, etc.), but more often used as an [adjective] meaning (of a fruit) 'just fully ripe'; (of a human being) 'in the prime of life, young, and vigorous'". Hakan Aydemir (2022) also contends that Türk originally did not mean "strong, powerful" but "gathered; united, allied, confederated" and was derived from Pre-Proto-Turkic verb *türü "heap up, collect, gather, assemble".

The name as used by the Göktürks only applied to themselves, the Göktürk khanates, and their subjects. The Göktürks did not consider other Turkic speaking groups such as the Uyghurs, Tiele, and Kyrgyz to be Türks. In the Orkhon inscriptions, the Toquz Oghuz and the Yenisei Kyrgyz are not referred to as Türks. Similarly, the Uyghurs called themselves Uyghurs and used Türk exclusively for the Göktürks, whom they portrayed as enemy aliens in their royal inscriptions. The Khazars may have kept the Göktürk tradition alive by claiming descent from the Ashina. When tribal leaders built their khanates, ruling over assorted tribes and tribal unions, the collected people identified themselves politically with the leadership. Turk became the designation for all subjects of the Turk empires. Nonetheless, subordinate tribes and tribal unions retained their original names, identities, and social structures. Memory of the Göktürks and the Ashina had faded by the turn of the millennium. The Karakhanids, Qocho Uyghurs, and Seljuks did not claim descent from the Göktürks

The above is  concerned with linguistic and philological aspects of the term Tūjué 突厥.  Much more could be said about the historical implications of the name.  And it's not just Tūjué 突厥 that gets blocked.  My Central Asian art and archeology scholar colleague has tried repeatedly to make contact about such terminology and just wrote to me:  "Whenever a word like Turkish or 突厥 is mentioned, the whole site gets blocked."

This quagmire pertaining to crucial scholarly terms is the direct result of the communist government's repression of the Turkic Uyghur people in Eastern Central Asia (called "Xinjiang" ["New Territories"] by the PRC government).  Similar circumstances abound in many other aspects of Chinese history, archeology, culture, and so forth.

 

Selected readings

• "Turco-Sogdian horses and languages" (10/28/24)
• "No more 'turkey', please" (12/21/22) — includes extensive phonological and philological background for the  name of the country (official and conventional:  "Turkey; formal and diplomatic:  "Türkiye")
• "Turkey, Türkiye, and Chinese characters", Pinyin News (2/25/23)
• "Turkey uteri" (11/22/12)

October 29, 2024 @ 8:28 pm · Filed by Victor Mair under Censorship, Names

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