Turkic elements in kalmyk ornithonyms

Abstract

With evidence from the Kalmyk language as well as, when necessary, Mongolian, Buryat and old-script Mongolian, the article considers the thematic group of ornithological lexics in order to identify Turkic-Mongolian lexical parallels. To confirm a Turkic parallel is actually of Turkic origin, Turkic materials were borrowed from the Old-Turkic Dictionary and dictionaries of Kazakh, Nogai, Tatar, Bashkir and other languages, i.e. the languages of the Kalmyks’ neighboring peoples they had been in continuous contacts with.  Apart from comparative materials from Mongolic and Turkic languages, the considered terms were also subject to comparative historical and etymological analyses which revealed the Turkic origin of the identified Turkic-Mongolian parallels within the Kalmyk ornithological lexics. It was established that a number of the terms exist not only in Kalmyk but also in Khalkha-Mongolian, Buryat and had been recorded in old-script Mongolian. This signifies that the terms have been existing in the Kalmyk language ever since the Kalmyks’ ancestors — the Oirats — inhabited the steppes of Central Asia together with other Mongols and contacted the ancient Turks from whom they borrowed those terms. Many of the ornithological terms can be found in Kalmyk only and coincide with those in Kazakh, Nogai and Bashkir for, as is evident, they were borrowed from the mentioned languages as a result of later contacts.