The Ethnonym Kazakh in Four Languages (Mongolian, Kazakh, Chinese and Russian): Spelling Variants Revisited

Abstract

Introduction. Kazakhs are a Turkic people dominant in present-day Republic of Kazakhstan. The former also reside in adjacent territories of China, Russia, Uzbekistan, Mongolia, and Turkey. Ancient written sources employed quite a number of ethnonyms — including the endonym қазақ (Qazaq) — to denote the ethnos. And the issue of etymology is still debatable. According to the main version, the word қазақ stands for a ‘free, unrestricted, independent person’. Goals. The paper seeks to examine spelling variants of the ethnonym in national languages of bordering countries — Mongolian, Chinese, and Russian. Results. The ethnonym has two spelling variants in Mongolian, namely: хасаг and казак. The former is the traditional spelling adopted by Mongols since ancient times. In Mongolian, the first syllable ка- (ka-) turns into ха- (kha-), which thus gave rise to the mentioned form. The second spelling variant was borrowed in the mid-to-late 20th century from Russian, and is a neologism. The Chinese hasake is as transformed as other ethnonyms, e.g., монгол (Mongol) — menggu, русский (Russian) — eluosi, ойрат (Oirat) — weilate, elute. Russians tended to call Kazakhs ‘Kirghiz-Kaisaks’, or ‘Kirghizes’ till the early 20th century. The latter ethnonym was replaced by қазақ (Qazaq), and further the spelling казах (Kazakh) was officially accepted.