I wrote:
> Another thing that bothers me is how the Balkans got their name. The name
to me looks like another form of vlakh, blac-, walha, wallach, etc., all with
the implication of Romance speaker. How old is it? Where did it come from?
Piotr replied:
<<It isn't particularly old. I think it's first documented in 16th-c. sources
as the name of the Balkan mountain range (if anyone has an earlier date,
please correct me), and its use with reference to the entire peninsula is
still more recent.... The word Balkan is of Turkish origin (from <balqan>
'densely wooded mountain'), and like the ancient name emphasises the features
of the lower parts of the range.>>
And that is the etymology that shows up in all the searches on the web.
I also found this on the web -
"The first time the word Balkan was mentioned was in a letter written by an
Italian humanist, writer and diplomat, Buonaccorsi Callimarco [actually
Callimaco] for a mountain in northern Bulgaria, in 1490. He took the Turkish
name Bal.kan which meant 'woody mountain.'"
I think this is based on Maria Todorova's assessment (Imagining the Balkans,
OUP, 1997, pp. 21-37) in which she apparently finds the Turkish source most
probable. I didn't read it. For anyone who can read Hungarian decently (I
can't), there are details at:
<<
http://magyar-irodalom.elte.hu/2000/uj/11.htm>>
and <<
http://magyar-irodalom.elte.hu/2000/uj/11.htm#_ftn1.>>
However, when I asked the only person I know who really knows anything about
Turkish or Turkey, he was a bit skeptical. <<I don't know of any other place
named balkan in Turkey and I didn't know Balkan in Turkish meant anything but
the Balkans, or maybe Greece...>> But this is US State Dept training and
wouldn't include old Turkish or perfect geographical knowledge.
So does anyone else know of another Turkic place name that includes
<balqan/balkan/bal_kan>? Or does anyone know when any of those words meaning
"wooded mountain" first appeared in Turkish texts?
Now, I don't know the details on how Callimaco heard the name. But it occurs
to me that Balkan doesn't have to have been a Turkish name for anything
specific in this scenario, but rather just a misunderstanding on Callimaco's
part. I.e., he thought the Turkish word for a simple description of a piece
of land was a proper name. Again, I don't know where Callimaco got his
information from or in what form he ended up writing the word <balkan>. He
appears to have gotten his information about the Romanians in Poland and I
don't know if he ever visited Bulgaria or not.
(On the web, it is occasionally stated that <balkan> is also a Bulgarian word
for mountain - not wooded mountain, but just mountain. So, whether it was
the Turkish word that first made the link might be an issue - just a random
thought without full information. I also tried to look up "wooded mountain"
and various compounds on the on-line Turkish dictionary and came up dry
except for maybe <bol>, abundant, copious.)
Again, I don't know any of the details in what Todorova wrote about other
possible origins of <balkan>, so I may just be wasting bandwidth. But a
question occurs to me.
The <walha>, <valsk>, <walach>, etc., in OHG, ON, etc., as meaning
Romance/Frankish/Italian (as opposed to <volcae> <welsh>, celtic/gallic) may
have made its way over to Greek at some point. There it may have traded <b>
for <v/w>. Which might explain variations like "Blaccorum", if I have that
right. BTW, another Italian scholar of the same time as Callimaco , Antonio
Bonfini (1427? - 1502), who lived in Hungary and argued for the Roman origin
of Romanians, had no problem deriving the name <valachus> from Greek <ballo:>
based on the theory that these folks were once skilled as archers and
slingers. So the jump in spelling wasn't considered out of the question at
that time.
When did "walha/vlakh" first appeared in Greek and what forms did it take?
Could any of those forms have been the scholarly source of the word <balkan>,
obtained without any direct or indirect contact with Turkish?
Once again, hope I'm not wasting bandwidth here.
Apologetically,
Steve Long