Mukurun

Hello!

I would greatly appreciate your kind assistance, for a research I am working on as an amateur.

I am trying to establish the etymology and original meaning of the word "Mukurun", in the name of the mountain called Pir-i-Mukurun (I know the meaning of "Pir"), or Pîremegrûn. It is a famous mountain, 2,665 meters high, in the Zagros Range, east of the Tigris, in the Lesser-Zab Basin (in Iraqi Kurdistan), supposed to correspond to Mount Nisir, "The mountain of salvation", where Uta-napishtim's boat landed after the (Babylonian) Deluge.

I have found several variants of its name, apart from Pîremegrûn: "Pir-Mogoroun" (in a French text dated 1892), Pir Omar Gudrun, Piri (or Pira, or Pera) Magrun (or Megrun), as well as the following explanation of a further variant in C.J. Edmonds' "Kurds, Turks, and Arabs: Politics, Travel and Research in North-Eastern Iraq", London, O.U.P., 1957, p. 17n: In the old Turkish almanacks this mountain is named Pir Umar Gudrun, but the ordinary Kurds always use the name given in the text - i.e., Pira Magrun - deriving it from Pir-i-Ma Gudrun (Our Spiritual Director, Gudrun).

I suspect that "Mukurun" may be related to "Mukryian", the name of a Kurdish tribe, their sub-dialect, and the area (across the border between Iraq and Iran, not far from the Pir-i-Mukurun) which they inhabit(ed), but I have no idea of the meaning of this name either, nor if it has one (as it normally should).

I know there are several similar toponyms, particularly of hills, mountains, "high places" or "points" (i.e., peninsulae). Here are just a few of them, which I dare think may be related: in Georgia (Mugure), Tajikistan (Mugulon), Afghanistan (Mukur, Mukurin, Mokarak, etc.), Kazakhstan (Muk(k)ur, Mukry), Pakistan (Mukruni), Ukraine (Gora Magura), Hercegovina (Mogorjelo), Slovenia (Mogoron, a hillock at the basis of a point on the Gulf of Venice near Pirano, in Istria, a formerly Italian area), continental Italy (Monte Maccarone,
Punta del Muccurune, Mucurune, Mocrone, Mucrone, Mugarone), insular Italy (Mogoro, Mogorella, in Sardinia - "mogoro" means "blunt, truncated hill" in the local language), Spain (Mukurre-Bizkarra; "mukurru" means "summit" in Basque), Sudan (Mogram), Tanzania (Makari).

I also know that the Hereros of Namibia consider Mukuru their ancestral god and creator, and since he "dispenses rain", I surmise he sits in some "high place" too.

In Latin, "mucro, -onis" = "point, pointed extremity", and this would seem to confirm the semantic field.

I thank you very much for any help you can supply.

Guido Ruzzier