Page "Gagauz people" Paragraph 3

The Encyclopedia of World cultures lists the ethnonym of the Gagauz as " Turkish speaking Bulgars ".

Astrid Menz writes this about the etymology: " Older ethnographic works such as Pees ( 1894 ) and Jireček ( 1891 )— both covering the Gagauz in Bulgaria — mention that only their neighbors used the ethnonym Ga ga uz, partly as an insult.

The Gagauz themselves did not use this self-designation ; indeed, they considered it offensive.

Both Pees and Jireček mention that the Gagauz in Bulgaria tended to register either as Greek because of their religion ( clearly an outcome of the Ottomanmillet-system ) or as Bulgarian because of the newly emerging concept of nationalism.

According to Pees informants from Moldova, the Gagauz there called themselves Hıristiyan-Bulgar ( Christian Bulgars ), and Gagauz was used only as a nickname ( Pees 1894, p. 90 ).

The etymology of the ethnonym Gagauz is as unclear as their history.

As noted above, they are not mentioned — at least not under that name — in any historical sources before their immigration into Bessarabia.

Therefore, we have no older versions of this ethnonym.

This, combined with the report that the Gagauz felt offended when called by this name, makes the etymology somewhat dubious.

Nevertheless, a number of researchers and Gagauz intellectuals have proposed various explanations.

Some of these explanations are obvious folk etymologies, and there is no consensus on any of them.

Most proposals assume that the name contains the element uz or guz, which they connect to the tribal name Oghuz.

That leaves the element gaga, which is supposed to be a tribal name of unknown origin.

We also are faced with the problem that both uz and ghuz are designations for the Oghuz in Byzantine and Arabic sources, respectively — i. e., they are not self-designations.

Some propose an element auz, which is supposed to have developed from Oghuz, thus leaving the element gag, which is explained as having developed from gök, hak, or ak.

All these explanations have serious problems with the historical development of Oghuzic phonetics and phonology.

An alternative etymology was proposed by Wittek ( 1952 ), who believed that the Gagauz were the offspring of a group of Rum-Seljuks who surrendered to the Byzantine emperor ; thus, he attributed the name to a leader of this group, the Seljuk prince Kaykaus.

There are additional explanations of the name Gagauz, but most of them cannot be taken seriously and are clearly only superficial combinations — such as that of Jireček ( cited after Pees 1984, p. 81 ), who suggests that the words gaga ( beak ) and us ( straight ) are supposed to mean “ those who speak out as they think ,” because the Gagauz like a good talk.

Most of these explanations obviously are linked to the speculations about the ethnogenesis of the Gagauz.

In connection with the etymological problem of the ethnonym Gagauz, one should always keep in mind that this very name was first mentioned in written sources in the eighteenth century ( Radova 1995, p. 268 ).

Before that, they were recognized in Moldova as Turkish-speaking Bulgarians.

The term Gagauz probably was initially not a self-designation but rather a label given by neighboring ethnic groups.

Both these facts tend to support the possibility of a non-Turkic etymological root.

Today, Gagauz is a neutral ethnonym.

Interestingly enough, however, since the 1980s — corresponding to the major political changes in Eastern Europe — some authors have started to change the ethnonym Gagauz into Gagavuz or Gagouz or even Gagoğuz ( the latter despite the fact that the official alphabet does not contain the letter ğ, the “ soft g ” of Turkish ), thus making a statement about both the etymology of the word and the ethnogenesis of this people.