ON THE ETYMOLOGY OF OLD UYGUR TWW OR TWYW~TWVW

Abstract

Etymology is one of the main fields of philology. It is much more difficult to find the origin of Old Turkic words than to find the origin of words in other periods of Turkish language. All the words in Old Turkic are not Turkish origin. It is found that in Old Uygur period, Turkish is communicating with different languages. The relationship with different languages led to the loanwords in Old Uygur. Some loanwords are from Chinese. The loanwords do not have regular ortography. Such a situation makes it difficult to determine Chinesse loan. One of the words with uncertainty about its origin is the TWW or TWYW~TWVW. A number of possibilities have been considered for the origin of the word, but no final result has been reached. In the article, evidences of the word in the Old Uygur texts will be listed and proposals about the origin of the word will be evaluated.

Keywords

• etymology
• old uygur
• twww or twyw~twvw
• chinese.