Kirkuk - Etymology

Etymology

The ancient name of Kirkuk was the Mittani Arraphka. During the Parthian era, a Korkura/Corcura (Ancient Greek: Κόρκυρα) is mentioned by Ptolemy, which is believed to refer either to Kirkuk or to the site of Baba Gurgur three miles (5 km) from the city. Under Greek reign it was known as Karkha D-Bet Slokh, which means 'Citadel of the House of Seleucid' in Mesopotamian Aramaic, the lingua franca of the Fertile Crescent in that era.

The region around Kirkuk was known in Aramaic and Syriac sources as "Beth Garmai" (Syriac: ܒܝܬܓܪܡܝ), which means the "place of bones" in a reference to bones of slaughtered Achaemenids which littered the plains after a decisive battle between Alexander the Great and Darius III. It is also thought that region was known during the Parthian and Sassanid periods as Garmakan, which means the 'Land of Warmth' or the 'Hot Land'. In the modern Persian and Kurdish languages too "Garm" means warm; the name is still used by the Kurds in the form Garmian with the same meaning.

And from the 7th century, when Muslim Arabs conquered the area, up to the medieval era, Arab writers simply used the name Kirkheni (Syriac for "citadel") to refer to the city. Some Arabs used the names Bajermi or Jermakan. A cuneiform script found in 1927 at the foot of Kirkuk Citadel stated that the city of Erekha of Babylonia was on the site of Kirkuk. Other sources consider Erekha to have been simply one part of the larger Arrapha metropolis.