Origin of The Name "Kalmyk"
The name "Kalmyk" is a word of Turkic origin that means "remnant" or "to remain." Turkic tribes may have used this name as early as the thirteenth century. Arab geographer Ibn al-Wardi is documented as the first person to use the term in referring to the Oirats in the fourteenth century (Khodarkovsky, 1992:5 citing Bretschneider, 1910:2:167). The khojas of Kashgaria applied the name to Oirats in the fifteenth century (Grousset, 1970:506). Russian written sources mentioned the name "Kolmak Tatars" as early as 1530, and cartographer Sebastian Muenster (1488–1552) circumscribed the territory of the "Kalmuchi" on a map in his Cosmographia, which was published in 1544. The Oirats themselves, however, did not accept the name as their own.
Read more about this topic: Kalmyk People
Famous quotes containing the words origin of and/or origin:
“Someone had literally run to earth
In an old cellar hole in a byroad
The origin of all the family there.
Thence they were sprung, so numerous a tribe
That now not all the houses left in town
Made shift to shelter them without the help
Of here and there a tent in grove and orchard.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
“Someone had literally run to earth
In an old cellar hole in a byroad
The origin of all the family there.
Thence they were sprung, so numerous a tribe
That now not all the houses left in town
Made shift to shelter them without the help
Of here and there a tent in grove and orchard.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)