Birnennamen Aus Hemşin: Vorarbeiten zur Feststellung und Beschreibung der Birnenarten und ihrer regionalen Namen im östlichen Schwarzmeergebiet

Abstract

AbstractThe article discusses a number of dialectal names for pears, which I collected in the Hamshen area of the Eastern Pontic range in Turkey. This study is the first attempt to give the etymology of these terms and to also describe the kind of pears meant by the respective names. As it is to be expected for Hamshen, which in former times was almost exclusively inhabited by an Armenian population, a great many of the pear names have a direct Armenian background. Others are of Pontic Greek origin, and a third group is represented by typical Turkish formations. The investigation showed that it was not possible to elucidate these names without considering the aspects of areal lingustics and cultural relationships. Irrespective of the language we can often observe several common patterns and motives in the formation of these terms. Thus, in addition to the 32 terms collected in Hamshen, many names taken from other languages of the area had to be included into the discussion.