On The Old Turkıc Word Kırkın Related To Women

Abstract

When the texts written throughout the history of Turkish are examined shows that the vocabulary related to women is abundant. It has been determined that since the first written documents of Turkish, furthermore to the words that directly correspond to the concept of “woman”, there have been various names for many similar situations, including words and phrases expressing women’s familial and kinship ties, status, clothing, and the situation of women in transitional periods such as birth, marriage and divorce. The word kırkın which was first encountered in the texts of the Old Uyghur Turkish period and can be followed in the historical texts of the Turkish language, is seen to be used as a word with meanings such as “girl, young woman, virgin; female servant, concubine, female slave”. When examining the semantic field of the word in question, it generally denotes the concept of “young girl/woman, virgil girl” while also appearing as a term that indicates the social status of women. Although there is no definitive explanation fort he origin of the word, there are controversial views stating that it is cognate with the word kırnak “concubine, female slave” and that both words are based on the origin kız “girl”. In the examined texts, it is observed that the word appears within phrase such as kız kırkın “young girl; girl and concubine”,tapıgçı kırkın “female servant”, yinçge kırkın “selender, graceful concubine”, eren kırkın teŋriler “distinguished male and female clergy”. In our study, the word in question was examined from an etymological perspective, and examples from historical Turkish texts were provided as evidence of its usage. The aim is to reveal the uses of the word kırkın which represents the concept of gender and the social status of women in Turkish society, in various word groups and to reveal its semantic field through these uses.