ETYMOLOGY OF THE WORD "ARAN (HARAN)". ARAN TRIBE

Abstract

"Aran" is one of the most common terms and keywords in historiography in recent centuries. Although some scholars have explained this word in accordance with their language or some traditions, a full scientific explanation of its true meaning has not yet been given. The author draws attention to examples of explanations of this word in numerous and multilingual sources on which the Russian and English wikipedias are based, and brings comprehensive evidence from them. Reconciling these scientific statements with each other, the author reveals that there is an inconsistency, a sharp contradiction between them. So, the same word spread in Eurasia since ancient times – the word Aran – is sometimes explained by representatives of the world academic science as a crossroad, sometimes as a climber, and sometimes as kidney-shaped. The author of this article observes the distribution geography of the word Aran with different forms of writing (Haran, Harran, Garan) as the initial requirements of the approach to solving the problem and clarifying the general reasons for this distribution; To study the historical periods in which the use of the word Aran is confirmed; To try to open the etymology of the word Aran with the dictionary of the language family of the peoples in the regions where this word has been used since ancient times.

According to the author's research based on a number of sources, in more ancient sources, Aran (and Ay; Ay means Moon in Turkic languages) was used as an ethnonym, a clan name: "The patriarchs of the Ay tribe occupied the Nile valley together with Aran warriors. In the XXVIII-XXIII centuries BC, they ruled several provinces of Egypt. Before the Ay and Aran tribes, Egypt was ruled by the Kush dynasty of Kam, who built cities in the Nile valley and created a state [25, p. 29-45]. According to the researches of I. I. Chopin, Kush were the ancestors of the Egyptian H'ays, that is, the Ay tribe [26, p. 119; 27, p. 64]. The Kush and Aran tribes of Kam origin laid the foundations of the ancient culture of Sumer, Elam and Egypt, and created cuneiform and hieroglyphic writing. Trachevski writes that their language was close to Turkish and Finnish dialects. The Ay people, who spoke this language under the leadership of the Aran Kams, drove the snake- and frog-eating aborigines from the Nile River valley into the desert and created wheat fields throughout the country. Before moving to Egypt, the descendants of Aran and Ay worshiped the Sun and the Moon and lived between Lake Urum and the Euphrates River [25, p.29, 42, 45, 47, 102, 103; 27, p. 64].

The main root of the keyword Aran, which is both a historical person, a place (country) name, and a tribe name, is the word ar found in ancient Turkish written monuments. Aran (Ar+an)  was formed from the combination of the Ar/Er [ brave; er - masculinity belonging to men, in the sense of pure (holy)] and suffix -an, which forms the name of the tribe and the name of the place (country). Ar is also a clan of the Gayna tribe of the Bashkir people, that is, an ethnonym. Our research also shows that the suffix -an creates toponyms in Turkic languages and that it has dialect forms such as -gan, -kan, -kan(d) [28, p. 400] and some of these examples are presented in the Russian Wikipedia. The word Aran (Ar+an), derived from the ancient Turkic word Ar or the Bashkir (Turkic) ethnonym, is also used as an ethnonym in a number of historical sources. The country names Iran (Ir+an), Irland (Ir+land) have the same meaning as the word Aran (Ar+an), which indicates different migration lines and events of the Ar tribes in the historical processes. The word -lan/lan(d) in the name of the country Ir+land takes part in the creation of a number of toponyms in the local language in Azerbaijan: Zengilan/Zəngi+lan (home of the Zengi Turkic tribes), Khırdalan/Khirda+lan (Khirda – small;  the place where small things are bought and sold), Savalan /Sav(a)+lan (Sav - from the word to be defended, to be protected is still used in Anatolian Turkish today; Sav(a)+lan - a convenient place to protect from the enemy, to be defended. Let us recall that this is in the South Azerbaijan province, which is in the territory of present-day Iran is the name of the highest mountain.). Based on the example that the suffix –an creates toponyms in Turkic languages and its dialect forms such as -gan, -kan, -kan(d), it can be said that the form of the suffix –lan, which participates in the creation of toponyms in the Azerbaijani language, can switch to the form - lan/lan(d). The transition to this form is not alien to the dictionary of the Turkish language family (like -gan/kan, -kan(d) in the words Erzin + kan, Samar + kand) [28, p. 400], the word "land" is also involved in the creation of the word "Irland".