Horse Coat Color čabdar and Its Origin
International Journal of Eurasian Linguistics, cilt.8, sa.2, ss.261-272, 2026 (Scopus)
- Yayın Türü: Makale / Tam Makale
- Cilt numarası: 8 Sayı: 2
- Basım Tarihi: 2026
- Doi Numarası: 10.1163/25898833-20260092
- Dergi Adı: International Journal of Eurasian Linguistics
- Derginin Tarandığı İndeksler: Scopus
- Sayfa Sayıları: ss.261-272
- Anahtar Kelimeler: color terms, etymology, horse coat colors, lexical contacts, Mongolic languages, Turkic languages
- Yıldız Teknik Üniversitesi Adresli: Evet
Özet
Horses are typically named and identified by their coat colors rather than their sex or breed. This practice is also evident in historical written documents in Turkic languages. Since pre-Islamic texts, various words have been used in Turkish for different horse coat colors. Some of them are: ak, boz, yağız, kır, kaşka, kızıl, kuba, etc. There are two basic horse coat colors: yağız (black) and al (chestnut). These two colors are alleles of one another. Coat coloration is determined by homozygous black, heterozygous black, or recessive chestnut genes, with various further modifications possible. The color of horse coat, don, can consist of one solid color, multiple colors, spots, stripes; or the horse’s hooves, legs, chest and tail can be in different colors. The word that we will focus on, čabdar, is also a word that denotes a horse color that is defined similarly in various sources. The word čabdar, which we identified in two works of historical Turkic texts (Mukaddimat al-adab and Shajara-yi Turk), will be examined along with its meanings and the sentences in which it appears in the two aforementioned works. The article also includes the forms and meanings of the word – known to be Mongolic origin – in Mongolic and modern Turkic languages.