Er At

Er at is the Old Turkic pair of words for a man’s name: er, “man”, and at, “name”. The pair stands once in the inscriptions of the Göktürk khaganates, in the Kül Tegin inscription, where the khan’s younger brother gets it by the Kut of his mother.^[1]^[2] It stands many times on the grave stones of the Yenisei, in the formula by which the dead man gives his name.^[3] A custom has been derived from the two. A boy bore a name as a child and won another as a man by a deed, and the new name took the place of the old.^[4] The custom rests on a handful of lines. The same lines have also been understood as having nothing to do with a name.^[5]

The line in the Kül Tegin inscription

Bilge Khan, who speaks in the inscription, tells how his brother grew up after their father’s death. In the working transcription of the text the passage reads kaŋım kagan uçdukda inim kül tegin yeti yaşda kaltı. umay teg ögüm katun kutıŋa inim kül tegin er at boltı.^[6] In English: when my father the khan flew away, my younger brother Kül Tegin was left at seven years old; by the Kut of my mother the katun, who is like Umay, my younger brother Kül Tegin got a man’s name.^[6] The next sentence passes to Kül Tegin’s first campaign, which the translation puts at sixteen, in his uncle’s service.^[6] The passage tells of no deed before the name. It does not say what the name was.^[6]

Three things in the sentence matter. The first is the order. The name comes after the boyhood and before the campaigns.^[6] The second is the source. The name comes by the Kut of the katun, and no deed of the boy is named as its cause.^[6] In the two other places where the inscription names Kut, it is the khan’s.^[1] Here the katun is credited with the same gift.^[1] The third is the verb. The working transcription has boltı, “became”, which is also the reading that Thomsen gave in 1896. By contrast, Tekin takes the verb to be buldı, “found, got”, because the object is a name that one wins.^[7]

The early translators gave the line the sense of coming of age. Radloff, in 1895, rendered it “by the good fortune of my mother, the katun, who is like Umay, my younger brother Kül Tegin matured into a man”.^[8] Thomsen, in the German translation of 1924, rendered “my brother Kül Tegin received a man’s name” and added in brackets “he was taken in among the adults”.^[9] His glossary of 1896 had given the phrase the sense of taking a husband’s place. Tekin remarks that Thomsen read the verb as boldı without saying why.^[7]

The formula of the Yenisei epitaphs

On the grave stones of the Yenisei the dead man often introduces himself with er atım, “my name as a man”. Some stones also give oğlan atım, “my name as a child”.^[3] The glosses are those of the standard etymological dictionary of Old Turkic, as one article quotes them.^[10] The formula stands on stones that give the name and little else. One has the words er atım yaruk tegin, “my name as a man is Yaruk Tegin”. Another has both names together: oğlan atım čubuč inal and, with part of the first word restored, (er)te atım kümül öge, “my name as a child is Čubuč Inal, my name as a man Kümül Öge”.^[11] On the stones the dead man gives his adult name and goes on to count his excellences.^[10]

The formula also appears on the Altın Köl stones. The opening line of stone II has är atım ärän ulug, which Radloff rendered “my hero name is Ärän Ulug”. Orkun and Malov kept är atım. Tekin reads atım alone.^[12] The name that follows the formula is what the dead man was called as a man. The stones are the Altın Köl inscriptions.

The formula is found in the Altai as well. A text at Kyzyl-Kabak gives the dead man’s name with the same words, “his name as a man is Kut Bermish”, and ends with his tribe and land.^[13]

The Yenisei stones are not texts of the Göktürk khaganates. They are also undated.^[14] The equation of their er atım with the er at of the Kül Tegin line is therefore an assumption. It is a natural one, since the two have the same words.

Name, title and horse in Kashgari

er ater atımoğlan atımOld TurkicKül Tegin inscription · Yenisei inscriptions
erlik adıTurkish

The eleventh-century dictionary of Kashgari gives the second word two senses. It reads āt, “name”, and āt, “title”. Its example is beg anar āt berdi, “the emir gave him a title”.^[15] From the same word it derives atlıg, “having a name”, for a chief of the people.^[15] A name could therefore be given by a ruler and could mark rank. In the dictionary är is “man” and ärän its irregular plural.^[16] Kashgari also has at, “horse”, and quotes the proverb quš qanatın är atın, “the bird by its wing, the man by his horse”.^[17] The name and the horse are two words of the same shape. Some scholars cite the proverb in arguing that er at in the Kül Tegin line means a man’s horse, and so a mounted force.^[18] The dictionary’s entries on at and är give no phrase är at and no description of a custom of naming.^[19]

Name and deed

The Kül Tegin sentence gives a name by a mother’s Kut and says nothing of a deed. Others hold that such a name was won. A historian of Turkic personal names asked whether a boy of fourteen or sixteen took the name directly or had to show an act of cleverness or courage. He answered that there was no sure evidence. The second was far more likely, he said, since a name easily taken would not be boasted of so often.^[20] Tekin glosses the pair as a name of manhood and valour. He says that the old Turks had the custom of a young man’s showing valour early and so taking a man’s name, and that the Yenisei epitaphs express the same name as er atım.^[21] A history of Central Asia states the custom more broadly. The base of the khaganate was the brotherhood of the full male members of the tribe, who were called er. Any youth could become an er at a certain age, after an initiation rite, some deed in battle or in the hunt. He then received his er aty, a man’s or hero’s name, whether he was a common soldier or a prince of the royal line.^[22] The account names no source line for the rite.^[22]

One text is brought to this question from another side. It is the stone of Kül İç Čor, a beg of the Tardush in the time of Bilge Khan.^[23] The catalogue of the runiform texts of Mongolia lists it as a text of twenty-nine lines from Ikhe Khushotu, put up about 723 to 725 by a man called Bantır(?).^[24] It says that Kül İç Čor killed a gazelle at the age of seven and a wild boar at the age of nine: yeti yašıŋa yegir ölürti, tokuz yašıŋa azıglıg toŋuz ölürti.^[23] The verb is ölür-, “to kill”, which the inscriptions use of enemies in battle as well as of game.^[23] A study of the hunt in the Old Turkic texts takes the ages as those of a youth’s first successful hunts. It reads the hunts as the deed by which a youth proved himself and took the man’s name, and follows an earlier view that held the same.^[23] The stone does not itself use the words er at.^[23] Modern scholarship makes the link, not the text. The link joins the name to the hunt.

The army interpretation

A study of the Kül Tegin line reads er at as an army. It gives five arguments. The first is that the later language has the pair with that meaning, and that modern Turkish erat means private soldiers.^[25] The second is that the Kutadgu Bilig of 1069 to 1070, which has a chapter heading with the pair and many verses, uses it in the sense of soldiers, army or servants and not of a man’s name.^[20] The third is grammatical: the line has no possessive ending, and if the name were Kül Tegin’s own the line should have er atın, as the Yenisei formula has er atım.^[26] The fourth is the spelling. The study understands the second word, as the stone writes it, to mean “horse” and not “name”.^[27] The fifth is the context. The line is followed by Kül Tegin’s campaigns, and the younger son, by a custom the study cites, inherited his father’s army.^[28] The study renders the line “with the consent of my mother, who is merciful like Umay, my younger brother Kül Tegin took the head of the army”.^[29] Another study had already allowed that the pair could be a military unit, and that Kül Tegin might have been taken into the army at sixteen by the favour of his mother the katun.^[21]

Three points speak against this interpretation. The Yenisei formula is the same pair and stands for a name.^[10] The two translators of the first generation took the line for a coming of age, and Tekin, who reads the verb as buldı, still glosses the pair as a name.^[30] The study itself calls the pair a hapax, a word found once, and accepts that a conclusion from a single occurrence cannot be certain.^[31] This interpretation remains a minority position. The line has two possible subjects, a man’s name and an army.

A later parallel: Dede Korkut

The Book of Dede Korkut, which is Oghuz and Muslim and was written down centuries after the khaganates, has a scene of the same kind. In the first tale a boy, the son of Dirse Khan, kills a bull in front of the Oghuz. The begs gather around him. They say that Dede Korkut should come and name the boy, take him to his father, and ask the father for a beglik and a throne.^[32] Dede Korkut comes and names him: “Let your son’s name be Boğaç. I gave him his name, may God give him his years.”^[32] A deed comes first, then a sage who gives the name, and a rank goes with it. That is the order of events that the modern interpretation of er at supposes. The text comes from a later age, from a different people and a different religion. It shows how an Oghuz tale told of a youth’s naming. It is not evidence for what the Göktürks did.

Open points

The inscription gives a man’s name in a sentence that credits a mother’s Kut, and it names neither a deed nor the name. The Yenisei epitaphs give the formula in the first person and set the adult name over against the childhood name on at least one stone. Kashgari shows that at meant both a name and a title. The custom that joins these is a reconstruction: a boy’s name, a deed, a new name, and the old name set aside. Each step has a source, and no source has all of them.

If the pair means an army, it would remove the custom from the Kül Tegin text. If the line means a name, the custom has a first attestation in 732^[1] and a mother as its source of fortune. If it means an army, the custom has the Yenisei stones and the later tale, and the Kül Tegin line has a different subject.

References

^ a b c d Kül Tegin inscription
^ Aydemir 2014 (Jahr after dem Erstellungsdatum der PDF, nicht printed gelesen), p. 65–66
^ a b Aydemir 2014 (Jahr after dem Erstellungsdatum der PDF, nicht printed gelesen), p. 67, 72
^ Aydemir 2014 (Jahr after dem Erstellungsdatum der PDF, nicht printed gelesen), p. 68–69
^ Aydemir 2014 (Jahr after dem Erstellungsdatum der PDF, nicht printed gelesen), p. 79–80
^ a b c d e f Kül Tegin inscription
^ a b Aydemir 2014 (Jahr after dem Erstellungsdatum der PDF, nicht printed gelesen), p. 77–78
^ Radloff 1894–1895, parts 1–3, p. 443
^ Thomsen 1924, p. 150–151
^ a b c Aydemir 2014 (Jahr after dem Erstellungsdatum der PDF, nicht printed gelesen), p. 72
^ Aydemir 2014 (Jahr after dem Erstellungsdatum der PDF, nicht printed gelesen), p. 72, 74
^ Yıldız 2019, p. 78–82; 335; Radloff 1894–1895, parts 1–3, p. 78–82; 335
^ Karaman Dezember 2021, p. 38
^ Yenisei inscriptions
^ a b al-Kāshgharī 1072–1074, p. 116
^ al-Kāshgharī 1072–1074, p. 88
^ al-Kāshgharī 1072–1074, p. 87
^ Aydemir 2014 (Jahr after dem Erstellungsdatum der PDF, nicht printed gelesen), p. 66
^ al-Kāshgharī 1072–1074, p. 87–88, 116
^ a b Aydemir 2014 (Jahr after dem Erstellungsdatum der PDF, nicht printed gelesen), p. 69
^ a b Aydemir 2014 (Jahr after dem Erstellungsdatum der PDF, nicht printed gelesen), p. 78
^ a b Litvinsky 1996, p. 332
^ a b c d e Tuncel 2023, p. 1127
^ Sertkaya 1983, p. 72
^ Aydemir 2014 (Jahr after dem Erstellungsdatum der PDF, nicht printed gelesen), p. 68, 70
^ Aydemir 2014 (Jahr after dem Erstellungsdatum der PDF, nicht printed gelesen), p. 74–76
^ Aydemir 2014 (Jahr after dem Erstellungsdatum der PDF, nicht printed gelesen), p. 71–72
^ Aydemir 2014 (Jahr after dem Erstellungsdatum der PDF, nicht printed gelesen), p. 79
^ Aydemir 2014 (Jahr after dem Erstellungsdatum der PDF, nicht printed gelesen), p. 80
^ Thomsen 1924, p. 150–151; 78; Aydemir 2014 (Jahr after dem Erstellungsdatum der PDF, nicht printed gelesen), p. 150–151; 78
^ Aydemir 2014 (Jahr after dem Erstellungsdatum der PDF, nicht printed gelesen), p. 65–66, 80
^ a b Eyüboğlu 2022, p. 7–8 (PDF)

Sources

Literature

Wilhelm Radloff, Die alttürkischen Inschriften der Mongolei (1894–1895, parts 1–3)
Vilhelm Thomsen, Alttürkische Inschriften aus der Mongolei, in Übersetzung und mit Einleitung (1924)
Riza Tuncel, Eski Türk Avcılığının İnançsal ve Ritüelistik Boyutları (2023)
Osman Fikri Sertkaya, Köl Tigin’in Ölümünün 1250. Yıl Dönümü Dolayısı ile Moğolistan Halk Cumhuriyeti’ndeki Köktürk Harfli Metinler Üzerinde Yapılan Arkeolojik ve Filolojik Çalışmalara Toplu Bir Bakış (1983)
Âdem Aydemir, Kül Tigin Yazıtı’ndaki „Er At“ Kelimesi Üzerine (2014 (Jahr after dem Erstellungsdatum der PDF, nicht printed gelesen))
Dursun Can Eyüboğlu, Dede Korkut’taki Boğaç Han (2022)
Hülya Yıldız, Altın Köl II (E-29) Yazıtının Geniş Yüzünün Sol-İç Satırı Üzerine (2019)
Maḥmūd al-Kāshgharī, Dīwān Lughat al-Turk (1072–1074)
B. A. Litvinsky; Zhang Guang-da; R. Shabani Samghabadi (ed.), History of Civilizations of Central Asia, Vol. III (1996)
Ahmet Karaman, Dağlık Altay Yazıtlarında İleri Ögeler (Dezember 2021)