Note on Place Names, Proper Names, and Transliteration
Place Names
In Eastern Europe place names cause significant trouble because they reflect past and present ethnic and political conflicts. As the states’ frontiers have changed dramatically over the last four centuries, the decision about whether to uphold the historical place names used in the described period or follow the contemporary names has become a political issue. In the case of states that no longer exist, such as the Crimean Khanate, the problem is particularly complex. We cannot lose sight of the fact that Tatar and Turkish place names in the Crimea were changed in accordance with imperialistic Russian, and then Soviet policy. In 1784, tsarist officials returned to some ancient Greek place names, in an effort to underline the classical heritage of the Russian Empire. Thus, the Crimea was included in the newly created Tauridian Province, while the most important cities were given ancient Greek names, for example, Feodosia replaced Kefe, and Gözleve became Evpatoria. Yet, the tsarist policy was modest in scale, in comparison to that of the Soviets. In the wake of the deportation of the Crimean Tatars in 1944, almost all Tatar and Turkish place names on the peninsula were changed.1 This time, the new names had no reference to the pre-Tatar names. Some of the new place names were given in honor of Russian and Soviet heroes,2 but the majority of them seem to have been given in haste from an agriculture textbook. To sum up, the newly introduced place names in the Crimea were products of state propaganda rather than a reflection of the language and culture of the local inhabitants of non-Tatar and non-Turkish origins.
For these reasons, I resolved the issue of place names as follows:
- a.Standard English place names are preferred, where they exist (e.g., Warsaw or Istanbul);
- b.contemporary place names are used to refer to settlements outside the historical boundaries of the Crimean Khanate, for instance, Chyhyryn or Varaždin; and
- c.historic place names are used for places that were situated in the Crimean Khanate (including Nogay steppes) and in the Kefe province of the Ottoman Empire. These are written in the forms most frequently recorded in the Crimean court registers (from the years 1678–83) and the Kefe defter (from the year 1682–83). As they were written in the Arabic script, there are some ambiguities concerning their transliteration. The Crimean Tatars did not pronounce words uniformly. It is possible to distinguish two main forms: Oghuz in the southern part of the peninsula and Kipchak in the north. The Oghuz forms seem to be very close to the Ottoman Turkish pronunciation. As the Crimean court registers were written in Ottoman Turkish, in cases where it was unclear how to pronounce a place name, we preferred Ottoman Turkish forms.
Proper Names and Terms
Likewise, the Ottoman Turkish forms of proper names are used, for example, ‘Giray’ instead of its Kipchak form ‘Kerey.’ We also use the Ottoman Turkish forms of Arabic names, e.g., ‘Mehmed’ instead of the Arabic form ‘Muḥammad’ or the Kipchak form ‘Memet.’
Legal and administrative terms also cause trouble. Most of the terms used here existed in Ottoman Turkish. In these cases, the Ottoman Turkish form is preferred. Foreign terms are given in italics.
Transliteration
Modern Turkish spelling is used in cases of words which were recorded in Arabic script and which occur in Ottoman Turkish (Türkçeİngilizce. Redhouse Sözlüğü). Therefore, the long vowels in words of Arabic and Persian origins are not indicated. The majority of the Turkish letters are pronounced as in English, with the exception of the following:
c sounds like English j
ç sounds like English ch
ğ is silent and lengthens the proceding vowel
ı sounds like u in radium
ö sounds like German ö
ş sounds like English sh
ü sounds like German ü.
We follow the Library of Congress system of transliteration from Russian to English.