Yugur Toponyms

 

The area inhabited by the Yugur people presents a kaleidoscope of toponyms: there are old and new names, and Western Yugur, Eastern Yugur, and Chinese designations for the same place. There are also a few Tibetan placenames, and names of unknown origin.
      It often appears to be problematic to connect the different names of one and the same place, as the sources on the Yugur languages are not very elaborate on this issue; in general, it is difficult to establish the original or most ancient name of a given place.

At the time when Malov visited the Yugur in the 1910s, many toponyms in the Yugur area were Chinese or had Chinese equivalent names next to their Yugur name; a number of these Chinese names are still current today.
      Many Chinese toponyms have been simply borrowed into the Yugur languages 'as is', e.g. the Chinese placename Beijing (Peking) is borrowed into Western Yugur as Peyjiñ.
      Some toponyms express the same meaning in the Yugur languages and Chinese, e.g. Chinese Heihé is Qara Qol in Western Yugur and Qara Mörin in Eastern Yugur, all meaning Black River.
      A small number of toponyms can be assumed to have been rendered from one of the Yugur languages into Chinese; these toponyms usually pertain to small places like farmsteads, valleys and mounds. For instance, Western Yugur Shar Kutïr (lit. Small Mounds) is called Xiaogudui in Chinese (lit. Small Ancient Mound), reflecting the Western Yugur pronunciation and meaning to some extent.
      Some Yugur and Chinese toponyms apparently are not related semantically or phonetically, e.g. Western Yugur Nünjin is called Húbianzi (lit. Lake Shore) in Chinese.

Due to a lack of detailed maps, it is often not possible to localize the smaller places like hamlets, springs, rivulets and hills exactly.
      Formerly, a lamasery (a Buddhist monastery and temple) formed the centre of a group of small villages and farmsteads, and Malov usually localizes a topographical feature in terms of 'situated near the lamasery of'.

Read more on:

Back to Sùnán Yugur Autonomous County
Back to the index of The Western Yugur Language