The history of Turkic borrowings into the Russian language

The Turkic languages have provided the Russian vocabulary with one of the oldest and most stable groups of loanwords: the words "money," "pencil," "iron," "sarai," and hundreds of others came from the steppe and Volga dialects. These words were brought in by Khazar trade, the Polovtsian neighborhood, the Horde administration, the markets of Kazan and Bukhara, and embassy relations with the Ottoman Empire.

What is called Turkism?

In Russian studies, "Turkisms" are words borrowed from Turkic languages into Proto-Slavic, Old Russian, and Russian — at different historical periods. The term is also applied to words of Turkic origin that entered Russian through an intermediary: Persian, Arabic, Mongolian, or Western European languages. It’s impossible to consider every word with an Eastern sound a Turkism — a proven etymology is needed.

Linguists divide such words into two groups. Native Turkisms originate from the vocabulary of the Turkic languages themselves: Kipchak, Tatar, and Oghuz dialects. Historical Turkisms are vocabulary that the Turks themselves previously adopted from their neighbors: the Persians, Arabs, Mongols, and Chinese. A word entered Russian "second hand," and identifying its original source can be difficult.

Researchers cite the Oghuz and Kipchak languages, primarily Turkish and Tatar, as the main contributors. Through Turkic, Russian also absorbed things foreign to the steppe: the names of Persian fabrics, Mongolian titles, and Arabic trade terms. Almost no written traces of the initial borrowings survive, so vocabulary is dated based on its first recordings in birch bark manuscripts, chronicles, yarlyks, and business documents.

Several layers are arranged chronologically. The first are inherited Turkic words from the Proto-Slavic language. The second are Old Russian loanwords from the pre-Mongol period. The third is formed by words from the Golden Horde period of the 13th – 15th centuries. The fourth and most widespread dates back to the 16th – 17th centuries, and the fifth extends from the 18th century to the present day.

The earliest traces

The Proto-Slavic layer is the most controversial. Words common to most Slavic languages are sometimes explained by contacts between early Slavs and steppe peoples before the Common Era. There are few candidates, and almost every one has a competing theory: Iranian, Germanic, or Slavic proper. The evidence is scant. The debate raged throughout the twentieth century and remains unresolved.

One of the discussed examples is "torg." Some etymologists trace it to a Turkic word meaning "silk," which in turn has a Chinese root. Others see it as a native Slavic derivation from the verb "teret" (to rub). Such twin words are rare in the ancient dictionary, and each case requires separate analysis.

Dating this layer is nearly impossible. The Proto-Slavs had no written language, and the surviving languages diverged long before the first literacy. Linguists rely on form comparisons — a method precise in arithmetic but uncertain in the source data. Because of this uncertainty, many dictionaries do not include Proto-Slavic Turkic words in their main list.

Steppe to the Horde

By the 9th – 12th centuries, the picture becomes clearer. Kievan Rus’ neighbored the Khazars, Volga Bulgars, Pechenegs, and Polovtsians — relations that developed in various forms: trade, wars, dynastic marriages, and mercenary service. Through these contacts, the terms "drum," "shoe," "felt," "pack," "mound," "stocking," "hut," "guard," and "horde" entered Russian everyday life.

"Bogatyr" comes from the Old Turkic baɣatur, meaning "brave warrior." Vasmer cites parallels: Hungarian bátor, "bold," Danube Bulgar βαγάτουρ, Chagatai batur, and Kyrgyz baatyr. He also estimates that the attempt to derive the eastern forms from Iranian baɣapuϑra- is highly questionable; the theory that the word derives from Russian "rich" (rich) is linguistically untenable — the suffix "-yr" does not appear in Russian word formation.

"Horse" is also linked to a Turkic source through metathesis, the rearrangement of sounds in a borrowed word during its adoption. Pre-Mongol Turkic words also include "boyarina" and "vatagu"; both etymologies have their supporters and critics, and dictionaries label them as controversial.

A unique work of this era is "The Tale of Igor’s Campaign," written in the late 1180s. Researchers count about forty-five Turkic words in it, almost all of which refer to the Polovtsians, against whom Igor waged his campaign. The text preserves the names of Polovtsian clans, personalities, and the realities of steppe life.

Kipchak language as a lingua franca

The Polovtsians, also known as the Kipchaks and Cumans, spoke a language understood from the Altai to the Danube. European merchants and missionaries learned it as a means of communication throughout Eurasia — Kipchak was as indispensable in the steppe as English is today at an airport.

The primary source of evidence is the Codex Cumanicus, an early 14th-century manuscript dated 1303. It was compiled by Christian missionaries as a phrasebook and dictionary: a Latin-Persian-Kipchak section and a Kipchak-German section. The only copy is kept in the library of St. Mark’s Basilica in Venice; the manuscript was translated into Russian only in 1972. Kipchak subsequently formed the basis of the Crimean Tatar, Karaite, and Armenian-Kipchak languages.

Horde layer

After 1240, the Golden Horde administration became the main source of borrowing. The words of this layer are as precise as accounting: they name duties, fees, positions, and documents. "Tamga" meant a stamp and a fee; from it arose the word "tamozhnya." "Yam" was a postal station, from the Turkic root "coachman"; the word "yam" appears in the khan’s yarlyks themselves, as confirmed by I. I. Sreznevsky.

Vasmer derives the words "yamsky," "yamshchik," and "yam" from the Turkic " jamčy " — "postal courier." The Russian word "yamshchik" (meaning "yam man") developed by analogy with nouns ending in "-chik/-shchik": yamchy (meaning "yam man") became "yamshchik" (meaning "coachman") in Russian. Moscow rebuilt the network of stations required to supply horses for the sovereign’s cavalry for its own purposes and preserved it until the railways were built.

"Denga" grew out of the Tatar form "tenga" ) tәңkә), a small coin. The plural gave the Russian word "den’gi," and the devoicing of the consonant gave it "den’gu." From the same sphere came "kazna," "kaznazhey," "altyn" as a coin, "kabala," and "kabak" (pub) in its early meaning of a drinking establishment. Vinogradov noted that the Tatar influence on Russian vocabulary encompassed management, monetary management, and the names of clothing, utensils, equipment, and horse breeding.

Horse colors are a separate chapter. "Roan," "buckskin," "bay," "black," "brown," "chestnut," and "argamak" as breed names — all are words of Turkic origin. In steppe culture, the horse was more important than any other thing, and the equestrian’s vocabulary was adopted in its entirety by Russian speech, along with professional subtleties that were lost on the Slavic peasant economy.

The exchange went both ways. During those same centuries, the Russian words "smola" (sumala), "pech" (mič), and "brevno" (büränä) entered the Tatar language — remnants of close proximity in the Volga region. Borrowing is never a one-way street: people take what they don’t have at home, and what they don’t have at home is usually small, but essential.

Peak borrowing

The bulk of Turkisms emerged in the 16th and 17th centuries. This was due to several simultaneous events: the fall of the Kazan Khanate in 1552 and the incorporation of the Volga lands into the Muscovite state, the growth of trade with Crimea, Turkey, and Central Asia, and the powerful cultural influence of the Ottoman Empire on Eastern Europe.

The list of words of this era reads like an inventory of an old bazaar: “barn”, “arshin”, “bazaar”, “baul”, “steelyard”, “booth”, “raisin”, “calagan”, “tower”, “trap”, “caravan”, “cinnabar”, “pick”, “dagger”, “body”, “kumach”, “ammonia”, “hearth”, “carp”, “barn”, “morocco”, “stellate sturgeon”, “antimony”, “herd”, “fog”, “iron”, “robe”, “cast iron”, “pants”, “jasper”, “estuary”, “quince”, “shish kebab”, “lasso”, “muslin”, “oil”, “wick”, “mess”.

Many of them arrived via the Ottoman Empire. At that time, the Turkish language served diplomacy, trade, and crafts across a vast territory, and Russian ambassadors, merchants, and captives brought more than just goods from Istanbul. The Ottoman Empire’s influence on Russian vocabulary lasted until the early 18th century.

What did the first borrowings in the text look like?

The spelling betrayed the word’s novelty. In 16th- and 17th-century texts, the same word was spelled differently: "pencil" appeared as "karadash," and "balagan" — with variations of the first vowel. The Russian ear replaced unfamiliar sounds with familiar ones: the velar and guttural Turkic consonants became the usual k, g, and kh. The inserted "n" in the word "pencil" is a mystery that etymologists honestly admit remains unsolved.

Peter the Great’s era

The words "bashka," "izyan," "karandash" (literally, "crayon") in their established forms, and "porcelain" (literally, "porcelain") all date back to Peter the Great’s time. The century opened not only as a window onto Europe: Eastern vocabulary was still in active use, and translations from European languages carried Turkic words into Russian texts in distorted forms — through Italian or French pronunciation.

An example is "The Turkish Monarchy," a Russian translation from the early 18th century of the English diplomat Paul Rico’s treatise on the Ottoman Empire. The translator mechanically imported Turkic words from the Italian edition, including typos. St. Petersburg researchers who analyzed this text noted that most of the Turkisms in it were exoticisms, terms that were only partially understandable to the reader. Izafet constructions, common in Turkic syntax, were copied as fixed forms, without any attempt at reinterpretation.

After Peter the Great, the flow began to wane. Beginning in the 18th century, French, German, and Dutch became the dominant forces in the Russian vocabulary; by the 20th century, the influx of Turkic borrowings slowed for the first time in history and never recovered. This did not hinder the pan-Slavic fate of such words: Turkish, Tatar, Kazakh, and Uzbek continued to contribute individual words to Russian — with the caveat that the share of new borrowings was negligible compared to previous centuries.

How words took root

Phonetics was the first step in processing borrowings. Turkic vowel harmony — the rule by which sounds in a word adapt to one another — didn’t survive in Russian: "karagay" remained "karagay" and didn’t become "keregey." Long vowels were shortened, final unstressed syllables were dropped or merged with Russian suffixes.

Morphology completed its work. The word acquired case endings, gender, and sometimes diminutive forms: from "yal" to "yalik," from "kazna" to "kazyonny." The suffix "-shchik" in "yamshchik" (coachman) appeared by analogy with Russian word formation, as did "-chik" in words for people of a certain profession. Grammar absorbed the foreign word into its own structure and gradually erased the seams.

Semantics changed more slowly than phonetics. "Kabala" (bondage) evolved from a debt obligation under Tatar law into a word for a generally heavy bondage. "Yarlyk" (label) from a khan’s charter granting the prince the right to rule became a household label on a bottle. "Balagan" (fairground booth) moved from the Persian palace to the fairground booth — the word traveled from Upper Asia to the Russian city through several languages.

Disputes about scale

The number of Turkic words in Russian is a question that linguists answer differently. The most comprehensive lexicon, E.N. Shipova’s 1976 "Dictionary of Turkic Words in the Russian Language," contains approximately two thousand words. Critics have noted that it includes both ancient loanwords common to most Slavic languages, as well as words whose Turkic origins were later disputed.

There are also radically skeptical estimates. One analysis of Shipova’s dictionary, published outside of academic journals, classified only about ninety words as truly Turkic — the author considers the rest to be native Russian vocabulary, mistakenly attributed to steppe sources, or borrowed from Arabic, Persian, and Mongolian. Academic etymology disagrees with this assessment: it relies on systematic phonetic correspondences, not on the superficial similarity of words. The truth, apparently, lies between these extremes — the generally accepted list of stable Turkic words is shorter than two thousand and longer than ninety.

The debate over individual words continues. Some etymologists derive "sarafan" from Persian, brought via Turkic mediation, while others consider it a Middle Eastern word with no clear path to Russian. "Ataman" has a Turkic version and an older hypothesis that it was borrowed from the German "Hauptmann" via Polish mediation; neither is considered definitive. Vasmer’s dictionary, in such cases, offers both versions with caveats.

Pseudo-Turkisms are a separate field for etymologists. The popular imagination tends to attribute any words beginning with "kara-," "bai-," or "bash-" to "Tatar": hence folk etymologies like "bogatyr" (from "bogatyr" - from "rich"). False explanations proliferate in popular texts faster than specialists can sort them out. A proven history of a word begins where a beautiful guess ends.

Turkisms in modern speech

The vocabulary of today’s Russian speakers contains fewer Turkic words than their ancestors did three centuries ago, yet they remain active. No native speaker perceives "pencil," "iron," "sarai," "bazaar," "herd," "izyum," or "arkan" as foreign — borrowing has ceased entirely. Individual lexemes live on in colloquial speech: "kalach" is appropriate on the table, while "kalym" and "yasyr" have become relics of historical novels.

Regional speech preserves more recent layers. In Tatarstan, local Russians freely borrow from Tatar "ash" (food), "bәlesh" (pie), "apa" (older sister, aunt), "aby" (older brother, uncle), and "kunak" (guest). Doctor, salesperson, neighbor — the word finds its way without any dictionaries. Scientists have also noted phonetic shifts in the speech of Russian-speaking Tatarstanis: soft consonants, a distinctive intonation carried over from Tatar.

Geography also gave Russian toponymy: rivers with names ending in "-say" and "-kul," and towns and villages with Turkic roots, dotted the Volga region, the Urals, Siberia, and the south of the country. Names such as Chingiz, Timur, Rustam, and Aidar entered the Russian nomenclature from Turkic cultures and appear in birth certificates without any exoticism. The language accepted them as casually as it once accepted "caravan" and "watermelon."

The fate of one word

"Karandash" (pencil) appeared in Russian in the 16th and 17th centuries as "karadash," from the Turkic karadaš, meaning "black stone." The Turkish karataş means black slate, and the Tatar kara tash means graphite. The Russian form, with the inserted "n," arose for an unclear reason, and even 21st-century etymological dictionaries are honest about this omission.

The word found a literary destiny. French caricaturist Jean-Jacques Sossa signed his works with the pseudonym Caran d’Ache, a transcription of the Russian word for "pencil"; he was the grandson of an émigré officer who had participated in the Russian campaigns. Later, the Swiss company Faber-Castuell — or rather, the Swiss firm named after the artist’s pseudonym — transformed it into the global brand of Caran d’Ache pencils. The steppe word for "black stone," having passed through Russian, French, and commercial registers, returned to European stores as a brand.

This is how borrowing works: a word moves from language to language, loses its origin, acquires new meanings, and sometimes ends up in a place opposite its starting point. Of all the Turkic words in the Russian dictionary, "karandash" (pencil) has one of the most well-documented histories: it has dates, forms, and a documented path through four languages. Most of its steppe relatives lack such biographies — there are only dictionary notations and tentative guesses that experts continue to verify bit by bit.