ACADEMY OF SAINT GABRIEL REPORT 2496 http://www.s-gabriel.org/2496 ************************************ ************************************************* * * * NOTE: Later research turned up additional * * information relevant to this report. * * See the end of the letter for details. * * * ************************************************* 28 Apr 2002 From: (Josh Mittleman) Greetings from the Academy of Saint Gabriel! You asked whether is an appropriate name for a 15th-16th century Turkish woman, and whether she would have been known as her father's daughter or by her occupation. Here is what we have found. We have verified that is a modern Turkish feminine name [1]. The comma in the name represents a comma-shaped hook hanging from the bottom of the . In modern Turkish spelling, and are pronounced differently. is \ah-tchel-yah\ while is . We haven't found this name in historical sources. The closest we've come is , the name of the daughter of a scholar who married an Ottoman sultan in 1622 [2]. That name was probably pronounced \ah-kee-lay\. The only examples of Turkish women's names that we've found are written in Turkish with Arabic script, and almost all the women are identified as their father's daughters using the Arabic word "daughter" [3]. We don't know if these examples are representative of Turkish naming customs for women, but since this is our only data, our advice is that you follow that pattern and use a name like . You can find a list of men's names recorded in late-period Turkey in our report 2423: http://www.s-gabriel.org/2423 It also contains a list of women's names. Note that we used some special spelling conventions in that letter; they are explained before the first list. We have found some examples of Turkish men identified by their occupations. Our source gives the Turkish word for some of them, but presents others only in English translation: physician, learned gentleman, captain, butcher, imam. For the Turkish words, we've used the same spelling conventions here as in report 2423, i.e. a quotation mark represents two dots over the preceding letter, represents a dotted 'i' and stands for an undotted 'i'. In modern Turkish, the dotted and undotted letters have different pronunciations. Of course, these names were originally recorded in Arabic script; our source uses modern Turkish spelling to transliterate the Arabic. helvacI sweetmaker tu"ccar merchant hallac, cotton-beater reis captain bazarci shopkeeper We can't say whether any of these bynames would have been used for women [3]. We hope this letter has been useful. Please write us again if any part of it has been unclear or if you have other questions. I was assisted in researching and writing this letter by Ursula Georges, Pedro de Alcazar, Talan Gwynek, Aryanhwy merch Catmael, Maridonna Benvenuti, and Adelaide de Beaumont. For the Academy, Arval Benicoeur 29 Apr 2002 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - References [1] "Turkish Names: Female" at "Islamic Articles" (WWW) http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Acropolis/8139/muslimarticles/names_turkish.html#female [2] Leslie P. Peirce, _The Imperial Harem: Women and Sovereignty in the Ottoman Empire_ (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), p. 106. [3] Yvonne J. Seng, "Invisible Women: Residents of Early Sixteenth-Century Istanbul", _Women in the Medieval Islamic World_, ed. Gavin R.G. Hambly (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1998). - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Correction, Arval, 29 Nov 2004: Corrected a mis-numbered footnote. Correction, Arval, 26 Dec 2004: Corrected the placement of a footnote to make it clear that all the occupational bynames come from the same source.