ACADEMY OF SAINT GABRIEL REPORT 3059 http://www.s-gabriel.org/3059 ************************************ 2 Oct 2005 From: Femke de Roas Greetings from the Academy of Saint Gabriel! In a previous report, we discussed for you the naming customs for a female slave in the harem of an Ottoman Sultan [1]. You have asked for further information, particularly about names that were taken from flowers. Here is what we found. Once again, please remember that until the twentieth century, Turkish was written in an Arabic script. The system of transliteration used here is based on modern Turkish, which uses certain special characters. We've used various punctuation marks to represent these special characters; we'll explain what each symbol means the first time that we use it. We mentioned some of the flower names we had found in our previous report [1]. We have used quotation marks, <">, to represent an umlaut (i.e., a pair of dots) above the preceding letter, and the comma, <,>, to represent a comma-shaped hook hanging from the bottom of the preceding letter: Gu"lbahar 'rose-blossom' Gu"lfem 'rose-cheeked' Gu"ls,ah 'rose-monarch' C,ic,ek 'flower' A variety of other flower names appear in Turkish court documents. They also appear in sources naming daughters and concubines of the Sultan [2, 3, 4]: Benefs,e 'banafsaj', a type of herb Nergis 'narcissus' Nilu"fer 'lotus-flower' Gu"lc,ic,ek 'rose-flower' Gu"lruh 'rose-spirit', or 'rose-essence' Yasemin 'jasmine' Any of these names would be a reasonable choice for a female slave in a Turkish harem. We can give the following approximate pronunciations. Unfortunately, stress is not indicated in Turkish spelling, so we can't indicate it for you in these names. In the pronunciations given, \u"\ represents the sound of u-umlaut as in German 'to feel' and as in French 'on'. More precisely, it is the vowel you get by pronouncing the in with your lips positioned as if you were saying as in . This sound is not found in English. Gu"lbahar \gu"l-bah-har\ Gu"lfem \gu"l-faym\ Gu"ls,ah \gu"l-shah\ C,ic,ek \tchee-tchayk\ Benefs,e \bay-nayf-shay\ Nergis \nayr-geese\ Gu"lc,ic,ek \gu"l-tchee-tchayk\ Gu"lruh \gu"l-rooh\ Yasemin \yah-say-meen\ 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. Research and assistance in preparing this report were provided by Ursula Georges, Arval Benicoeur, Gunnvor Silfraharr, and Talan Gwynek. For the Academy, October 2, 2005 Femke de Roas ______________________________________________________________________ REFERENCES [1] Academy of Saint Gabriel Report 3023 http://www.s-gabriel.org/3023 [2] Whitcher, Ursula, (aka Ursula Georges), "Sixteenth-Century Turkish Names," (WWW: privately published, 2002). http://www.s-gabriel.org/names/ursula/ottoman/ [3] Akgu"ndu"z, Ahmed, _Osmanli'da Harem_ (Istanbul: Osmanli Aras,tirmalari Vakfi, 1995). [4] Peirce, Leslie, _The Imperial Harem_ (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), p. 226.