Name of Armenia

The name Armenia enters English via Latin, from Ancient Greek Ἀρμενία.

The Armenian endonym for the Armenian people and country is hayer and Hayastan, respectively. The exact etymologies of the names of Armenia are unknown, and there are various speculative attempts to connect them to older toponyms or ethnonyms.

Armenia/Armenians

Armenia and Armenians are the most common names used internationally to refer to the country Armenia and the Armenian people. Armenians themselves do not use it while speaking Armenian, making it an exonym.

Etymology

Multiple theories and speculations exist about the origin of the name Armenia, but no consensus has been reached by historians and linguists. Armenologist Nicholas Adontz has rejected some of the speculations in his 1946 book.[1]

The earliest unambiguous and universally accepted attestation of the name dates to the 6th century BC, from the trilingual Behistun Inscription, where the names Armina (in Old Persian), Harminuya (in Elamite), and Urashtu (in Babylonian) and their equivalent demonyms are used in reference to Armenia and people from Armenia.[2] In Greek, Αρμένιοι (meaning Armenians) is attested from about the same time, perhaps the earliest reference being a fragment attributed to Hecataeus of Miletus (c. 476 BC).[3]

From Indo-European *ar-

Some authors have connected Armenia to the Indo-European root *ar- meaning "to assemble".[4]

From Armani and/or Armânum

Early 20th century Armenologists have suggested that Old Persian 𐎠𐎼𐎷𐎡𐎴 a-r-mi-i-n(a) and the Greek Armenoi are continuations of an Assyrian toponym Armânum or Armanî.[5] There are certain Bronze Age records identified with the toponym in both Mesopotamian and Egyptian sources. The earliest is from an inscription which mentions Armânum together with Ibla as territories conquered by Naram-Sin of Akkad in c. 2250 BC[6] identified with an Akkadian colony in the Diarbekr region.[7] Many historians, such as Wayne Horowitz, identify Armanî which was conquered by Naram-Sin of Akkad, with the Syrian city of Aleppo.[8]

Armenia has also been claimed as a variant of Urmani (or Urmenu), attested epigraphically in an inscription of Menuas of Urartu.[9]

From Har-Minni

Alternatively, Armenia is interpreted by some as ^ḪARMinni, that is, "the mountainous region of the Minni".[10] Minni (מנּי) is also a Biblical name of the region, appearing in the Bible (Jeremiah 51:27) alongside Ararat and Ashchenaz, probably the same as the Minnai of Assyrian inscriptions,[11] corresponding to the Mannai. The Elamite name for Armenia was inscribed as har-mi-nu-ya.[12]

From Erimena

The name Erimena appears in Urartian inscriptions as the father of king Rusa III, which can be interpreted to mean "Rusa, son of the Armenian".[13]

Armen tribe hypothesis

There have been further speculations as to the existence of a Bronze Age tribe of the Armens (Armans, Armani; Armenian: Արմեններ Armenner, Առամեններ Aṙamenner), either identical to or forming a subset of the Hayasa-Azzi.[14][15] In this case, Armenia would be an ethnonym rather than a toponym. Attestations of such a tribe have never been found.

From Aram and/or Arame

Armenian tradition has an eponymous ancestor, Aram, a lineal descendant of Hayk (Հայկ), son of Harma and father of Ara the Beautiful (according to classical Armenian historian Moses of Chorene).[16][17] A much older Aram, the son of Shem, is also mentioned from the Book of Genesis, Historian Flavius Josephus[18], and the Dead Sea Scrolls, as being the sovereign over "all the land of Mesopotamia between the Tigris and the Euphrates to the north of the Chaldees to the border of the mountains of Asshur and the land of 'Arara."[19] Aram is sometimes equated with Arame of Urartu, the earliest known king of Urartu.[20] The endonym Hayk’ (from Classical Armenian) in the same tradition is traced to Hayk himself.[21]

The names Armen and Arman, feminine Arminé, are common given names by Armenians. Armin is also a Persian given name.[22]

Hayastan/Hayk/Hayer

Armenian people use names derived from the stem hay- as their endonym. Hay (singular) and Hayer (plural) is used to refer to the Armenian people. Hayastan (Hay + -a- + -stan) is used to refer to their country, while Hayk was used historically and is still used today romantically.

Etymology

From Hatti

According to Diakonoff, the ethnonym may derive from the unattested Proto-Armenian name *hatiyos or *hatyos → *hayo → hay,[23][24] related to Urartian 𒆳𒄩𒀀𒋼 (^KURḫa-a-te, "the land of Hittites"), from Hittite 𒄩𒋾 (ḫa-ti /Ḫatti/). In the Armenian language, the Proto-Indo-European intervocalic *-t- drops and yields /y/.[25] Compare *ph₂tḗr → *hatir → *hayir → hayr ("father"). Other examples include *h₂eh₁ter- → *ātr- → *ayr → ayrem ("burn"), *bʰréh₂tēr → ełbayr ("brother").

The name Ḫāte was given by Urartians to all lands west of Euphrates, including the territory around Malatya (a region assumed to be occupied by speakers of Proto-Armenians). Diakonoff theorizes that when the Urartians were assimilated among the Proto-Armenians, they took over their Indo-European language and called themselves by the same name of the "Hittites".[26]

From Hayasa

Others suggest that the etymology of the hay- stem derives from the name of a realm in proximity to the Armenian Highlands called Ḫayaša.[23]

The presumption is that the name Hayk' would derive from Hayasa, but Diakonoff considers this "not provable and in its very essence not probable." According to Kapantsjan, the suffix -sa in Hayasa as the ancient Luwian toponymical suffix -ssas, widely in use throughout all of Anatolia, but this suffix is not present in the Armenian language. It is also argued that the initial ḫ in Ḫayaša yielding /h/ in Armenian is improbable.[27]

From Haik

According to Armenian historiographic tradition, the endonym Hayk’ (Հայք) comes from the legendary eponymous ancestor of the Armenian nation, Hayk (Հայկ).

Somkheti/Somekhi

This form, and forms derived from it, is used by Georgians and some peoples of the Caucasus.

Etymology

According to Diakonoff, the name is derived by metathesis from the name of the country called Suḫmu in Akkadian and Zuhma in Hittite, located in the upper Euphrates valley, close to South-Caucasian tribes, and is presumed to have been inhabited by Proto-Armenians.[28]

Ararat/Urartu

Used historically as a synonym for Armenia,[29] in the forms of Urartu in the Assyrian dialect of Akkadian and Urashtu in the Babylonian dialect, as well as Ararat in Biblical Hebrew. The name Ararat was changed to Armenia in the Bible as early as the 1st century AD in historiographical works[30] and very early Latin translations.[31] This name was attested as Uruatri as early as the 13th century BC by Assyrian king Shalmaneser I, and it was used interchangeably with Armenia[32] until the last known attestation from the 5th century BC by Xerxes in his XV Inscriptions.[33] Sometime during the early periods of Classical Antiquity, the use of Urartu declined and was fully replaced with Armenia. The name continued to be used in the form of Ayrarat[34] for the central province of Ancient Armenia (also attested as Aurarat by Strabo),[35] as a scarcely used alternative name for the First Republic of Armenia (Araratian Republic),[36][37] and for a short-lived and self-proclaimed Kurdish state known as the Republic of Ararat. Today, Ararat is used as one of the names given to the twin-peaked mountain in the Armenian Highlands, in modern-day Turkey, and for a province by the same name in the Republic of Armenia. It's also a common given name used by Armenians.

Modern names

Language	Armenians	Armenia
Armenian	հայեր (hayer)	Հայաստան (Hayastan), Հայք (Hayk’)
Arabic	أرمن (Arman)	أرمينيا (Armīniyā)
Aramaic	ܐܪܡܐܢܥ (Armānī)	ܐܪܡܝܢܝܐ (Armīniyā)
Avar	Цӏамухъ (C̣amuq̄)	ЦIамгIалал (C̣amghalal)
Azerbaijani	Ermənilər	Ermənistan
Mandarin Chinese	亞美尼亞人 (yàměiníyàrén)	亞美尼亞 (yàměiníyà)
French	arméniens	Arménie
Georgian	სომხები (Somkhebi)	სომხეთი (Somkhet'i)
Greek	Αρμένιοι (Arménios)	Αρμενία (Armenía)
Hebrew	ארמנים (Armenim)	ארמניה (Armeniya)
Kurdish	Ermeni	Ermenistan
Persian	ارمنی (Armani)	ارمنستان (Armanestan)
Russian	армяне (armyane)	Армения (Armeniya)
Turkish	Ermeniler	Ermenistan

References

1. Nicholas Adontz. "Histoire d'Arménie : les origines, du Xe siècle au VIe siècle av. J.C.", Paris 1946: "Armani has absolutely no relation to Armenia."
2. "ARMENIA and IRAN i. The Achaemenid province – Encyclopaedia Iranica". 2019-12-14. Archived from the original on 2019-12-14. Retrieved 2020-01-03.
3. "Χαλύβοισι πρὸς νότον Ἀρμένιοι ὁμουρέουσι (The Armenians border on the Chalybes to the south)". Chahin, Mark (2001). The Kingdom of Armenia. London: Routledge. pp. fr. 203. ISBN 0-7007-1452-9.
4. T. V. Gamkrelidze and V. V. Ivanov, The Early History of Indo-European (aka Aryan) Languages, Scientific American, March 1990; James P. Mallory, "Kuro-Araxes Culture", Encyclopedia of Indo-European Culture, Fitzroy Dearborn, 1997.
5. H. A. Rigg (1937).
6. surviving in an early Babylonian copy, ca. 2200 BC, URI 275, lines I.7, 13; II.4; III.3, 30.
7. Horace Abram Rigg, Jr., A Note on the Names Armânum and Urartu, Journal of the American Oriental Society (1937).
8. Wayne Horowitz, Mesopotamian Cosmic Geography, Eisenbrauns 1998, ISBN 0-931464-99-4
9. Vahan Kurkjian, History of Armenia, Michigan 1968
10. Easton's Bible Dictionary
11. International Standard Bible Encyclopedia s.v. Minni
12. "Wayback Machine" (PDF). 2019-08-01. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2019-08-01. Retrieved 2020-01-05.
13. Chahin, M., 1912- (2013-11-05). The kingdom of Armenia. London. p. 104. ISBN 978-1-136-85243-5. OCLC 863157664. Dr R.D. Barnett suggests, and he is supported by other scholars, the possibility of Erimena meaning Armenian: therefore, ‘Rusa, son of the Armenian.’CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
14. Rafael Ishkhanyan, "Illustrated History of Armenia," Yerevan, 1989
15. Elisabeth Bauer. Armenia: Past and Present (1981), p. 49
16. Moses of Chorene,The History of Armenia, Book 1, Ch. 12 (in Russian)
17. History of Armenia by Father Michael Chamich from B.C. 2247 to the Year of Christ 1780, or 1229 of the Armenian era, Bishop's College Press, Calcutta, 1827, page 19: "[Aram] was the first to raise the Armenian name to any degree of renown; so that contemporary nations ... called them the Aramians, or followers of Aram, a name which has been corrupted into Armenians; and the country they inhabited, by universal consent, took the name of Armenia."
18. Josephus, Flavius. Antiquities of the Jews. Book 1, section 143.
19. Charles, R.H. (1913). The Book of Jubilees 9:5 from The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament. Clarendon Press. http://www.pseudepigrapha.com/jubilees/9.htmhttps://digitalcommons.andrews.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1003&context=papers
20. "Արամ" in H. Ačaṙean (1926-35), Hayocʿ Anjnanunneri Baṙaran (Yerevan: Yerevan State University), 2nd ed., 1942-62
21. Razmik Panossian, The Armenians: From Kings And Priests to Merchants And Commissars, Columbia University Press (2006), ISBN 978-0-231-13926-7, p. 106.
22. Parsiana, Book of Iranian Names: a dweller of the Garden of Eden, a son of king Kobad
23. "ARMENIA AND IRAN iii. Armenian Religion – Encyclopaedia Iranica". www.iranicaonline.org. Retrieved 2020-01-04. The origin of Arm. hay “Armenian” is uncertain, but it may come from the name of the Hittites, through whose territory the early colonizers passed: Proto-Arm. *hatiyos yields *hayo, shortened to hay (I. M. D’yakonov, Predystoriya armyanskogo naroda, Erevan, 1968, p. 236).
24. Kopeček, V., Hoch, T., Baar, V. (2011). The Origins of Toponyms and Ethnonyms in The Region of the South Caucasus. Region and Regionalism 10(2): 201–211.
25. "Wayback Machine" (PDF). 2020-01-05. p. 3. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2020-01-05. Retrieved 2020-01-05. The PIE initial *p- yields Arm. h-, and the intervocalic *-t- drops: hayr ‘father’: Skt. pitā, Gr. πατήρ, Lat. pater, OHG fater, Toch. B pācer
26. Dʹjakonov, I. M. (1968), S. T. Jeremjan, editor, Predystorija armjanskovo naroda. Istorija Armjanskovo nagorʹja s 1500 po 500 g. do n.e. Xurrity, luvijcy, protoarmjane (The Pre-History of the Armenian People. The History of the Armenian Highland from 1500 to 500 BC. Hurrians, Luwians, Proto-Armenians) (in Russian), Yerevan: Academy Press, page 236
27. "I. M. Diakonoff, The Pre-history of the Armenian People. The Formation of the Armenian People. Remote and Classical Antiquity". 2020-01-05. Archived from the original on 2020-01-05. Retrieved 2020-01-05. There remains the linguistic succession. The assumption of a development from the hypothetical Haiasa language to Old Armenian has no base in any known linguistic fact whatever. It rests entirely on a certain similarity between the name of the country Haiasa (probably /xaiasa-/, with the Arm. sound x) and the self-appellation of the Armenian--hayk' (with the sound h) (52). From what has already been said above about the nature of ethnonyms in general it is evident that this similarity can in no way serve as proof of an organic connection between these terms. Moreover, as the Old Armenian words of analogous structure show, it is difficult to say how the initial form of the word hayk' sounded. The initial consonant might have been either *p-, as in hayr "father," from I.-E. *pe"ter, or the Proto-Indo-European laryngeal *H-, as in haw "grandfather," or *h-, which itself has a different derivation in the Indo-European languages, for example, from *s-. The diphthong -ai- might also be traced to different sound combinations, including -ate-, -ati-. The stem of the word hayk' is hayo- (and not, let [114] us say, *haya- (53). Kapantsjan interprets the suffix -sa in Haiasa as the ancient Luwian toponymical suffix -ssas (54), which was certainly widely in use throughout all of Asia Minor. But there is one area where this suffix is not found at all, and this area is Armenia. Therefore in the word "Haiasa" the element -sa, if it is a suffix, has no relation to Old Armenian.
28. Dʹjakonov, I. M. (1968), S. T. Jeremjan, editor, Predystorija armjanskovo naroda. Istorija Armjanskovo nagorʹja s 1500 po 500 g. do n.e. Xurrity, luvijcy, protoarmjane [The Pre-History of the Armenian People. The History of the Armenian Highland from 1500 to 500 BC. Hurrians, Luwians, Proto-Armenians (in Russian), Yerevan: Academy Press, page 234
29. Oriental Studies in the USSR. Indiana University: Nauka Publishers, Central Department of Oriental Literature. 1988. p. 312. In his view, the first Armenian state was the kingdom of "The House of Togarmah" in the area of Melid (Melitene, modern Malatya) on ... Here, as we know from the abovementionaed inscriptions, “Armenia” and “Urartu” were synonyms ...
30. Josephus. Antiquities of the Jews. Translated by Whiston, William. 1.3.5 – via PACE: Project on Ancient Cultural Engagement.
31. "The Book of Genesis: Chapter 8". LatinVulgate.com. Mental Systems, Inc. Retrieved 8 June 2018.
32. "ARMENIA and IRAN i. The Achaemenid province – Encyclopaedia Iranica". 2019-12-14. Archived from the original on 2019-12-14. Retrieved 2020-01-18. Armina is named as a province (satrapy) of the Achaemenid empire; the inhabitants are called Arminiya- “Armenian.” [...] it is rendered phonetically in Elamite as Har-mi-nu-ya (-ip), etc. The inscriptions’ Babylonian versions, however, use KURú-ra-áš-ṭu “Urartu” and LUú-ra-áš-ṭa-a-a “Urartean,” i.e., the name of the kingdom (and its inhabitants)
33. Yamauchi, Edwin M. (2003). Foes from the northern frontier : invading hordes from the Russian steppes. Eugene, Ore.: Wipf and Stock Pub. p. 36. ISBN 1-59244-214-5. OCLC 54451068. The name Urashtu (a variant for Urartu) is encountered for the last time in the inscriptions of Xerxes (486–465). In the trilingual texts of Darius (522–486) the Old Persian word which corresponds to the Akkadian Urashtu is Armina.
34. Downing, Charles, folklorist. (1993). Armenian folk-tales and fables. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. ix. ISBN 0-19-274155-1. OCLC 29299405. [...] Masis, a name (Masios) used by Greek geographers to denote a range to the south-west—but ‘upon the mountains of (the land of) Ararat’, i.e. a country known to the ancient Assyrians as Urartu. This ancient name (for Urartu and Ararat are synonymous) is perpetuated by that of the central Armenian province of Ayrarat, the source of some of the [...]CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
35. "AYRARAT – Encyclopaedia Iranica". 2019-12-16. Archived from the original on 2019-12-16. Retrieved 2020-01-18. AYRARAT, region of central Armenia in the broad plain of the upper Araxes (q.v.); the name is undoubtedly connected with the Assyrian Urautri, later Urartu, the biblical Ararat (Genesis 12:20, Jeremiah 15:13), and with the people called Alarodioi by Herodotus (3.94) in the fifth century B.C. The name Ayrarat is unknown to classical authors who were well acquainted with Armenia, and it appears to have been in purely local usage to describe the central lands of Armenia which formed the royal domains of the Arsacid kings and probably those of their Orontid and Artaxiad predecessors. In this case it may well represent the Araxenōn Pediōn (Araxena plain) of Strabo (11.14.3), which in its Armenian form Erasxajor was otherwise restricted to one district within Aurarat.
36. "Անդրանիկ. "Իմ զինվորն անզեն ու անձայն վկա չի դառնա" - republic.mediamax.am". 2019-12-18. Archived from the original on 2019-12-18. Retrieved 2020-01-01. “For General Andranik and for all the Turkish-Armenian leaders and people in general, the core of Armenia was the Armenian Highland - Erzurum, Van, Mush and Sasun. The small Russian-Armenian Republic of Yerevan was a small province on the eastern outskirts of Armenia... and the liberation of that province would have no solution to the liberation of Turkish-Armenians. The axis of the Armenian Revolutionary Movement and the political goals pursued by the Armenian parties would be the liberation of the Armenian Highland. Andranik had fought for 30 years to liberate Mother Armenia.” [...] “Andranik, who had fortified himself in Zangezur, holding a hostile attitude towards the republic ‘created by the Turks’, was largely reflective of the Western Armenian mentality of that time. The National Delegation headed by Poghos Nubar in Paris enjoyed more authority among Western Armenians than the Government of the Republic of Armenia. The word "Republic of Armenia" was not acceptable to many, it was just ‘Ararat Republic’,” Vratsyan writes. Original text: «Զորավար Անդրանիկի եւ առհասարակ բոլոր թրքահայ ղեկավարներուն եւ ժողովուրդին համար բուն Հայաստանը Հայկական լեռնաշխարհն էր - Էրզրումը, Վանը, Մուշն ու Սասունը։ Ռուսահայոց Երեւանյան փոքրիկ Հանրապետությունը, բուն Հայաստանի արեւելյան ծայրամասերուն վրա փոքրիկ նահանգ մըն էր... եւ այդ նահանգին ազատագրումը ոչ մեկ լուծում կբերեր Թրքահայաստանի ազատագրության։ Հայ հեղափոխական շարժման եւ հայ կուսակցություններու հետապնդած քաղաքական նպատակներուն առանցքը կկազմեր Հայկական լեռնաշխարհին ազատագրումը։ Անդրանիկ 30 տարի պայքարած էր, որպեսզի ազատագրե Մայր Հայաստանը» («Զորավար Անդրանիկ եւ հայ հեղափոխական շարժումը. կենսագրական ակնարկ» Երեւան, 1990): [...] «Անդրանիկը, որ ամրացել էր Զանգեզուրում՝ թշնամական դիրք բռնելով «թուրքերի ձեռքով ստեղծած» հանրապետության վերաբերմամբ, զգալի չափով արտահայտիչ էր արեւմտահայերի այն ժամանակվա մտայնությանը։ Ազգային պատվիրակությունը Փարիզում Պողոս Նուբարի գլխավորությամբ ավելի հեղինակություն էր վայելում արեւմտահայերի մեջ, քան Հայաստանի Հանրապետության կառավարությունը։ «Հայաստանի Հանրապետություն» խոսքն էլ ընդունելի չէր շատերի համար, եղածը սոսկ «Արարատյան Հանրապետություն» էր»,- գրում է Վրացյանը։
37. "Անկախ Հայաստանի անդրանիկ տոնը". 2018-09-05. Archived from the original on 2018-09-05. Retrieved 2020-01-02. “…Today we will find ourselves in a beautiful and heartwarming reality. Today, we have the Armenian Republic in the Ararat province, which has been the epicenter of our political and intellectual life,” the newspaper writes. It is noteworthy that the press in the Diaspora called the newly created state “Araratian Republic.” It showed that the Armenians were demanding, and the republic declared in 1918 regarded only a small part of Armenia. Original text: …Մենք այսօր կգտնվենք գեղեցիկ ու սրտապնդիչ իրականության հանդեպ։ Այսօր ունենք Հայկական Հանրապետություն Արարատյան նահանգի մեջ, որ եղել է մեր քաղաքական եւ իմացական կյանքի ոլորանը»,–գրում է թերթը։ Հատկանշական է, որ սփյուռքում լույս տեսնող մամուլը նորաստեղծ պետությունն անվանում էր «Արարատյան Հանրապետություն»։ Դա ցույց էր տալիս, որ հայը պահանջատեր է, իսկ 1918 թվականին հռչակված հանրապետությունը դիտարկում է որպես Հայաստանի միայն մի փոքր հատվածը։

• Horace Abram Rigg, Jr., A Note on the Names Armânum and Urartu Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 57, No. 4 (Dec., 1937), pp. 416–418.

External links

• Armenian History; Tacentral.com
• Alternate Names or Name Variants for Republic of Armenia
• History of Armenia