QUESTIONS ON THE SUBJECT OF THE ORIGIN OF COMMON ARMENIAN MONTH NAMES

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to examine the genealogy of common Armenian month names, to reveal the period of their naming, which has been examined by a number of famous grammarians.

It has been shown that five of the ancient Armenian month names are native Armenian words: tre, kaghots, arats, areg, avelyats, seven are borrowings from Farsi: mehekan, ahekan. mareri, hrotits, navasard, sahmi, margats. Four of them are Persian month names, three are cooperative words that have turned into month names in Armenian culture: navasard, sahmi, margats. The month name Hori remains unexplained.

For the first time, a comparison has been made between the month names of Old Armenian, Middle Armenian and Modern Armenian. In the Middle Armenian status, the names of the months were mainly taken from the Julian Calendar which later passed to the Modern Armenian language. Some of them differ from the Modern Armenian month names in writing and pronunciation, and others are borrowings from Arabic and Turkish. Latin (Roman) month names are used in modern Armenian, because the Armenians switched to the Julian calendar from the 18th century, borrowing all the Latin month names. The constant pairing of the dates of the months of the Armenian calendar (“Tomar”) with the Julian one compiled by some cineradiographs was also presented, as well as the days contained in the Armenian months were given, as a result of which it became clear that they were different in their temporal inclusion in different centuries.