Bibliographical Note

Most of the material in this brief essay comes from various specialist encyclopaedias treating the Ukrainian language. See, in particular, O.M. Harkavets, “Tiurkizm,” in Ukrainska mova: Entsyklopediia, ed.

For a survey of older, pre-Islamic “Orientalisms” preserved in modern Ukrainian, see K.M. Tyshchenko, “Davnii skhid u slovnyku i toponimii Ukrainy,” in I.P. Bondarenko, ed., Movni ta literaturni zv’iazky Ukrainy z krainamy Skhodu (Kyiv: Vyd. Dmytro Buraho, 2010), 7-57. Tyshchenko is a specialist in Iranian influences on Ukrainian. Also see Iaroslav Lebedynsky, Scythes, Sarmates, et Slaves: Uinfluences anciens nomades iranophones sur les Slaves (Paris: L'Harmattan, 2009), especially 117-47, on languages. I also consulted an unusual volume featuring a new arrangement of ma­terials made possible by recent technology: Ali Nourai, An Etymological Dictionary of Persian, English and Other Indo-European Languages, 2 vols. (N.p.: Xlibris, 2013), and available online at https://archive.org/details/ AnEtymologicalDictionaryOfPersianEnglishAndOtherIndo-european- Languages/page/n377, 14 February 2011. For a detailed study of a very old Iranianism in Ukrainian, see my “The Word Maidan: Where It Comes from and What It Means,” https://www.slideshare.net/ThomasMPrymak/ the-word-maidan-illustrated, 15 October 2016.

Etymological dictionaries for the various Slavonic languages are also of considerable use.

I would also sometimes check the materials found in these dictionaries and sources against the widely respected Etymolohichnyi slovnyk ukrainskoi movy, 6 vols (Kyiv: Naukova dumka, 1982-2012), and, where possible, Ja­roslav B. Rudnyckyj's incomplete Etymological Dictionary of the Ukrainian Language, in 15 fasciculae (Winnipeg: uvan, 1962-76). Always opinionated, Rudnyckyj's dictionary gives meanings in English, and often offers quite learned and balanced disquisitions on the entries, but covers only the first letters of the Ukrainian alphabet.