Turkmen
UK /ˈtɜːk.mən/ · US /ˈtɝk.mən/ proper noun, noun, adjective
Forms Turkmens Turcoman Turkoman Turkman
- proper noun A Turkic language of the Turkmen spoken mostly in Turkmenistan.
- noun A person from Turkmenistan or of Turkmen descent.
- adjective Of, from, or pertaining to Turkmenistan, the Turkmen people or the Turkmen language.
Synonyms
Etymology
The current majority view for the etymology of the ethnonym Türkmen or Turcoman is that it comes from Türk and the Turkic emphasizing suffix -men, meaning "'most Turkish of the Turks' or 'pure-blooded Turks.'" A folk etymology, dating back to the Middle Ages and found in al-Biruni and Mahmud al-Kashgari, instead derives the suffix -men from the Persian suffix -mānind, with the resulting word meaning "like a Turk". While formerly the dominant etymology in modern scholarship, this mixed Turkic-Persian derivation is now viewed as incorrect.
Treated as a plural of the deprecated term Turkman, influenced by English man, plural men.
From Turkish Türkmen.
Sources: Wiktionary · WordNet 3.0 — from the Wiktionary entry “Turkmen”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details