The issue of lexic levels of Khorezm Dastans’ onomastics

Abstract

This article encompasses an overview of the dastans’ onomastics and gives a review of the etymology of proper nouns used in Khorezm national dastans. It also provides information on folklore, including linguocultural, ethnolinguistic, and sociolinguistic aspects of proper nouns found in the folklore lexicon.The article cites the studies of Uzbek scientists and foreign scholars, particularly American linguist and anthropologist Edward Sepir, who conducted research in the field of onomastics and relied on their methods of investigation. Dastan onomastics in Khorezm region differs with some of its features from the onomastics in other regions of Uzbek folklore. This area was inhabited by people who spoke the language of the Persian language group, the ancient Khorezmian language. Later, Turkic languages were spoken in the area, and the inhabitants of the area became accentuated in the Turkic language group. However, the elements of the ancient Khorezm language, which are the language of Persian languages group, have not disappeared completely. This article analyzes such names. It is true that the language of the Khorezm dastans contains lexical, and onomastic elements, which are borrowed from other languages, such as Arabic and Persian, however, as other articles have commented on them, the work is mainly about ancient Khorezmian and Mongol onomastic units. The ethnonymic materials from the Mongolian language, such as dorman (dörmän), kenagas (ќenägäs), nogay (noĝay), kipchak (qipčaq), nayman (näymän), qongirot are analyzed, while the onomastic units of the ancient Khorezmian language include etymological data on toponyms such as Chartak, Shamakh, Darband, Kushdarband, Khorezm, Khiva, as well as phytonyms of Yavshan, Janggal and others.