Lexical Traces of Astronomical Knowledge in Ancient Turkic and Kazakh Place Names
67th Annual Meeting of the PIAC, Gotemba 2025
Toponyms reflect not only geographical and historical realities but also encode deep layers of cultural and cosmological meaning. In the traditional worldview of Turkic-speaking peoples, spatial orientation, celestial cycles, and mythological cosmology played a central role in organizing knowledge about the environment. This paper explores the hypothesis that ancient astronomical knowledge is embedded in the names of places across the Kazakh steppe and broader Turkic regions. The research focuses on toponyms containing celestial lexemes such as Ai (moon), Kün (sun), Juldız (star), Tañ (dawn), Tengir/Tanrı (sky deity), and others that reflect the cosmological principles of the early Turkic worldview. It further explores compound names where astronomical terms are combined with descriptors of sacred or strategic geographic locations—mountains, rivers, or settlements—suggesting a cultural layering of cosmology onto space. The study uses a multidisciplinary approach, combining historical linguistics, cultural anthropology, and geo-referencing techniques. Comparative analysis is conducted between Kazakh toponyms and parallel naming conventions in Old Turkic inscriptions (e.g., Orkhon-Yenisey), Mongolic languages, and Altaic mythologies. Particular attention is paid to the symbolic use of celestial terminology in naming mountains (Khan-Tengri, Ai-Bulak), seasonal pastures (Juldız-Jailau), or settlements associated with divine or ancestral presence such as (Aishuaq, Künes). Findings suggest that celestial-oriented toponyms are not arbitrary but often correspond with traditional knowledge systems, including timekeeping, navigation, seasonal migration, and ritual practices. Moreover, many of these names appear in oral epics and sacred narratives, indicating their function in mythopoetic memory transmission. The study offers a new framework for reading place names not only as linguistic artifacts but as encoded cosmograms—maps of the world shaped by sky-oriented cognition. This opens a broader discussion on how linguistic landscapes preserve pre-modern scientific understanding of the cosmos and invites further dialogue on the intersection of ethnolinguistics and archaeoastronomy within Altaic studies.