An onomatological study of poetry: The case of themes behind proper names in Fuzuli's poems



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An onomatological study of poetry: The case of themes behind proper names in Fuzuli's poems

MostafaShahiditabar



Department of Foreign Languages, Imam Sadiq University, Tehran, Iran

Mostafa.shahiditbar@yahoo.com

Postal address: Shahrak-e-Gharb, Tehran, 1465943681

Phone number: 989127523289

Department of Foreign Languages, Imam Sadiq University, Tehran, Iran

Mostafa Shahiditabar was born in Yukhari Sahand, Zanjan, Iran in 1982. His B. A. is in English Language and Literature and his M. A. is in Linguistics. He is a lecturer of Linguistics. He is a member of faculty at Imam Sadiq University, Tehran, Iran. He has published on various topics in linguistics and literature in numerous international journals. Mr. Shahiditabar's current fields of interest include discourse analysis, language acquisition, content-analysis and literature.



An onomatological study of poetry: The case of themes behind proper names in Fuzuli's poems

Abstract


This study is aimed to consider place and person names in poetry to find out the themes and ideology of the poet in order to see if onomatology can report the theme of any text (poetry in this paper) without a detailed consideration of it. To achieve this goal, Fuzuli's Azeraijani Turkish poems are chosen as the corpus of the study. Regarding the themes and ideology of the poet, the results show that Fuzuli is a romantic poet. His themes are religious in general and Shia-oriented in particular. He is the master of Turkic ancient terminologies and has a good command of Persian as well as Arabic literature. About onomatological consideration, this paper shows that one can discover the probable themes of any text by studying onomastics and toponymy. Another application of the study is the fact that the current study broadens the scope of onomastics from just studying origin or/and history of names to the studying the themes or ideologies behind the names.

Keywords: onomatology, poetry, Fuzuli, Azerbaijani Turkish, Turkic languages

Introduction


Onomastics or onomatology is the study of the origin, history, and use of proper names. Crystal (2008) defines it as:

Onomastics is a branch of semantics which studies the etymology of institutionalzed (proper names, such as the names of people (‘anthroponymy’ or ‘anthroponomastics’ and places (‘toponymy’ or ‘toponomastics’ ;aslo called onomatology. In a looser usage, ‘onomastics’ is used for personal names and ‘toponymy’ for place names.

It can be claimed that name studying or onomastics is a branch of (lexical) semantics which itself is a branch of general semantic studies proper names to recognise the origin or/and history of names.

Studying names and considering them scientifically is of the interests of linguists on the one hand and analyzing literary texts from different viewpoints is another interest of linguists and literary researchers on the other hand. As far as researches in the field of name studying are concerned, many scholars have delved into names studies to uncover the hidden facts and ideologies behind the names. But little attention has been made to consider literary texts to find out the themes or ideology behind them. To have an overview the works done in the field, a review of literature would be rewarding.


Review of literature


A review of literature shows that studies related to onomastics is replete with scholarly works. Linguists and other language contributors may study changing one’s first/last name in one region as a trend as Coulmont (2014) or the creation and usage of fictional characters in magazines, books, and the Internet in library texts as Abel (2013) in onomastics. Also, onomastics may cover some other topics that scholars have been studied as names in literary works (Danesi and Compagnone: 2012, Nuessel: 2012), names in Internet (Witten: 2012, Xiang: 2012), nicknames (Willoughby et al: 2012) or even in specific situations as naming and war (Wagner et al: 2012) or Greek onomastics(Matthews :2012). A review of some of the mentioned works is in the following:

Coulmont (2014) declares that in the case of changing one’s own first name, it can be said that one names oneself is in virtue of one’s characteristics. The writer claims that 'a change of first name is a move along several dimensions, not only ethnic or national ones'. The author believes that it is sometimes a relational play between an older name and a younger one. And this is the reason behind the fact that changing a family name and changing a first name are different social acts.

Danesi and Compagnone (2012) considers the names in a literary context. It studies names used in the seven Harry Potter novels by J. K. Rowling. According to this work, the names are replete with mythic and occultist meanings. The author believes that the names complement the characterizations and even guide the narratives themselves. In other words, the events in the stories can be predictable by the names of the characters. This feature of the stories constitutes metaphorical cues to the storylines. As far as this study is concerned, the naming patterns used in the books revive 'the mythic past for the contemporary world in ingenious ways'.

Matthews (2012) provides some sources for the study of the ancient Greek world. According to this work the names of the ancient Greeks opens a valuable insight into ancient Greek society. It also examines the way Greeks responded to new environments. It exclaims that Greeks draw out issues of identity that are expressed through the choice, formation, and adaptation of personal names.

Witten (2012) that reports one of the first published accounts of sociophonetic variation studies Internet community weblog — MeFi, from MetaFilter.com. This study shows that participants across four English-speaking countries tend to prefer dialectal and socio-cultural differences in naming preferences despite the fact that the speech channel is limited or non-primary.

Willoughby et al (2012) with the claim of the scarcity of research studies on adolescent naming practices and exemplifying Chevalier (2006) as the only example, provides a comprehensive analysis of morphological and semantic features of names. It considers adolescent language practices and their role in society and insists on 'raising awareness of naming practices to promote cultural and linguistic sensitivity amongst high school students' in Victoria and Queensland schools.

Nuessel (2012) discusses and exemplifies some selected names in a literary context (James Hynes’s Academic Novel The Lecturer’s Tale). This exemplary study enumerates most common features of the mentioned genre.

As far as literature review is concerned, scholars have tried to study names in different contexts (literary or nonliterary), but none has studied the theme or ideologies behind the names. This study aims to broaden the scope of onomastics from just studying origin or/and history of names to studying the themes or ideologies behind the barenames.


Research questions


This study is an attempt to shed light upon the concept of onomastics in poetry and see if one can discover the probable themes of any piece of poetry by studying onomastics and toponymy. More specifically, the current study seeks to answer the following research questions:

1. Does onomastics show the content of literary works? if yes, how?

2. What themes can be understood from the onomastic study of the current study case (Fuzuli's Azerbaijani Turkish poems)?

Method

This study is a qualitative study which aims to analyze proper names to see if one can report the theme of poetry regardless of any detailed studies. The author used content-based analysis in order to consider the proper names.



Corpus

The corpus of the present study contains proper names in poetry. Fuzuli's Azerbaijani Turkish poems are chosen as the corpus of the study. The total number of proper names is 488. The names found in the poems are extracted from Məhəmmədzadə S., H. (2005).


Procedure

To find answers for the posed research questions, the researcher studied proper names meticulously and found a number of themes related to the poet. Then, they were tallied. After counting the relevant themes, the researcher showed them in a table. Finally, they were discussed in full details.



Results
The frequencies of proper names of the present study corpus are seen in the following table:

Table 1: Proper names frequency in Fuzuli's Azerbaijani Turkish poems



Proper names

English meaning

frequency

percentage

Proper names

English meaning

frequency

percentage

Məcnun

Majnun

32

6.46%

Eyas

Ayas

7

1.41%

Fərhad

Farhad

20

4.04%

Qur'an

Qur'an

6

1.21%

Süleyman

Solomon

20

4/04%

Nəbi

Prophet

6

1.21%

Bəğdad

Baghdad

16

3/23%

İbrahim

Abraham

6

1.21%

Çin

China

15

3/03%

Bəsrə

Basra

6

1.21%

Xızır

Khidr

17

3/43%

Məryəm

Mary

5

1/01%

Leyli

Layla

14

2/28%

Yusif

Joseph

5

1/01%

Məsiha

Christ

13

2/63%

Vəssaf

Vasaf

5

1/01%

Adəm

Adam

13

2/63%

Nuh

Noah

5

1/01%

Roma

Rome

10

2/02%

Mustəfa

Mustafa

5

1/01%

Hind

India

9

1/82%

Sultan Süleyman

Solomon King

5

1/01%

İrəm

Iram

9

1/82%

Bisütun

Behistun

5

1/01%

Xosrov

Khosrow

8

1/62%

ƏhmədMuxtar

Ahmad Mukhtar

5

1/01%

Kəbə

Kaaba

8

1/26%

Cəm

Jar

5

1/01%

Cəmşid

Jamshid

8

1/26%

Other proper names




199

40/7%

kərbəla

Karbala

8

1/26%

total proper names




488

100%


Results and discussion


According to table 1, Fusuli's most frequent proper name is Majnun (Mecnun). Regarding Majnun, it should be mentioned that this name was borrowed from a love story that originated as poem in ancient Arabia. In this story a boy called Qays and a girl called Layla fall in love with each other when they are young, but when they grow up,Layla’s father doesn't allow them to be together. Qays becomes obsessed with her, and the community gives him the epithet Majnun (lit. "possessed"). The story of Layla and Majnun passed into Azerbaijani literature by Fuzuli and HagiriTabrizi in the 16th century. As it is seen in table 1, Majnun is used 32 times (6/46%) by the poet that shows the importance of this theme in his works. Also, the second frequent named applied by the poet in the corpus in question is Farhad (20 times or 4.04%). Regarding Farhad it can be mentiond that Frahad is the lover of Shirin described in "Khosrow and Shirin", that is is the title of a famous literary tragic romance by NizamiGanjavi (1141–1209) who also wrote Layla and Majnun discussed earlier. It can be said that one of the prominent themes of Fuzuli is romance that can be understood by using roman-related terminologies in Turkish literature like Majnun, Farhad, Layla (14 times), Khosrow (8 times), Joseph (5 times), Behistun(5 times) etc. Regarding what is said, it can be concluded that one of the main themes of Fuzuli's poems is romance and love that shows he is a romantic poet.

A glance to the table shows that Fuzuli has a good command of Persian and Arabic literature. One of the reasons behind embarking upon this claim is the fact that he has borrowed some romantic themes/terminologies from Arabic as well as Persian literature e. g. Majnun and Layla on the one hand, and also he has used some multilingual verses in his work on the other hand. For instance, he has some Turkish-Persian and Turkish-Arabic verses that can be seen in the following:

Persian-Turkish (The italicised words are Turkish and the rest words are Persian):

Yekdəmbiyavünişin, eytürki-ruyi-susən, 

Mimirəməzfərağət, məni-salubgedirsən

Besyar can bedadim ta amədibedəstəm, 

Kəsrasüxənnəbaşəd, gərqanımıtökərsən

Eymədəni-bəlağət, eyhüsni-gənci-afət, 

Sərhafədayi-rahətordanki, sənkeçərsən

To hakimivü sultan, ma xümləbəndəqurban, 

Emruzruzi-lütfəst, gərəlimitutarsən

Əzeşqi-to Füzulibesyarzarigiryəd, 

Əknunçeçarəsazəm, mənağlaram, gülərsən.

Oh, you beautiful Susan, come and sit for a second,

I will die if I be separated from you, you will drop me and go.

I died a lot till I reached to you,

Nobody is allowed to say a word, if you want to kill me.

You are the King and I am truly your servant,

Today is the day of Forgiveness, if you catch my hand.

Fuzuli will cry a lot for your love,

What can I do now?, I will cry and you will see that.

Arabic-Turkish (The italicised words are Turkish and the rest words are Arabic):



Vəslinmənəhəyatverir, firqətinməmat,


Sübhanəxaliqixələqəlmovtəvəl-həyat.

Qıldınədayi-nə't, Füzuli, tamamqıl
Kəmmilhubis-səlamivətəmmimhubis-səlat.

Reaching to you is life for me and your separation is death,

My Allah is clean who has created life and death. …

Oh Fuzuli, you have thanked Allah's blessing, so,

It starts with one by one hello and ends in praying.

As it can be seen in the above mentioned verses, the second finding of the analysis of Fuzuli's poems is that he has a good command of Arabic and Persian literature.

Among his frequent words, Fuzuli has used words like Solomon (20 times plus 5 times (Sultan Solomon)), Christ (13 times), Adam (13 times), Kaaba (8 times), Karbala (8 times), Qur'an (6 times), Prophet (6 times), Abraham (6 times), Mary (5 times), Joseph (5 times), Noah (5 times) and Mustafa (5 times). It can be said that the number of words related to religion is 105 (23/43%) that is higher than other names seen in the corpus that shows the poet has a religious trend in his work. A meticulous look at the religious proper names used by Fuzuli shows another item. He has used words like Karbala (8 times), King of Karbala (3 times), King of Devotees (1 time), and Martyr of Karbala (1 time) that he has a Shia thinking.

Another theme used by the poet is Turkic ancient names. Bəg and paşa (Sir/Master/Devotee) and gəmi (ship) are examples of this item. For instance, Bag is an old ancient Turkish word that can be found in a book titledDivanüLügati't-Türk (Mehemmedzade: 2004).

To sum up, it can be said that analyzing proper names in Fuzuli's Azerbaijani Turkish poems show that:

1: Fuzuli is a romantic poet.

2. His themes are religious in general.

3. He has shown to be Shia in particular.

4. He is the master of Turkic ancient terminologies.

5. Fuzuli has a good command of Farsi as well as Arabic literature.

To see if our analysis is in accordance with the fact, the author quotes some sentences from EncyclopaediaIranica and Wikipedia about Fuzulito compare them with the obtained results in the following:

EncyclopaediaIranica:



FOŻŪLĪ, MOḤAMMAD, b. Solaymān (ca. 885-936/1480-1556), widely regarded as the greatest lyric poet in Azerbayjani Turkish, who also wrote extensively in Arabic and Persian. He adopted the pen name (taḵallosá) of Fożūlī (presumptuous) in order to be “unique,” as he reveals in the preface to his Persian dīvān (Karahan, in EI2 II, p. 937; Bombaci, 1970, p. 13). ….

Fożūlī is credited with some fifteen works in Arabic, Persian, and Turkish, both in verse and prose (complete listing in Karahan, 1996, pp. 244-46). Although his greatest significance is undoubtedly as a Turkish poet, he is also of importance to Persian literature thanks to his original works in that language (indeed, Persian was the language he preferred for his Shiʿite religious poetry); his Turkish adaptations or translations of Persian works; and the inspiration he derived from Persian models for his Turkish works.

Wikipedia:



Fużūlī (or Fuduli, فضولی; Azerbaijani: Füzuli, c. 1494 – 1556) was the pen name of the Azeri or the Bayat branch of Oghuz Turkic[4][5][6] and Ottoman poet, writer and thinker Muhammad bin Suleyman (محمد بن سليمان). Often considered one of the greatest contributors to the Dîvân tradition ofAzerbaijani literature, Fuzûlî in fact wrote his collected poems (dîvân) in three different languages: in his native Azeri, Persian, and Arabic. Although his Turkish works are written in the Azeri dialect of Turkish, he was well-versed in both the Ottoman and the Chagatai Turkic literary traditions as well. He was also well versed in mathematics and astronomy

As it is seen, Fuzuli is the greatest lyric poet in Azerbayjani Turkish. He has written extensively in Arabicand Persian. Also he preferred Persian for his Shiʿite religious poetry. It can be seen that our results are in accordance with the mentioned data quoted from the references in question.

Considering what is mentioned, possible questions for the proposed research question are; 1. Yes, considering proper names, onomastics show the content of literary works. 2. The themes gotten from the onomastic study of the current study case shows that the poet is a romantic and religious thinker who is the master of Turkic ancient terminologies and has a good command of Persian as well as Arabic literature.

Conclusion


The analysis of data shows that with an onomatological studying of a literary text, for example poetry, we can report the themes of the text. As it was seen, proper names of Fuzuli's Azerbaijani Turkish poems are studied to see if we can find any themes. The analyses of his usage of proper names indicate that he is a romantic and religious poet. Also, he is the master of Turkic ancient terminologies and has a good command of Persian as well as Arabic literature. It can be concluded that place and proper names can report related themes of any text (poetry in this paper) without considering the poems in detail. In another word, one can discover the probable themes of any text by studying onomastics and toponymy. Of course, this study is just about one poet and its results cannot be generalised to all poets or (literary) texts. Another point regarding this study is the fact that the current work suggests to broaden the scope of onomastics from just studying origin or/and history of names to the studying the themes or ideologies behind the names.

Acknowledgments


I would like to thank Mr. Mehdi Fatemi for assistance with analyzing Fuzuli's poems and also for his comments that greatly improved the manuscript.

References


Abel, L. E. (2013). Dickensian Eponyms. Names A Journal of Onomastics: Volume 61, Issue 2 (June 2013), pp. 75-91.

Chevalier S. (2006). Ava to Zac: A Sociolinguistic Study of Given Names and Nicknames in Australia. Tubingen: FranckeVerlag.

Coulmont, B. (2014). Changing One’s First Name in France. Names A Journal of Onomastics: Volume 62, Issue 3 (September 2014), pp. 137-146.

Crystal, D. (2008). A Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics.Blackwell Publishing.

Danesi, M. and Compagnone, C. (2012).Mythic and Occultist Naming Strategies in Harry Potter. Names A Journal of Onomastics: Volume 60, Issue 3 (September 2012), pp. 127-134.

Matthews, E. (2012). Old and New Worlds in Greek Onomastics.Published to British Academy Scholarship Online.

Məhəmmədzadə S., H. (2005). Divan-ı Əşar-i Türku-i Fuzuli.Təbriz. Əxtər Nəşriyatı.

Mehemmedzade S., H. (2004). Divanü Lügati't-Türk.Tebriz. Exter Neşriyatı.

Nuessel, F. (2012). A Note on Selected Names in James Hynes’s Academic Novel The Lecturer’s Tale. Names A Journal of Onomastics: Volume 60, Issue 2 (June 2012), pp. 109-116.

Wagner, G. G. (2012). Naming and War in Modern Germany. Names A Journal of Onomastics: Volume 60, Issue 2 (June 2012), pp. 74-89.

Willoughby, L. et al (2012). Nicknames in Australian Secondary Schools: Insights into Nicknames and Adolescent Views of Self. Names A Journal of Onomastics: Volume 60, Issue 3 (September 2012), pp. 135-149.

Witten, K. (2012). Sociophonetic Variation in an Internet Place Name. Names A Journal of Onomastics: Volume 60, Issue 4 (December 2012), pp. 220-230.

Xiang, X. (2012). Linguistic and Cultural Characteristics of Domain Names of the Top Fifty Most-Visited Websites in the US and China: A Cross-Linguistic Study of Domain Names and e-Branding. Names A Journal of Onomastics: Volume 60, Issue 4 (December 2012), pp. 210-219.

http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/fozuli

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuz%C3%BBl%C3%AE

Table 1: Proper names frequency in Fuzuli's Azerbaijani Turkish poems



Proper names

English meaning

frequency

percentage

Proper names

English meaning

frequency

percentage

Məcnun

Majnun

32

6.46%

Eyas

Ayas

7

1.41%

Fərhad

Farhad

20

4.04%

Qur'an

Qur'an

6

1.21%

Süleyman

Solomon

20

4/04%

Nəbi

Prophet

6

1.21%

Bəğdad

Baghdad

16

3/23%

İbrahim

Abraham

6

1.21%

Çin

China

15

3/03%

Bəsrə

Basra

6

1.21%

Xızır

Khidr

17

3/43%

Məryəm

Mary

5

1/01%

Leyli

Layla

14

2/28%

Yusif

Joseph

5

1/01%

Məsiha

Christ

13

2/63%

Vəssaf

Vasaf

5

1/01%

Adəm

Adam

13

2/63%

Nuh

Noah

5

1/01%

Roma

Rome

10

2/02%

Mustəfa

Mustafa

5

1/01%

Hind

India

9

1/82%

Sultan Süleyman

Solomon King

5

1/01%

İrəm

Iram

9

1/82%

Bisütun

Behistun

5

1/01%

Xosrov

Khosrow

8

1/62%

ƏhmədMuxtar

Ahmad Mukhtar

5

1/01%

Kəbə

Kaaba

8

1/26%

Cəm

Jar

5

1/01%

Cəmşid

Jamshid

8

1/26%

Other proper names




199

40/7%

kərbəla

Karbala

8

1/26%

total proper names




488

100%

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