Georgian and Turkish onymy in the speech of Georgian speaking Muhajirs living in the Düzce region (Turkey)

Abstract

After the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878, the Turkish authorities initially settled Muhajirs on the Black Sea coast of the Ottoman Empire. Some of their descendants have preserved their mother tongue and many historical traditions to the present day. There were about 150 villages in which Muhajirs from the Russian Empire were temporarily settled on Ottoman state owned lands (vakufs) between 1878pp1882. In those villages, descendants of Muhajirs (not only Georgians, but also Abkhaz-Abazas and North Caucasians) can still be found today. The present article deals with the onomastic material preserved in Georgian Muhajirs’ speech in the Düzce region (Düzce İli). Before 1878, the territory of modern Düzce was populated by different ethnic groups living alongside ethnic Turks. These included Orthodox Bulgarians from Thrace, Greeks and Bosnians. After the war, most of those peoples left the region for their historical motherlands, and the territory left by them was offered to Muhajirs coming from the South-western Georgia (Achara, Machakhela, Nigali…).