[SEALANG] Tai-Viet linguistics question CONTINUED

[Liam C. Kelley]

Dear list,

I finally received a copy of the book on Zhuang place names: Zhang 
Shengzhen, ed., Guangxi Zhuang yu di ming xuan ji [Collection of Guangxi 
Zhuang Place Names] (Nanning: Guangxi minzu chubanshe, 1988). It is an 
interesting but problematic book. From what I can gather from the brief 
introduction, some officials who worked for various organizations in the 
Zhuang Autonomous Region decided in the early 1980s to collect together all 
of the Zhuang place names in the region and to explain them. The problem is 
that none of them appear to have been trained as linguists or historians. 
They admit that they did not really know what they were doing when they 
collected the names, and then they spent several years trying to decipher 
and make sense of the material they had collected. . . Hence, I find that 
some (or many?) of their explanations are guesses more than anything else.

That said, one thing that is clear is that many place names began with the 
word Gu 古 [ku/kuə/kɔ in old Chn, co in Viet.], and as I mentioned 
previously, some of the earliest texts (15th cent.) to record geographical 
information (in Chinese) in Vietnam demonstrate that there were many 
districts in Vietnam which also began with this word.

According to the Zhuang place name study, gu 古 [ku/kuə/kɔ in old Chn, co in 
Viet.] is the equivalent in Chinese to ke 棵, which is “a numerary adjunct 
for trees.” Gedney’s Comparative Tai Source Book (pg. 77, entry 0105) has 
kɔɔ and koo under the entry for “tree, plant” and indicates the following 
more specific meaning: “clump, as of bamboo.” The SEAlang dictionary offers 
the following info for Thai: กอ(WEBRANK:2) ˈkɔɔ 1 C clump (of growing 
plants, trees)

Hence, you have place names like the following:

Gubu 古卜 [Gobug in Zhuang]. Bug = pomelo. (I came across an article on the 
web on Zhuang and Tai place names by Maneepin Promsuthirak which also lists 
this name)

Gulou 古婁 [Roraeu in Zhuang]. Lou is said to be Zhuang for “raeu,” meaning 
“maple.” Hence, a place where there were a lot of maple trees.

Gukun 古昆 [Gogoen in Zhuang]. Goen is a kind of bamboo 山竹.

Gunian 古念 [Gonim in Zhuang]. Nim = myrtle 桃金娘

There are some cases where the Zhuang name seems related to a Chinese term. 
Since some of the villages listed in this book were established as late as 
the 18th century, this could make sense. The following is example, although 
no date is given for when this village was founded:

Gubi 古筆 [Gobit in Zhuang]. Bit = duck. The explanation: because this village 
had a lot of 鴨腳木. This is the Chinese name for the ivy tree (Schefflera 
heptaphylla). The Chinese name literally translates as “duck foot tree.” So 
was the Zhuang name created in reference to a knowledge of the tree’s 
Chinese name??

There are other cases were the term “gu/go” is not explained, but is just 
said to be the name of the village, such as the following:

Guhuo 古火 [Govuj in Zhuang]. Says that “go” is the name of the village and 
“vuj” means “hardship.” Because the village is in an area which often 
floods, the people there suffer lots of hardship.

Guhu 古胡 [Goruz in Zhuang]. “Ruz” = boat, and “go” has no particularly 
meaning. The shape of the village is like that of a boat.

>From looking at this material (without buying all of their explanations), my 
hunch now is that this term kɔɔ and koo, which means “a cluster” of some 
kind of tree/plant in Tai languages was used in that sense in some village 
names, but also came to serve as a kind of adjunct numerary used in village 
names where it was placed alongside other terms.

This latter function is precisely how the Vietnamese term “ke” (which I am 
trying to understand) appears to have functioned. As for the second word in 
ke place name compounds, since they are only one syllable, it’s very 
difficult for me to determine what language(s) they are from (especially if 
some, like the Zhuang examples, are specific botanical terms):

Ke Ao, Ke Som, Ke Bac, Ke Lap, Ke Blou are some names which Western 
missionaries recorded in the 17th century.

***My main question, however is this: does it make any linguistic sense that 
ke could be a Vietnamese adoption/pronunciation of a Zhuang/Tai term 
kɔɔ/koo? Is it logical for those vowels to change in that manner as the term 
moves from one language to another?

And yet one other minor question: some Zhuang place names (and old place 
names in Vietnam) begin with the word duo 多 [ta in old Chn, da in Viet.]. 
According to the Zhuang place name study, this refers to “land.” The SEAlang 
dictionary has the following entry which seems the closest in sound:
ตระ(WEBRANK:3) trà 1 N a piece (used in reference to land), portion; plot

However, Li Fang-kuei said that “Siamese also shows tr-, but it exists 
chiefly in Cambodian and Sanskrit loans.”

Question: What Tai word for “land” could duo 多 [ta in old Chn, da in Viet.] 
be an attempted transcription of?

Many thanks for any ideas,

Liam Kelley
University of Hawaii

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