[SEALANG] Tai-Viet linguistics question CONTINUED

[Pittayawat Pittayaporn]

Dear Prof. Kelly and the list,

Thank you very much for sharing with us your research on these place 
names. I do agree that attempts at etymologizing place names in SEA 
oftentimes are pure guesses. Here is my response to this wonderful posting.

> 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.
There is another book written by a linguist at Guangxi University (广西 
大学）. The author, Qin Fengyu (覃凤余）, herself is from the Zhuang 
nationality. Although I haven't read the book, I glanced through the it 
and found her study to be quite systematic.
>
> 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
>

I think this explanation quite possible although I find it surprising 
that 'clump' should be used as a generic for place names . Maybe, the 
full name in Zhuang would be some thing like "Mban Gobug", which means 
"the village of the pomelo trees." Note that in many Tai languages, 
/kɔ:/ does not mean a clump, but simply the plant or the trunk.
> 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.
>

I suspect that the 'gu' in these two cases are not from 'kɔɔ.' The 
explanations given are likely to be cases of folk-etymology-- inventing 
etymology of a word according to one's perception of the word.
>  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.
See above.
>
> 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?
>
I still insist that it extremely unlikely that the Vietnamese term “ke” 
are related to the Zhuang/Tai term kɔɔ/koo transcribed with the 
character 古 gu. In this case, there is no reason why /ɔ/ should change 
to /ɛ/, whether through borrowing or through change over time. In cases 
we actually see /ɔ/ changing into /ɛ/, we usually find conditioning 
environment, e.g. /-ɔc/ > /-ɛc/.
> 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?
>
多 is most likely an attempted transcription of the original Tai word 
for 'river' *da:A ('A' indicates the tonal category corresponding to the 
lack of tone mark in Thai). This etyma is reflected /tha:4/ (น้ำ)ท่้า in 
Thai and /ta:/ in most Tai languages. Some Tay dialects in the Cao Bang 
area still preserve the orginal /d-/ initial. This etymon is still used 
widely in the Central and Northern branches of Tai. In Southwestern Tai, 
to which Thai, Lao, and Shan, belong to, the word is obsolete.

Hope you find this helpful.

Best wishes,
Joe
Cornell University

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