Talk:Боян

Etymology

@Bezimenen: please check out Илчев, Стефан (1969) “Боян”, in Речник на личните и фамилни имена у българите [Dictionary of Bulgarian Personal and Family Names] (in Bulgarian), Sofia: Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, page 86. The etymology is stated as bajan, from some Turkic root meaning "rich". It says it was later re-analyzed by the folk as deriving from боя се (boja se), meaning that others should be afraid of the holder. A doublet is therefore Баян (Bajan), which is listed on page 67. Neither of these derivations relates to what is currently published; should we change it? P.S. Please @ me if you can, so that I don't miss your answer Kiril kovachev (talk・contribs) 20:07, 4 September 2023 (UTC)

@Kiril kovachev: The Oghuric origin is plausible, so it's worth mentioning. I've knew of that theory, but I didn't have a source to reference it at the time when I did the etymology. For this reason, I just added the Slavic derivation. It should be noted that Bulgarian Боян (Bojan) is encountered in other Slavic languages, e.g. Serbo-Croatian Бо̀јан, so a Slavic derivation cannot be excluded altogether. In principle, the expected outcome of Proto-Turkic *bāyan in Oghuric would be Баян (Bajan) (e.g. in Avar Bayan), but the reanalysis could explain the -о- in Bulg. Безименен (talk) 19:03, 6 September 2023 (UTC)

@Bezimenen Alright, nice one. Thanks for the explanation, I reckon I will transfer the Oghuric as a possible derivation then. It also strikes me as possible, although I don't know the chronology of it, that the Serbian be derived from a borrowing from (Old) Bulgarian. However, are there any other Slavic cognates? The presence of any more would probably make it more likely to be of Slavic origin, I would think. Kiril kovachev (talk・contribs) 21:05, 6 September 2023 (UTC)