Sunday 8 August 2010

Elia Kazan's name

In his extended family, Elia Kazan had relatives with Turko-Arabic names, among whom there was a Murad and a Sultana. His mother's family was Karajoglou: kara means black, jo is derived from Josef/Yusuf and oglou means son of. I recall from school days, we studied about the two governments, one Turkish and the other Persian, which ruled Iraq consecutively in the period after the fall of Baghdad in 1258--Baghdad, by the way had a second fall in 1958. One of these two governments was Kara Koyilo, the Black Sheep as Kara means black and Koyilo sheep and the other government was Aaq Koyilo, the White Sheep, as Aaq means white and Koyilo sheep. Likewise, in Dostoyvsky's THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV, the name Karamazov means the Black Mazov. In 1952-3, I lived in the town Tellaafer, 70 kilometres west of Mosul (sometimes nowadays on the news about terrorist acts). Tellaaferi folks were Shiites speaking Turkish. I picked up some words from them one of which was oghli meaning son of usually used in swearing and cursing as in the phrase: kuppuk oghli kuppuk and shuk oghli shuk which respetively mean: dog son of a dog and jackass son of a jackass

No comments:

Post a Comment