Hayasa's Relation in Hayastan's History

[SevSpitak]

Re: Hayasa's Relation in Hayastan's History

One example of words shared between the Hurrian root and the Armenian language is Xndzor. As we all know, Urartian was a later dialect of Hurrian, and most probably, if Xndzor reached us, it's either through the Mitanni or the Urartians. There were other similar words (like wood and war) but I can't seem to find the site where I read this.. (if I do, I'll post it here).

Xndzor (Xntsor in WA) means apple, and there isn't a single IE language that has a similar word for apple. (damn if only I found the site, I'd post what its Hurrian equivalent was..)

I personally believe that one new discovery about Hayasa will answer many questions about our identity.

[SevSpitak]

Re: Hayasa's Relation in Hayastan's History

It is without a doubt that Urartu became Hayastan. Whether it had a complete change of ethnic groups or slow change due to amalgamation and intermingling, Urartu is the geopolitical predecessor of Armenia. The proof that Biainili and Armenians lived together is the numerous IE Armenian words found in Urartian inscriptions, and vice versa in the Armenian language. The ancient kingdom of Van in Movses Khorenatsi's Armenian history is Bianili (through Urartian to Armenian language change, B->V, minus the Urartian suffix, "Vian", similar to how Erebuni became Erevan).

As I said, those were some theories using the aspects of our history we have the least amount of information on. I wouldn't be surprised if nothing from what I said is true. Nevertheless, I wanted to see what others think about Hayasa.

Do you think it's coincidental that Hayasa and Hayastan are so similar? It's possible that Armenia was called Hayasa by the native people until Parthian rule as well. Since Armenians don't have their own written record of what they were prior to Mesrob Mashtots, we cannot dismiss Hayasa's similarity with Hayastan as coincidental. Don't forget that Lesser Armenia was the precise location of where Hayasa was prior to the Cimmerian and Phrygian invasions. This also helps the theory that Hayastan's etymological root is Hayasa.

Here is the quote from M.Chahin's "Kingdom of Armenia, A History":
"Basic Armenian appears to be closest to Greek. Its vocabulary consists of more Indo-European words with Greek than with any other dialect. The next highest number of lexical parallels is to be found in Sanskrit, with only 300 shared words. It is also suggested that Armenian shares so many grammatical and lexical elements with Hittite that it is much more reasonable to suppose that Armenian developed naturally from Hittite dialects of Asia Minor, west of the Upper Euphrates. In fact, there are so many characteristics of Armenian which remind one of Hittite that it is highly improbable that they can be separated."

Based on this statement, I speculated that since Hayasans and Hittites were close, they might have shared a similar language ("...so many characteristics of Armenian which remind one of Hittite..."). They might have been invaded by Phrygians and the language overlap changed the root of the Hayasan language into a Phrygian language with many elements kept from Hittite, and who in turn took over the throne of Urartu and changed its language to Hayasan, which was a Phrygianized Hittite language. It's a possibility, no?

How, in your opinion, did Urartu become Hayastan, and what was Hayasa?

[Federate]

Re: Hayasa's Relation in Hayastan's History

Bagratuni = Bagrat + Dun (house)+ i (of the/from).
Yervanduni = Yervand + Dun (house) + i (of the/from).

unrelated to the Urartian suffix uni.

Are you sure about this? Bagrat and Yervand are both names by themselves (with Yervand still being fairly common) which would leave "uni" without a տ. Same for Arshakuni (Arshak a given name) which does not even have a t/d at the beginning of "uni".

[jgk3]

Re: Hayasa's Relation in Hayastan's History

3. As told by M. Chahin, the Armenian language's structure is so similar to the one of the IE Hittites that it is unlikely that they are unrelated. It is possible that Armens (The people of Armenos) were Phrygianized Hittites or just plainly Phrygians with Hittite influence, or not. We can also assume that, assuming Hayasans spoke a language close to the Hittites, were Phrygianized (yeah... a lot of assumptions, but this is how we come up with theories and reach discoveries, right?).

Armenian is as similar to Hittite as English is similar to Russian. Hittite, along with Tocharian, broke away from the IE-homeland at such an early date that some scholars would even postulate that Hittite and Indo-European were cousins in their homeland, a judgement not all too outrageous for anyone who's worked with Hittite and seen the radical anomalies it shares with the Anatolian branch which don't fit the Indo-European paradigm. I am curious what this M. Chahin has to say about Hittite language structure being similar to Armenians... As far as I can tell, this is outrageous, because first of all, Hittite tends to have its verb occur in sentence final position, using a vast array of clitic pronouns which it can put consecutively into a long chain, which strikes me as agglutinative pattern, such as those common in Turkish (though it's not related to that language in any way). Armenian uses no such system, and you can put the verb wherever the hell you like, lol.

6. All this assuming Hayasans acquired the -stan suffix in their language under the Median rule (assuming -stan was a suffix used by those Iranians), dropped the former "-sa" suffix and established their kingdom as Haya[s]-[s]tan (the s may come from either HayaSa, -Stan or both).

I'm quite certain that we got the -stan suffix along with most of the Iranian loanwords in our language from the period that Armenia was under Parthian subjugation.

Now these are all assumptions. I'm only putting possibilities on the table. Tell me what you think of my assumptions (if there are any anachronisms, inaccuracies, etc), what you would add to them, and what assumptions, or knowledge , of the Hayasans, Azzis, Armens and/or Biainili you have.

*notice the Urartian suffix in YervandU-NI common in Armenian as well? (as in BiainI-LI, ErebU-NI, BagratUNI, AshuqiU-NI, UrmenyuqINI, AramILI, TunibU-NI).

Bagratuni = Bagrat + Dun (house)+ i (of the/from).
Yervanduni = Yervand + Dun (house) + i (of the/from).

unrelated to the Urartian suffix uni.

I'm not convinced by your "assumptions". Our fascination with identifying ourselves as Hayasans, and even as Urartians, has grown less and less attractive to me the more I started investigating the matter personally.

[SevSpitak]

Hey. New to the site and decided to go head on with the biggest mystery in Armenian history. How did Biainili(Urartu) become Hayastan(Armenia), where did the names Hayastan and Armenia come from? I believe that Hayasa plays a key role in the change from Biainili to Hayastan.

These are my assumptions:
1. If it is true that Indo-Europeans did not originate in Anatolia or the Armenian Highlands, and that Hittites came from beyond the Caucasus and settled in the lands of the non-IE Hattians and inherited their name to become Hittites, then it is possible that Hayasans were part of those unknown IE invaders who settled a little earlier in what became later as Lesser Armenia than their counterparts in Hatti Land. It is also possible that their language changed, and that they are not related to the Hittites at all.

2. We know that Hayasan and Hittites had a relationship and were often allied with the Hittites. As we know, so far, that Hayasans didn't write, we can't know what they spoke, and it is possible that Hayasans spoke the IE language of the invaders who settled in Hatti Land and became the Hittites, aka the Hittite Language.

3. As told by M. Chahin, the Armenian language's structure is so similar to the one of the IE Hittites that it is unlikely that they are unrelated. It is possible that Armens (The people of Armenos) were Phrygianized Hittites or just plainly Phrygians with Hittite influence, or not. We can also assume that, assuming Hayasans spoke a language close to the Hittites, were Phrygianized (yeah... a lot of assumptions, but this is how we come up with theories and reach discoveries, right?).

4. The way I like to understand the reason why we call ourselves Hays and foreigners call us Armenians it is through this analogy:
Take a Greek girl called Armina. Then take an Armenian man called Hayk. Now imagine that Hayk and Armina get married, and Armina moves in the family of Hayk. The Greeks and all those involved with the Greeks will/might call that family "the family of Armina" because she is related to them, but the family will refer to itself as the family of Hayk because he is natively in that family and Armina is the foreigner. But the flaw is the language (hence the point of this thread): why would the children of Hayk speak the language of their mother Armina and forget the language of their father, keeping only some elements of it?

5. Biainili/Urartu was a federative kingdom, or a multi-ethnic empire sharing a border with Hayasa. Historians associate Hayasa with Azzi. If we can assume that Hayasa and Azzi are/were once one state(or related), then we can assume that Azzis may have referred to themselves the same way as Hayasans, knowing that the Azzi portion became almost half of the imperial lands of Urartu, we can assume that the Orontids and/or Yervandunis* came from the inhabitants of Azzi who were of Hayasan origin and when the empire fell from the hands of the ethnic Biaini, they took the throne and changed the name from Biainili (name of the dominating ethnic group) to their own name, Hayastan. This assumption may also be I retold by replacing the Azzis with Hayasans living under Urartu (as it is likely that the north-west portion of Urartu had a geographic overlap with part of Hayasa).

6. All this assuming Hayasans acquired the -stan suffix in their language under the Median rule (assuming -stan was a suffix used by those Iranians), dropped the former "-sa" suffix and established their kingdom as Haya[s]-[s]tan (the s may come from either HayaSa, -Stan or both).

Now these are all assumptions. I'm only putting possibilities on the table. Tell me what you think of my assumptions (if there are any anachronisms, inaccuracies, etc), what you would add to them, and what assumptions, or knowledge , of the Hayasans, Azzis, Armens and/or Biainili you have.

*notice the Urartian suffix in YervandU-NI common in Armenian as well? (as in BiainI-LI, ErebU-NI, BagratUNI, AshuqiU-NI, UrmenyuqINI, AramILI, TunibU-NI).