“GEGHARD”
SCIENTIFIC ANALYTICAL
FOUNDATION
2024
2024
Azerbaijan’s propaganda war against Armenia is waged on multiple fronts. Baku TV, one of the instruments of the Aliyev regime's expansionist policy towards Armenia, is actively involved in distorting the etymology of Armenian place names.
In one of the programs of the TV, the etymology of the toponym Aparan is erroneously presented as a Turkic word, supposedly meaning "a place where the Apar-Avars lived." This claim, however, lacks any scientific foundation or scholarly research. It is merely based on a superficial homonymy.
There are numerous explanations for the etymology of the toponym Aparan, but none of them are related to the "Apar-Avars." According to writer and publicist Mesrop Taghiadian, the word originated from "aparank." Linguist Hrachya Acharyan noted that it is a borrowing from Old Persian. British diplomat James Morier derived the word from the Persian "aber" meaning "cloud," while Russian orientalist M. Nikolsky leaned towards the hypothesis that the word has Urartian origins[1].
The "Azerbaijani etymology" of the name Aparan is pseudo-scientific. It is an example of the information warfare that Azerbaijan wages against both Armenia and its other neighboring countries. It is no coincidence that the "research" and the reportage about it reference the "brilliant historian and linguist" Ilham Aliyev, according to whom "the names of settlements in Armenia have Azerbaijani origins."
It is worth noting that Avars never lived in Armenia. Their original habitat was East Asia, and later, Eastern Europe. According to the accepted view, they were one of the Mongolian tribes.
The Azerbaijani 'etymological' interpretation of the name Aparan is just one example of a broader pattern. This practice is a continuation of Soviet-era policies aimed at making territorial claims against other nations and providing a 'legitimate' basis for these claims.
Regarding historical grounds, if a place had a Turkic name does not automatically mean it belongs to Azerbaijanand and and is the 'inheritance' of Azerbaijan, a state created in the 20th century. The widespread assignment of Turkic place names to numerous settlements is also linked to the policies of the Tsarist period when maps, frequently referenced by Aliyev, predominantly used Turkic names, ignoring the native Armenian names that existed from earlier periods. When the Turkic variant of a place name cannot be substantiated, Azerbaijanis resort to fabricating explanations, as seen in their 'etymology' of Aparan.
Photo by Anahit Minasyan
[1] Anahit Abrahamyan, The Demographical and Dialectal Descriptions of Some Old Villages Situated in the Kasakh River Basin, 2020, pp. 4-5, https://language.sci.am/sites/default/files/ardi_hayerenagitowtyan_khndirnere_0.pdf