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Name of Turkey


The English name , now applied to the modern Republic of Turkey, is historically derived (via Old French Turquie) from the Medieval Latin Turchia, Turquia; and Greek Τουρκία. It is first recorded in Middle English (as Turkye, Torke, later Turkie, Turky), attested in Chaucer, ca. 1369. The Ottoman Empire was commonly referred to as Turkey or the Turkish Empire among its contemporaries.

The name of Turkey (Turkish: Türkiye) can be divided into two components: the ethnonym Türk and the abstract suffix –iye meaning "owner", "land of" or "related to" (originally derived from the Greek and Latin suffixes –ia in Tourkia (Τουρκία) and Turchia; and later from the corresponding Arabic suffix –iyya in Turkiyya (تركيا).)

On 29 October 1923, upon the country declaring a Republic, Turkey adopted its official name, Türkiye Cumhuriyeti, known in English as the Republic of Turkey.

The first recorded use of the term "Türk" or "Türük" as an autonym is contained in the Old Turkic inscriptions of the Göktürks (Celestial Turks) of Central Asia (c. AD 735). The Turkic self-designation Türk is first attested in reference to the Göktürks in the 6th century AD. A letter by Ishbara Qaghan to Emperor Wen of Sui in 585 described him as "the Great Turk Khan."


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