Ashkenaz - thoughts on etymology
I've long been interested in the origins of peoples and my first introduction to the term "Ashkenaz" occurred in high school when learning about the Jewish people of Europe in World War II.
I then became aware of the term in other contexts including biblical and historical especially with an interesting (one of a number of other theories) connection to the Caucasian nation of Khazaria, the truth of which has been buried in history.
I won't elaborate on that theory or others as there is plenty of information elsewhere on it.
What I will discuss is the possible etymology of the word "Ashkenaz" linked to some of my thoughts on linguistics of ancient biblical peoples.
Abraham - the forefather who links together some of the major religions on Earth was a man who came from the East according to the bible. He lived in Sumeria and spoke Sumerian, an agglutinative language with an ergative structure.
The reason I mention this is that the word "Ashkenaz" appears around the time of Noah, specifically as one of his grandsons through Japheth who also originated the Turkic peoples in his lineage according to some stories.
Most languages on Earth nowadays are from the Indo-European family - a relative newcomer to the scene and having a more analytic modern structure known as nominative-accusative as opposed as to the older ergative.
It is important to note here that Abraham precedes Moses and therefore modern Judaism and its practices. He also precedes the earliest timeframe commonly associated with the collection of the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) which is around 1100 BCE. So the supposition of these ancient men speaking Hebrew is pure conjecture and real history - as in the case of Abraham's location in Sumeria says otherwise.
Ignoring the more modern association of the word "Ashkenazi" with modern day Germany which many modern Jewish people state as their medieval origin and land - and looking at what historians write of the word "Ashkenaz" as in the Bible; Jeremiah 51:27 describes it as one of three kingdoms - ie. a region thought to be around Urartu.
Other etymologies speak of the names of people around the area of the upper Euphrates again in the same region.
Yet others claim it was a Slavic region or even Khazaria. What is important in my view is that it appears that the word has been used to describe a region or an area corresponding to Eastern Anatolia around the Euphrates.
Here is where my thinking enters. If one looks at the word in the light that it is not Semitic, but rather more like the ancient agglutinative languages of the East that include Turkic the word "Ashkenaz" might be broken down into:
Aş (ın) - Food, edible things (of)
Ağzı - Estuary, junction, edge, an entry point to...
roughly meaning an entry point or place of plentiful food... containing suggestions of:
A fertile place by a river/estuary
Possibly the Turkic equivalent of a phrase such as the modern "Fertile Crescent" for example which refers to the Cradle of Civilization including Mesopotamia and Sumeria. An area of plenty, a food bowl etc. which the areas in question around the Euphrates pointed to by historians most certainly were.