Words Derived from Proto-Turkic *bēg (‘Lord’)

author: Mamers-Mamertos/reddit, added on: 2025-04-03

Mamers-Mamertos:

There are different ideas about where this word originally came from.

One theory suggests that it might have come from Middle Chinese, possibly from words like 百 (paek, “hundred”), 佰 (paek, “leader of a hundred men”), or 伯 (paek, “eldest brother, noble”) ~ 霸 (paek, “hegemon”).

Another theory links it to Middle Iranian languages, such as Sogdian baga (“lord, master”) or Old Persian 𐏎 (BG, “god”), which trace back to Proto-Indo-Iranian *bʰagás (“god”, literally “dispenser”).

However, the German Turkologist Gerhard Doerfer considered the Iranian origin uncertain and suggested that the word could be genuinely Turkic.

Collection: european-words - Tags: europe, words, lord - Source: reddit.com