Nyelvészeti megjegyzések a Dentumoger elnevezéshez

This chapter proposes a new linguistic explanation of the name Dentumoger, which occurs five times in chapters 1, 3, 5 and 14 of Anonymus’s Gesta Hungarorum as an ethnonym, as the name of Hungarian groups still living there, as the name of the ancestral territory and as another name for Scythia. It reviews earlier interpretations, from Gottfried Schwarz and Dánkovszky to Németh, Pais, Györffy, Ligeti, Juhász, Róna-Tas, Sándor, Komar, Türk and Sudár. It argues that explanations with a Hungarian diminutive suffix (Den+tü, ‘Donets Hungarians’) conflict with Hungarian morphology, semantics and syntax, since a place name can serve as an attribute only with the adjectival suffix -i, and that the Hetumoger hypothesis fails on phonological grounds. The author instead derives Dentü from Den, a front-vowel Turkic variant of the river name Don, and the Turkic adjectival suffix +DX (+tu/+tü), citing parallels such as Kyrgyz szoltu, the place name Nogajtu and the Uyghur place names Quduqti, Tërekti and Sarimsaqti. The Latin spelling moger is read as magyer, giving Old Hungarian *dentü magyer ‘the Don Hungarians’, a construction possibly formed by a bilingual Hungarian or Kabar elite. The development from ethnonym to country name, geographical name and finally Scythia is explained through ellipsis, metonymic transfer and the part–whole relation. On the basis of Anonymus, Regino of Prüm, Gottfried of Viterbo, the etymology and the geography of Bulgar-Turkic and Alanian loanwords, the chapter places Dentumoger along and west of the Don, and treats Kézai’s Dentia and Mogoria as secondary forms derived from Dentumoger.