Turtle this

You may or may not have heard of Kucha.  For those who are interested in Tocharian or Uyghur, you almost certainly would be well aware of this oasis city on the northern rim of the Taklamakan Desert in the Tarim Basin of Eastern Central Asia. 

Coordinates: 41°42′56″N 82°55′56″E

Kucha is the historical seat of so-called Tocharian B, i.e., Kuśiññe Kantwo, the home of the renowned Buddhist translator, Kumārajīva (344-413), and an important center of Uyghur history and culture from the 7th to 13th centuries.

The oldest Chinese name I know of for Kucha is Qiūcí 龜茲. I recall when I first encountered it how puzzled I was.  Nearly everyone without specialized knowledge who has occasion to read this name in Modern Standard Mandarin (MSM) is apt to pronounce it guīzī, but they will be wrong on both syllables.

龜 is a fun character to behold, but it is also one of the hardest characters to write. It only has 17 strokes, but they are difficult to get in the right order and proportions. Rotate it 90º to the left, then you can see the head out in front, the shell on the top / back, the feet hanging down underneath, the tail projecting behind, and the body in the middle of it all. So, even though it is troublesome to write, it’s easy to recognize and joke about.  We soon learn that it is pronounced guī and means “turtle”.

Conversely, 茲 is relatively easy to write (9 or 10 strokes, depending on your preference), but a nuisance to remember what it means:  “now, here; this; time, year”.

Put the two characters together and what do you get?  Guīzī 龜茲 (“turtle this”).

Wrong, dead wrong. You have to give both characters an irregular reading and bleach them of their meaning.  Instead of guīzī 龜茲 (“turtle this”), you must remember to read them as the transcriptional name Qiūcí 龜茲, which sinographically stands for Kucha.

Here's the etymology of Qiūcí 龜茲.

First attested in the Book of Han, written in the 2nd century. Apparently corresponds to the endonym of the historical Kucha in Tocharian B *Kuśi, attested in the genitive Kuśiñ and adjective kuśiññe (“pertaining to *Kuśi”), or its more archaic variant (see Adams, 2013, which reconstructs the Proto-Tocharian *kući(ye) proto-form for the adjective). Cf. Niya Prakrit (kucirajaṃmi, “kingdom of Kuci”). Adams (ibid.) suggests further etymology from Proto-Indo-European *ḱewk- (“shining, white”).

Wiktionary (accessed December 28, 2024)

By the way, 龜 has another irregular pronunciation, viz. jūn, used only to signify chapped or cracked skin.  I think it must reflect the same morpheme as jūn 皸 ("chapped; cracked [skin]").  

May you have no turtle skin throughout the coming New Year!

 

Selected readings

• "An early fourth century AD historical puzzle involving a Caucasian people in North China" (1/25/19)
• "Tocharian C: its discovery and implications" (4/2/19)
• "A Kuchean shift in terminology from Indo-Iranian to Tocharian" 6/10/24) — with extensive classified bibliography
• "The origins and affinities of Tocharian" (8/20/23)
• "The geographical, archeological, genetic, and linguistic origins of Tocharian" (7/14/20)