# Caliph " Uthman  or Usman or Osman"



## Canbek

Which one of these is the right form in Arabic ?  In Kurdish we used to say " Osso" and " Osman"; In Turkish its " Osman",
Etymology of this word ?  Thanks kindly.


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## berndf

The spelling in Arabic letters is عثمان. The phonemic transliteration is: _`Uthm__ā__n. __Osman _is the Turkish pronunciation, approximating _th_ by _s _(_u_ or _o_ is the same anyway in Arabic words).


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## momai

berndf said:


> The spelling in Arabic letters is عفان. The phonemic transliteration is: _`Uthm__ā__n. __Osman _is the Turkish pronunciation, approximating _th_ by _s _(_u_ or _o_ is the same anyway in Arabic words).


Actually,Ossman comes form The Arabic word Uthman not 'fan , 'fan is his father's name and hence his full name is Uthman bin 'fan  lit:{Uthman the son of 'fan}.


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## berndf

momai said:


> Actually,Ossman comes form The Arabic word Uthman not 'fan , 'fan is his father's name and hence his full name is Uthman bin 'fan  lit:{Uthman the son of 'fan}.


Thanks. Copy-paste error. I have no Arabic keyboard and copy-pasted the Arabic and got the wrong word. In the small font, عثمان and عفان look so similar to my untrained eyes. I corrected it above and enlarged the font.


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## Dib

And I guess, Ottoman is derived from the same source through a th-less language (Latin?).


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## berndf

Dib said:


> And I guess, Ottoman is derived from the same source through a th-less language (*Latin?*).


Italian.

(source)


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## Dib

Cool, thanks!!


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## fdb

berndf said:


> Italian.
> 
> (source)



We had an interesting discussion of this recently in the Greek forum:

http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=2745026

The Italian etymology on offer in etymonline does not explain the second -o- in Ottoman. My understanding is that "Ottoman" represents a contamination with the Germanic name Otto.


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## Dib

Ahah, interesting!


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## Canbek

What does "Uthman" mean in Arabic ?  Is it used in Persian  as "Uthman" form ?


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## fdb

Canbek said:


> What does "Uthman" mean in Arabic ?



Like many old Arabic names it does not have an obvious etymology.



Canbek said:


> Is it used in Persian  as "Uthman" form ?



The Arabic name ʻuthmān is pronounced /osmɒn/ in modern Persian. Though it should be said that he is not talked about very much in modern Iran, for obvious reasons.


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## gburtonio

> The Italian etymology on offer in etymonline does not explain the second -o- in Ottoman. My understanding is that "Ottoman" represents a contamination with the Germanic name Otto.



Could it instead be a case of inserting a vowel sound between two consonants to fit Italian phonological rules? Since /tm/ would not be allowed in Italian?


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## fdb

I would not rule this out, but…. Why does the Italian form have a double –tt-, while the Arabic has only a single –ϑ-?  And why should the Italians have borrowed this name from classical Arabic, and not from Turkish, where it has –s-?


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## ancalimon

fdb said:


> We had an interesting discussion of this recently in the Greek forum:
> 
> http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=2745026
> 
> The Italian etymology on offer in etymonline does not explain the second -o- in Ottoman. My understanding is that "Ottoman" represents a contamination with the Germanic name Otto.



There is also another theory which states that the Turkic name of Osman was Ataman which means "the leader of the clan" in Turkic (or horsemaster according to some but I disagree with that one).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ataman


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## Canbek

fbd, I don't think Italians had any choice...Because, as you guys have  already mentioned, it's Uthman in alphabet but somehow Turks read it as Osman...So  is there any Arabic alphabet version that suggests the word to be read  as Osman ? If there was any, it would have been Osman not Uthman any  way...So, there is nothing wrong with what Italians read, but there 's a  problem with how Turks did ?  Or, Turks have got nothing to do with  this, because Persians read it as Osman...Because, although " th" like  in Uthman. is not common in Turkish or loan words, there is some in  words existed in  so called " Ottoman Turkish" have "th" in it...And  surprisingly, I'll get you some  Arabic ones...   For example: Athal (  Arabic)= Ash-colored...Athar(Arabic)= the pure ...Ather =the most  pure...Ithaf ( Arabic)= present,  dedicate...Ithal(Arabic)=importation,insertion,inclusion...Itham(Arabic)=  accusation, imputation....So, given these examples, one might think: If  an so called " Ottoman Turk"  manages to read these words above  stressing the "th" ( unless in Arabic there is somthing different to  "th") , same Ottoman person should have read Uthman-Othman, as  Uthman-Othman,  not as Osman...If I'm wrong, please let me know...


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## fdb

I am afraid this is totally wrong. The Arabic ث  is pronounced /s/ in Turkish. Consistently.


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## Canbek

So, do you mean the above words don't exist ? Can you please  advice  me some examples of this consistency ?


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## fdb

These words do not contain the letter ث . Athar is أطهر, for example.


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## Treaty

Canbek said:


> Because, although " th" like  in Uthman. is not  common in Turkish or loan words, there is some in  words existed in  so  called " Ottoman Turkish" have "th" in it...And  surprisingly, I'll get  you some  Arabic ones...   For example: Athal (  Arabic)=  Ash-colored...Athar(Arabic)= the pure ...Ather =the most  pure...Ithaf (  Arabic)= present,   dedicate...Ithal(Arabic)=importation,insertion,inclusion...Itham(Arabic)=   accusation, imputation....So, given these examples, one might think:  If  an so called " Ottoman Turk"  manages to read these words above   stressing the "th" ( unless in Arabic there is somthing different to   "th") , same Ottoman person should have read Uthman-Othman, as   Uthman-Othman,  not as Osman...If I'm wrong, please let me  know...



You have confused the _th _(θ like in too*th *written with ث in Arabic) with _t-h_ (in ra*t-h*ole). The _th _in Arabic _Uthman_ is pronounced _θ_ not _t-h_. Turkish and Persian don't have _θ_ so they pronounce its correspondent Arabic letter as _s_.  In your examples which are in Turkish spelling,  their Arabic  equivalents are written by two separate letters (like t ت and h هـ). In  some of them, there is even a vowel between _t_ and _h_ (like _ittihām _that is shortened to _itham _in modern Turkish).


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## Canbek

fdb, you first said : " I am afraid this is totally wrong. The Arabic ث  is pronounced /s/ in Turkish. Consistently" 

And I said : " So, do you mean the above words don't exist ? Can you please  advice  me some examples of this consistency ?"

Your response to my question is : " These words do not contain the letter ث . Athar is أطهر, for example."  

Well,  your response explains that  Athar  hasn't  got" ث"  ...And I checked  it, what you said is right....However, it's not the answer of the question I forwarded to your  statement above...You haven't showed any word in Turkish yet,  confirms  "The Arabic ث  is pronounced /s/ in Turkish. Consistently. "


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## Treaty

Examples (Turkish/ Arabic/ romanised Arabic):
misal مثال miṯāl*
saniye ثانیه ṯānīya 
eser اثر aṯar
mesnevi مثنوی maṯnawī
sena ثناء ṯenā'
sabit ثابت ṯābit


* ṯ represents Arabic ث and is pronounced like _th _(/θ/) in English.


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## Canbek

Treaty, your example is convincing...However, for Persian only...Because I am unaware of the sound of this _"θ_"  letter, which corresponds to "th"...I got what I want, but there's a  very big issue merges  in here, which I'm unable to  discus in this  platform...Thanks kindly.


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## Treaty

Canbek said:


> Treaty, your example is convincing...However, for Persian only...Because I am unaware of the sound of this _"θ_"  letter, which corresponds to "th"



Why only for Persian? I didn't see if I've discussed Persian here. It was all from Turkish dictionaries. If you want to be fully convinced about the correspondence of letter ث with sound _s_ in Ottoman Turkish, you can download the Redhouse Turkish Dictionary (printed 40 years before Ataturk in London) from here. You can find the words starting with ث on page 511. Their pronunciation in English is written in front of them. The word عثمان _osman_ itself is on the page 652 in the middle of the left column. (note that _ss _has the same pronunciation as _s_, but written so to avoid mispronunciation of it as _z_ that is common in English when _s_ is placed before _m_ or between vowels. This is fully explained in page 14 along with the pronunciation of ث). 

P.S. By the page numbers I mean the original page numbers as written on the pages, not the page number of the PDF file (that is 21 more than the former).


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## Canbek

Treaty : 1-) First, thanks very very much  for this favor...I wouldn't be able find this dictionary, if you hadn't helped me out, mate...

            2-) I am absolutely, without checking this treasure , convinced about those letters , no problem with that.

            3-) How ever,I should say that  I'm looking to a picture  from an angle that totally different to yours...I explained  enough to you,  in the other forum...
Now, I got a review from a Turk, regarding your link:

            "This is not Turkish or Ottman Turkish because I'm Turkish but I coudn't understand the written letters "  

Thanks again.


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## Muttaki

Canbek said:


> Well,  your response explains that  Athar  hasn't  got" ث"  ...And I checked  it, what you said is right....However, it's not the answer of the question I forwarded to your  statement above...You haven't showed any word in Turkish yet,  confirms  "The Arabic ث  is pronounced /s/ in Turkish. Consistently. "



Well, Osman is already known as pronounced with 's' in Turkish and ث in Arabic. Although you don't have any proof for Turks read it wrong when they pronounce it unlike Italians, why do you need other examples? If you knew anything about Arabic alphabet and how those words that you gave are written, you would see your argument has no ground. These are some Arabic words which is written with ث and pronounced 's' in Turkish:

ثابت (sabit), اثبات (isbat), حادثه (hadise), عبث (abes), خبيث (habis)


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## berndf

It should be pointed out that the Ottoman Turkish name of the letter ﺙ itself was pronounced [s]. The Ottoman version of the Arabic alphabet was derived from the Persian variant of the Arabic alphabet (Persian was the literary and court language of the early Turkic empires in the region, from the Seljuk to the early Ottoman empires) which also features the pronunciation of the letter ﺙ as [s].


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## ApprentiSorcier

In classical Arabic dictionaries, the trilateral root ع ث م  from which عثمان is probably derived refers to the notion of bigness and tallness. Like many first names, عثمان may have been first an attribute referring to the person's physical appearance. The suffix ان is still found in a number of Arabic adjectives like جوعان عطشان ضمان كسلان


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## fdb

According to the lexica ʻuϑmān is either some sort of snake, or some sort of buzzard. It is a very rare word.


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## Canbek

berndf said:


> It should be pointed out that the Ottoman Turkish name of the letter ﺙ itself was pronounced [s]. The Ottoman version of the Arabic alphabet was derived from the Persian variant of the Arabic alphabet (Persian was the literary and court language of the early Turkic empires in the region, from the Seljuk to the early Ottoman empires) which also features the pronunciation of the letter ﺙ as [s].



I don't want to make further comments about this, however, just a question:  isn't there any letter in Arabic, corresponds to "S"  ?


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## berndf

Yes there is one: س (siin).


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## Canbek

berndf said:


> Yes there is one: س (siin).



So, wouldn't it be possible to use this letter, instead of the one corresponds to " th" in the word Uthman ?


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## Treaty

Canbek said:


> So, wouldn't it be possible to use this letter, instead of the one corresponds to " th" in the word Uthman ?



No. The correct spelling of the words as the original is crucially important in pre-Modern Arabic writing systems because otherwise it may change the meaning.


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## Canbek

Treaty said:


> No. The correct spelling of the words as the original is crucially important in pre-Modern Arabic writing systems because otherwise it may change the meaning.


  First let's check what berndf  commented :  " It should be pointed out that the Ottoman Turkish name of the letter ﺙ  itself was pronounced [s]. The Ottoman version of the Arabic alphabet  was derived from the Persian variant of the Arabic alphabet (Persian was  the literary and court language of the early Turkic empires in the  region, from the Seljuk to the early Ottoman empires) which also  features the pronunciation of the letter ﺙ as [s]."

 In this case, a question arouses: in  Arabic version of the alphabet used in Persian,  isn't there any letter "s" can be used  in this case, to replace "ﺙ  "?


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## berndf

You would of course want to spell Arabic words the Arabic way. This means on the other hand that when you encounter a word in Persian or Ottoman Turkish that contains the letter ﺙ you can be quite confident that it is a loan from Arabic.


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## Canbek

berndf said:


> You would of course want to spell Arabic words the Arabic way. This means on the other hand that when you encounter a word in Persian or Ottoman Turkish that contains the letter ﺙ you can be quite confident that it is a loan from Arabic.



O.K...What you saying is, the word Osman,in Persian,  has to be written the way Arabic alphabet allows them to do so...Is that right ?  My question is still un answered, probably Treaty should responde  as a Persian speaking...If a letter exists and provides the "s"  sound in Arabic alphabet already, why would Persians bother ( or Turks in your case)  using  ﺙ instead ? There's another issue :  you said "You would of course want to spell Arabic words the Arabic way"...  Why would I spell the Arabic words in Arabic way ?  English word  Washington  is spelled "Vaşington" in Turkish through Latin Alphabet...Why would a Persian bother  using letter ﺙ  , whilst there is another one exists and provides the "s" sound ? ( considering or guessing  , letter(s) exist in Persian Arabic alphabet to  provide "s" sound, or simply  "s"  to be used in Osman  )  How ever, I'm unsure about Arabic language so my questions might be a bit misconsept driven in this case.


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## berndf

The comparison isn't fitting. English isn't the sacred language of Islam und and George Washington isn't a revered Islamic leader but Arabic is and Khalif 'Uthman is and.you should know better than I do that every dot in the Quran and other important original Text from the creation period of Islam is sacred and you are not supposed change any of it in any way.

A better comparison is the use of Hebrew letters to spell Yiddish. As you probably know, Yiddish is at its base a German dialect but is spelled in Hebrew and not Latin letters. And for Jews, Hebrew also is a sacred language. Loan words from Polish, Russian, Hungarian etc are spelled so they fit the Yiddish pronunciation of Hebrew letters but never ever Hebrew or Aramaic words. They are always spelled as in Hebrew/Aramaic, even if the spelling made no sense trying to read it with Yiddish pronunciation rules.


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## Canbek

berndf said:


> The comparison isn't fitting. English isn't the sacred language of Islam und and George Washington isn't a revered Islamic leader but Arabic is and Khalif 'Uthman is and.you should know better than I do that every dot in the Quran and other important original Text from the creation period of Islam is sacred and you are not supposed change any of it in any way.




   First of all, Osman  is not a sacred person among all Muslims...Plus,  Muaviya and his son  both were  Khalips and tens of millions of Muslims swearing to them on  daily basis ... So, to be a  Khaliph, wouldn't grant a sacred position  to anyone among all the Muslims ......I   think we'ra getting out of context...Back to the issue : The point is,   Persians or Turks, name a son as Osman...Because they use Arabic  alphabet, they had to write in " Uthman" form..Why ?    Because Osman is  only written as Uthman in Arabic ? Is this right, is that what you say   ?  So, it allowed and caused a confusion among not only non-Arabic  alphabet  users, but also Turks and non-Turks like me , too...Because,  we know the emperor's name as Osman, but Europeans call him a name  similar to German ones  such as  Ottoman, Otman, Uthman... And Europeans  don't mind that actually Persians and Turks and Kurds and so on  call  him Osman, not Ottoman...And still call him Ottoman and the versions...  Why would  Europeans call Fatih Sultan Mehmed, instead of Fatih Sultan  Muhammed ? Wasn't  Mehmed a local non-Arabic word used to replace  Muhammed ?  Plus,  referring to you theory that Osman was sacred, I  assure  you Muhammed is the most sacred personality ever, in Muslim  world...So, Turks and Persians and the rest of the Muslim world and the  entire world accept the corrupt version Mehmed, instead of Muhammed,  which is sacred, but on the other hand  most oh them  would never try  Osman, instead of Uthman !  

  Your second example; a comparison of Yiddish with Hebrew letters is a seperate issue...We may continue...


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## Treaty

You didn't consider an important part of berndf post, that Arabic was a  sacredly cool language. Many pre-modern scholars had learned how to read  and write Arabic earlier than their own language. It was very  prestigeous for someone to articulate Arabic well. Actually, an  important sign of literacy for Persian people (even now) is to spell  Arabic words correctly. Not writing the Arabic words correctly may  dramatically shift their meanings. Consider Uthman, it has to potential  for six different meanings if you use only one form of ʿ and s. 

We do not need to go far to Yiddish for examples. You can find easily in English: Words like *gn*ostic, *pn*eumonia, *rh*ubarb, *ps*y*ch*o, *ch*rist,  and so on (I ignored vowel, they have their own story) are written so  because they made sense in the original Greek. You have at least eight different  "k" in English (c, k, ck, q, ch, kh, cq, cc) because they have different roots  and reasons. This is almost the same for Persian and Ottoman Turkish.


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## berndf

There is no difference in spelling between Mehmed and Muhammad. Mehmed is just a pronunciation variant of the same spelling. There is another variant that is spelled slightly differently: Mahmoud. But that is variant within Arabic.


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## Canbek

berndf said:


> There is no difference in spelling between Mehmed and Muhammad. Mehmed is just a pronunciation variant of the same spelling. There is another variant that is spelled slightly differently: Mahmoud. But that is variant within Arabic.



After this response, it appears to me that you  don't want further reply, that's fine for me...<...>


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## Canbek

Treaty said:


> You didn't consider an important part of berndf post, that Arabic was a  sacredly cool language. Many pre-modern scholars had learned how to read  and write Arabic earlier than their own language. It was very  prestigeous for someone to articulate Arabic well. Actually, an  important sign of literacy for Persian people (even now) is to spell  Arabic words correctly. Not writing the Arabic words correctly may  dramatically shift their meanings. Consider Uthman, it has to potential  for six different meanings if you use only one form of ʿ and s.
> 
> We do not need to go far to Yiddish for examples. You can find easily in English: Words like *gn*ostic, *pn*eumonia, *rh*ubarb, *ps*y*ch*o, *ch*rist,  and so on (I ignored vowel, they have their own story) are written so  because they made sense in the original Greek. You have at least eight different  "k" in English (c, k, ck, q, ch, kh, cq, cc) because they have different roots  and reasons. This is almost the same for Persian and Ottoman Turkish.



Yes, I understand your point !  Turks admire Persian, because its prestigious...But Persians don't realise that they have a prestigious  language, they admire Arabic instead...And so on...After, Persians or Turks give a name to a valuable son, Osman, which means below:

  "According to the lexica ʻuϑmān is either some sort of snake, or some sort of buzzard. It is a very rare word."


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## berndf

Canbek said:


> After this response, it appears to me that you  don't want further reply, that's fine for me...<...>


It seems you took my reply as a joke. It was serious. Look up the Ottoman Turkish spelling of the name _Mehmed_ (_Mehmet_ in modern Turkish): You will find it is محمد. The same as _Mohammad _in Arabic.


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## berndf

Canbek said:


> Yes, I understand your point !


I am afraid you don't. This forum is not about which language is the greatest, the most prestigious or any of the sort. We treat Turkish, Persian and Arabic with the same respect. Treaty tried to explain to you the importance of Arabic in the Islamic Persian culture. This does not belittle the importance of the Persian language itself but simply explains why Persian wouldn't assimilate the spelling of Arabic words.


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## Canbek

berndf said:


> I am afraid you don't. This forum is not about which language is the greatest, the most prestigious or any of the sort. We treat Turkish, Persian and Arabic with the same respect. Treaty tried to explain to you the importance of Arabic in the Islamic Persian culture. This does not belittle the importance of the Persian language itself but simply explains why Persian wouldn't assimilate the spelling of Arabic words.



The one that doesn't  understand is,  you... I don't care  which language is greater than the other and I am not Persian ! I'm looking for the truth...All after these, any one with common sense in this area would have realised that Osman"s name actually wouldn't be Osman, but something different which I pointed out, stressed despite all humiliations, attacks to my self etc...You even don't understand what I'm traying to say to Treaty...And you have no idea about the historical context of this topic, but traying to give me advice about it !  Its your forum, enjoy your self...Good bye.


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## إسكندراني

fdb said:


> I would not rule this out, but…. Why does the Italian form have a double –tt-, while the Arabic has only a single –ϑ-?  And why should the Italians have borrowed this name from classical Arabic, and not from Turkish, where it has –s-?


I have a speculative theory. The bulk of the Ottoman navy in later years was what we would today call Algerian. They pronounce ϑ as t . And the venetians were the only Europeans authorised to trade with the Islamic world by the catholic church, so their orthography coming to be accepted is a natural development.


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## ancalimon

Canbek said:


> Yes, I understand your point !  Turks admire Persian, because its prestigious...But Persians don't realise that they have a prestigious  language, they admire Arabic instead...And so on...After, Persians or Turks give a name to a valuable son, Osman, which means below:
> 
> "According to the lexica ʻuϑmān is either some sort of snake, or some sort of buzzard. It is a very rare word."



Turks do not admire Persian today. Actually most of the Turks dislike the languages spoken in Middle East. For example Arabic and Persian. The thing is that most Turks admire is Islam itself. Back in the day the court Turkic (not the common Turkic) was influenced heavily by Persian and Arabic because they sound more gaudy than Turkic. To me it feels like it makes the speaker flatter himself while speaking. Turkic sounded vulgar and not poetic and maybe even "a little barbaric" like maybe how German sounded to many Europeans back in the day.

For example we have Arabic or Persian words for their Turkic equivalents if that word has become vulgar or rude. A funny example would be "sikiş" which means "sex" ~ fu*king". It somehow became an extremely rude word and for example in TV you would hear "cinsi münasebet" (relationship between sexes in Arabic) instead of "sikiş".

Also Arabic and Persian were not prestigious back in the day. Actually Europeans hated Turks backs in the day because they became Muslims. After Fatih Sultan Mehmed conquered Istanbul, it is said that Sultan Mehmed sent a letter to Vatican complaining about why they were fighting the Turks. Mehmed told the pope that their ancestors were from the same family and they were brothers. After this there were talks of a letter supposedly written by the pope in Europe. Supposedly this letter asked Mehmed to convert to Christianity and become baptized and only if he did so will Turks be accepted as the brothers of the family and Mehmed the true heir to Roman Empire and the Greeks. After this Fatih Sultan Mehmet got very angry and decided to conquer Italy and convert Vatican to Islam. Of course over the coming centuries, Ottomans failed at Vienna with the help of Hungarians and entered the declining stage.


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## berndf

fdb said:


> According to *the lexica* ʻuϑmān is either some sort of snake, or some sort of buzzard. It is a very rare word.


Could you be a bit more specific? I couldn't find this explanation.


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## fdb

Try this (scroll down to the entry in Lane):

http://ejtaal.net/aa/#hw4=703,ll=20...1189,uqa=282,uqw=1049,umr=696,ums=579,umj=516


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## berndf

fdb said:


> Try this (scroll down to the entry in Lane):
> 
> http://ejtaal.net/aa/#hw4=703,ll=20...1189,uqa=282,uqw=1049,umr=696,ums=579,umj=516


Hmm. I know only the interpretation that the name is derived from the root عثم (being a broken bone) which you find on the same page plus the suffix ان. But well, who knows. I prefer to go with your comment in #11: _Like many old Arabic names it does not have an obvious etymology._


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