# Etymology of Serbo-Croatian "šešir"



## oldp2015

Hello,
I would appreciate any information about the etymology of the Croatian/Serbian/Bosnian word šešir/шешир (meaning hat). I can't think of a connection in other Slavic languages or in modern Turkish. The Croatian Language Portal (Hrvatski jezični portal) does not list any etymology. 

Thanks in advance!


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## dihydrogen monoxide

According to Skok the word is not present in any other Slavic languages. He supposes it comes from Arabic íäKja with the meaning of hat and according to him the main vowel and the beginning is not explained. I'm not able to tell what the Arabic transliteration represents since the transliteration in Arabic does not involve any of the letters. He suspects, but has no idea.


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## nimak

The word *шешир* (šéšir) ['ʃɛʃir], pl. шешири, is present in Macedonian too, as a term for some styles of hats. Not all head coverings called "hats" in English are called шешири in Macedonian.


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## thegreathoo

dihydrogen monoxide said:


> According to Skok the word is not present in any other Slavic languages. He supposes it comes from Arabic íäKja with the meaning of hat



Probably from _sash _meaning turban, head dress.


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## dihydrogen monoxide

Is etymology for Arabic shash known, could it be of Persian origin?


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## fenakhay

dihydrogen monoxide said:


> He supposes it comes from Arabic íäKja with the meaning of hat.


There is the Arabic word شَاشِيَّة (šāšiyya) which refers to the Maghrebi fez. It comes from شَاش (šāš) meaning muslin.


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## dihydrogen monoxide

Is the شَاشِيَّة (šāšiyya) MSA or do other dialects use it too? I'm wondering, since BCS showcases e-vocalism and isn't شَاش (šāš) supposed to be a three-consonant root like ktb 'read,book', if I disregard the vowel since it's not written in Arabic then it would be two consonant root?


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## fenakhay

The term is in MSA and it is a loanword. In my dictionary, it says it comes from the name of a village/town in Persia known for making muslin. I don't have any more information.


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## AndrasBP

What about the ending *-ir* in šešir? It doesn't look like it just developed spontaneously. Some kind of analogy, perhaps?


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## dihydrogen monoxide

Almost all words in BCS that end in -ir are of turkish origin (bakir, kefir... that come to mind).


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## Xerîb

I think Arabic šāš شَاش “muslin” and Biblical Hebrew šēš שֵׁשׁ “fine linen” are probably ultimately of Egyptian origin… compare Middle Egyptian šs “fine linen” (Sahidic Coptic ϣⲛⲥ, Bohairic Coptic ϣⲉⲛⲥ).

This article from a popular source offers an Albanian etymon, šeše, for šešir/шешир:

Espreso - Najbrže rastući portal u Srbiji i regionu

But then what would be the origin of the Albanian word? And how can we explain the addition of -ir? This is not a usual suffix in BCMS as far as I know.

From surfing the interwebs, it seems like šešir/шешир is a relatively recent word... What was the original referent of šešir? Did it originally refer to the Ottoman فس fes (Arabic طربوش ṭarbūš) “fez”?

If so, the word resembles the Hebrew word  šašer שָׁשַׁר “vermilion” (originally, according to some Biblical commentaries,  “kermes”, the brilliant red dye obtain from the dried bodies of a species of scale insect found on Mediterranean oaks—perhaps “kermes” was still a possible meaning in some contexts in early modern times?). Kermes was the dyestuff typically used for the red color of the fez. And the fez was well known even among Balkan Christians in the 19th century:

Вук Стефановић Караџић — Википедија

This is rank speculation on my part—the semantic connection is tenuous, the path of borrowing (North African Jewish merchants active in the Ottoman Empire?) unknown, and the phonology imprecise and probably a Scheingleichung.

I hope someone follows up and finds the etymology.


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## Torontal

this is really interesting, I went through Ottoman and Turkish dictionaries but couldn't find any similar word, neither found any indication that the Arabic شاشيه entered the Ottoman vocabulary in the first place. It is not found in Ottoman dictionaries either.
The only occurence i found şeşir being mentioned in Turkish (Dr. google) in passing is in the context of the particular vocabulary of Macedonian and Kosovo Türks. So it seems to me that it could be a non-Turkish origin word that only entered the dialects of the local Turkish people in place of _şapka_ (Turkish for hat).
So I suspect the source could be another language... but I have no idea.
What about Albanian? Is it present there?

Edit:

I missed one possibility, just checked Dankoff's Evliya Çelebi Glossary, and apparently Evliya Çelebi used the word _şâş_ شاش in a few places in the meaning of turban, and then i saw the TDV İslam Ansiklopedisi's sarık (=turban in Turkish) article which mentions it too:
SARIK - TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi

_Suriye, Mısır, Arap yarımadası ve İran’da şâş kelimesi de “sarık” mânasında kullanılmıştır; Kalkaşendî, Eyyûbîler döneminde kadıların ve ulemânın giydiği büyük sarıklardan “şâşât” ve serbest bıraktıkları ucundan (taylasan) “züâbe” adıyla söz eder (Ṣubḥu’l-aʿşâ, IV, 43-44)._

~

_In Syria, Egypt, the Arabian Peninsula and Iran the word şâş was also used in "turban" meaning; Al-Qalqashandi calls the big turbans worn by the kadis and the religious scholars in the Ayyubid period by the name “şâşât”, and the end of it which was left freely by the name "züâbe" (Ṣubḥu’l-aʿşâ, IV, 43-44)_

So I wouldn't disclose that either, but then i can't find explanation to the -ir ending, and I don't know if the sound change is possible from ş_âş_ to š_eš _in South Slavic.

Also the place name what @fenakhay mentioned in post #8 from where the word شاش could derive is I think Tashkent:
Tashkent - Wikipedia

_In the mid-seventh century, the Sasanian Persian Empire collapsed as a result of the Arab Muslim conquest of Persia. Under the Samanid dynasty (819–999), whose founder Saman Khuda was a Persian Zoroastrian convert to Islam, the city came to be known as Binkath. However, the Arabs retained the old name of Chach for the surrounding region, pronouncing it ash-Shash (الشاش) instead. Kand, qand, kent, kad, kath, kud—all meaning a city—are derived from the Persian/Sogdian کنده kanda, meaning a town or a city. They are found in city names such as Samarkand, Yarkand, Panjakent, Khujand etc.). After the 16th century, the name evolved from Chachkand/Chashkand to Tashkand. The modern spelling of "Tashkent" reflects Russian orthography and 20th-century Soviet influence._


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## ahvalj

_Șapka_ itself seems to be a loan from Slavic, where it is ultimately from the Old French _chape_ (West Slavic has it with _č: czapka, __čapka_), the diminutive _-ka_ seems to convey the Old French _-el_ in _chapel_.


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## Xerîb

I see that the first link I posted, to an article about Albanian words in BCMS on a Serbian news site, did not come through. I hope this link to the article offering the Albanian etymon šeše works:

KEVE TI? Ove reči SVAKODNEVNO koristimo, a potiču DIREKTNO iz albanskog jezika! (FOTO)

Could this Albanian šeše could be from شاشيه ? If so, what is the -ir ending in BCMS?


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## ahvalj

Concerning Albanian, I've found this:


> Reč šešir je po svemu sudeći nastala od albanskog naziva za belu kapu s ravnim temenom - "šeše", kakva se nosila u centralnoj Albaniji. "Šešir" se u srpskom jeziku najpre javio u Vojvodini, početkom 18. veka, gde su, verovatno, cincarski i albanski trgovci označavali kape s ravnim temenom.


Don't know how serious it is.
Going deeper, the Albanian _shesh_ is derived from the Latin _sessum_.

P. S. Partial cross post with #14.


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## Xerîb

Videos on YouTube, such as "Tying a tarboosh" neatly illustrate how _šāš_ of white muslin is used to dress a_ šāšiyya. _(Just search on that title.) Maybe someone could weigh in on whether a North African _šāšiyya_, perhaps with _imāla_ ( إمالة‎, raising of _a/ā_), could yield an Albanian form_ šeše_.


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## ahvalj

Just speculating… The enigmatic suffix _-ir_ could have in principle been added in South Slavic, perhaps by analogy with some other word. Etymologically, Slavic has (rare) suffixes _-yŗь~-uŗь~-ъŗь_ (from _*-ūri̯-~*-au̯ri̯-~*-uri̯-_), the former of which is continued in the South Slavic _-ir, _like in (the Latin loan) _pāstōrem>pastyŗь>pastir._


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## nimak

The traditional Albanian cap, made of wool, in Albanian is called: *qeleshe*, *plis*, *qylaf*.

That Serbian website says:


> ... albanskog naziva za belu kapu s ravnim temenom - "šeše", kakva se nosila u centralnoj Albaniji ...


That says: the flat-topped Albanian fez/tarboosh type qeleshe had been called "*šeše*". But I couldn't find any proof for this. Оn the other hand, in Albanian "sheshim" means "_flattening_"; "sheshoj" means "_to smooth_", "_to flatten_".

In Macedonian, Serbian, and Bulgarian the traditional Albanian cap is called *кече *(*keče*) ['kɛt͡ʃɛ], from Turkish *keçe* "_felt_".


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## AndrasBP

When was the word *šešir *first attested in writing?


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## Xerîb

> Оn the other hand, in Albanian "sheshim" means "_flattening_"; "sheshoj" means "_to smooth_", "_to flatten_"



That seems like a very promising line of inquiry! It parallels English _flatcap, _for instance. 



> the flat-topped Albanian fez/tarboosh type qeleshe had been called "*šeše*". But I couldn't find any proof for this.



The Oxford _Albanian English Dictionary_ (1998) gives the following:

*sheshe *flat skullcap word by men in northern Albanian [sic]​
Also the Albanian Wiktionary:

sheshe - Wiktionary​
And this Facebook post from a ethnographic museum also appears to mention the skullcap (in the definite form _sheshja_?) with pictures of the items described.

The _-ir _of BCMS still needs to be explained. (I was hoping that an Albanian plural in _-ra _could have helped with this aspect of the problem — that is, for the sake of exposition, an Albanian plural *_sheshera _would suggest a genitive sg. or acc. pl. _šešira_ in BCMS, and a stem_ šešir-_ extracted from that somehow. But a scenario of this type seems like a long shot.)


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## dihydrogen monoxide

Was latin sessum ever **sedsum. I would guess the root would be *sed-.


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