# Help me please to identify some old ottoman letters (what it says in English)



## perisae

Hello from Thessaloniki, Greece. I am a collector of old Ottoman pocket watches, I found one in my city (Thessaloniki) and I am interested mainly for historic reasons to know what it says. I will be very happy if someone helps. (I am also interested to know if the symbol (with the sun and the radius) symbolize something special (in O ttoman world))
Thank you in advance,
Perikles


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## Sirius77

perisae said:


> Hello from Thessaloniki, Greece. I am a collector of old Ottoman pocket watches, I found one in my city (Thessaloniki) and I am interested mainly for historic reasons to know what it says. I will be very happy if someone helps. (I am also interested to know if the symbol (with the sun and the radius) symbolize something special (in O ttoman world))
> Thank you in advance,
> Perikles
> View attachment 26467


This is not Turkish, this is Ottoman.


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## perisae

Yes I know that (I write it in the title of the post). But Turkey is the natural sequence of the Ottoman empire. In Greece many experts in Greek language know very well ancient Greek (from their studies from university), I thought that it could be happening the same to Turkey. If you were in my position and you couldn't translate this script, what would you do?


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## Rallino

I see ليويقو but it makes no sense to me. I'm also not sure if the intitial letter is supposed to be an L. My somewhat farfetched opinion is that the person who made this watch was of Slavic origins and his name was _Livikov_. 
Let's wait until someone more experienced in Ottoman script visits this thread.


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## perisae

Thank you "Rallino" very much for your answer. I believe that you are very close, almost you found it. I thought that the text was a 'wish' (like others old Ottoman pocket watches). But now after your response, I believe that is the watch dealer name. In the dial of the watch it writes: "Levi Salonique" (a mans name (Jewish ?) from Thessaloniki). Levi (in the watch dial) / Livikov (your suggest). Maybe the text whites "Levi" in Ottoman?


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## analeeh

Yes, I read it as 'Lev Yaqof' or something like that.


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## perisae

Thank you very much "analeeh". Wow!! Web is a fantastic tool! Without internet and especially this site, I I would never know what this script says. Thank you again all for your valuable help!
PS. (maybe it is not  "Yaqof' but Ya'akov(Jacob))


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## analeeh

Yes, I think it definitely is a spelling of Jacob, _Yakof_. ق is one of the ways of spelling modern Turkish k (the 'back' k which is used before back vowels and as a rendition of Arabic q, which would suit perfectly here). _Yakov_ seems to be the typical rendition of Ya'akov in Ladino, which would of course have been the native language of many Selanikli Jews at the time, and is also the Turkish form. It's also possible looking back at it that that last letter might be a slightly misshapen second ـو, which would be _v_, although equally ـف _f_ might be used to represent the final sound because two ووs look funny or because of Russian-style final-devoiced pronunciation.


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## perisae

Thank you "analeeh", your knowledge (it clearly seems) is very valuable to my research. I will save all your last post.


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