# What is the etymology of the Turkish kalfa?



## Christo Tamarin

kalfa


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## apmoy70

Christo Tamarin said:


> kalfa


Could it be from the Arabic قَلَفَ qalafa, _to wrap, enwrap_?


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## momai

This website suggests that Arabic khaliifa ,which literally means "successor" is the source of Kalfa.I am not sure,though, if this is true!


apmoy70 said:


> Could it be from the Arabic قَلَفَ qalafa, _to wrap, enwrap_?


Actually,qalafa means to peel ,of which we have qalfa which means "prepuce".So we can exclude it as a possibility, I think.


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## apmoy70

momai said:


> Actually,qalafa means to peel ,of which we have qalfa which means "prepuce".So we can exclude it as a possibility, I think.


I just proposed qalafa because in MoGr we have the profession of *«καλαφάτης»* [kalaˈfatis] (masc.) --> _caulker_ < It. calafato < Ar. قَلَفَ qalafa


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## Treaty

I suspect it's related to Arabic root _k-l-f_ which produces a number of words related to 'ordering', 'ordeal', 'formality', 'duty', etc. In Persian, _kolfat_ (<Ar. _kulfa_) means 'housemaid'.


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## fdb

apmoy70 said:


> I just proposed qalafa because in MoGr we have the profession of *«καλαφάτης»* [kalaˈfatis] (masc.) --> _caulker_ < It. calafato < Ar. قَلَفَ qalafa



I think this is on the right track. Mod. Gk. καλαφατης, Italian calafato, Turkish kalfa, Arabic qallafa “to caulk a ship”, also Ar. dialect qalfa “foreman”, all belong together, but I am not sure which of these is the ultimate source. Note please that English “caulk” (also spelt “calk”) is from Latin calcare "to tread", and is thus not related to these.


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## djara

In the first Arabic dictionary, Kitab al 'ayn (8th century AD), it is jalfaTa جلفط (to caulk) and the profession jilfaT جلفاط (caulker). Ibn al Athir also cites a hadith attributed to Mohamed's disciple Umar where he says لا أحْمل المسْلمين على أعْوَادٍ نَجَرها النَّجَّارُ وجَلْفَظَها الجِلْفاظَ (I will not carry Muslims on wood fashioned by a carpenter and caulked by a caulker, he probably means ships). Ibn al Athir notes that the word is sometimes spelt with a ط and sometimes with a ظ.
Replacing the jeem with a qaf seems to be a later development.
According to cntl.fr the French verb calfater is from Italian and ultimately from Arabic _qalfata, ǧalfata _which, it says, is probably a borrowing from Latin _calefare _or_ calefectare_


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## sotos

Perhaps from the medieval Greek καρφίον (nail), v. καρφόω (to nail), from the ancient κάρφος (dry piece of wood). Related to carpenter?


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## fdb

djara said:


> In the first Arabic dictionary, Kitab al 'ayn (8th century AD), it is jalfaTa جلفط (to caulk) and the profession jilfaT جلفاط (caulker). Ibn al Athir also cites a hadith attributed to Mohamed's disciple Umar where he says لا أحْمل المسْلمين على أعْوَادٍ نَجَرها النَّجَّارُ وجَلْفَظَها الجِلْفاظَ (I will not carry Muslims on wood fashioned by a carpenter and caulked by a caulker, he probably means ships). Ibn al Athir notes that the word is sometimes spelt with a ط and sometimes with a ظ.
> Replacing the jeem with a qaf seems to be a later development.
> According to cntl.fr the French verb calfater is from Italian and ultimately from Arabic _qalfata, ǧalfata _which, it says, is probably a borrowing from Latin _calefare _or_ calefectare_



Very interesting. I need to think about it all some more. Can you confirm that qalfa “foreman” is used in Tunisian dialect?


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## djara

fdb said:


> Can you confirm that qalfa “foreman” is used in Tunisian dialect?


I think _qalfa_ is used in the medina of Tunis among artisans meaning an apprentice or a beginner. I need to check. We also have a family name QalfaaT apparently related to caulking.


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## djara

fdb said:


> Can you confirm that qalfa “foreman” is used in Tunisian dialect?


I confirm that the word is used in Tunisian Arabic by artisans. The actual meaning is a midway position between apprentice and master.


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## shawnee

djara said:


> I confirm that the word is used in Tunisian Arabic by artisans. The actual meaning is a midway position between apprentice and master.


I appreciate this information, because I found it to have the same ambivalent meaning (apprentice/ master) when it appears as a Turkish loan in the form of a nickname Κάλφας in the Ionian islands (of all places).


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## themadprogramer

djara said:


> I think _qalfa_ is used in the medina of Tunis among artisans meaning an apprentice or a beginner. I need to check. We also have a family name QalfaaT apparently related to caulking.



I can also confirm it's a stage between aprentice and master.

Furthermore I'd like to point out the TDK who have yet to be recognised for their missatributions traces it to "kh-l-f" rather than "q-l-f".

I as a speaker of Turkish with very little knowledge of arabic nevertheless feel it's related to q-l-f but it may have entered through another semitic langugage. (Ex. The verb uyumak which many would recognise as a "pure" turkish word has been traced back to aramaic, who knows what else may have come into the language like this).
As for my reason to prefer q-l-f, is that qalfa has a general connotation of guardian. (The aforementioned TDK even give an example to this by explaining how a nanny excorting children somewhere could also be considered a kalfa)

Also Khalfa (conjugated as so) means behind (but as a proposition) generally speaking it's a veyr rare sight to see a foreign preposition used as a noun without recieving any suffixes but it's not impossible. It would mean someone who watches ones back (kind of like arkadaş) however I find it highly unlikely that this wouldn't be in a form like khalfalık.


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## danielstan

In Romanian we have:

_calfa _< Turkish _kalfa _

which is a middle position between apprentice and master:
- in Middle Ages the apprentice was the one learning from the master without payment (only food and shelter)
- after the stage of learning, the apprentice became a 'calfa', a skilled worker obliged by contract to work few years for a small payment


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## arn00b

Ahmet Akkoç said:


> Ex. The verb uyumak which many would recognise as a "pure" turkish word has been traced back to aramaic, who knows what else may have come into the language like this).



Which Aramaic word does it come from?


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## themadprogramer

arn00b said:


> Which Aramaic word does it come from?



Okay my bad I just happened to confuse it with something else. Proto-Turkic *ū-dɨ, we haven't gone much further in tracing its origin.

Fine I won't let you walk empty handed  we have KUT which is most certainly from קודשא but etymologists refuse to associate themselves with it much. All I can say is that it was at least known during what we today know as "Tengrist Paganism" how it ended up here beats me.


Oh and I remembered one more word that we use from قلف we have kılıf which has two main usages:
1. As a sort of rag or fabric: _gözlük kılıfı, arabanın üstündeki kılıf_ et.
2. A more solid cover, the most recent example I ran into was _telefon kılıfı._

I hope that these can provide some more insight


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## Perseas

apmoy70 said:


> I just proposed qalafa because in MoGr we have the profession of *«καλαφάτης»* [kalaˈfatis] (masc.) --> _caulker_ < It. calafato < Ar. قَلَفَ qalafa


We also have «κάλφας» (=apprentice)  [kalfas] < Turk. kalfa < Arab.  خليفة
κάλφας - Βικιλεξικό


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## Torontal

Though Turkish dictionaries trace back the word _kalfa_ (in Ottoman Turkish written قلفه or more rarely قالفه) to Arabic خليفة (khalifa), (for example in the Kamus-ı Türki, I guess later dictionaries are just repeating it) it is certainly problematic, because Arabic kh becomes h in Turkish (so Ar. _khalifa_ regularly became _halife_ in Tur. and it is indeed used in that way). 
So it either comes from another root, or it must entered Turkish through the mediation of another language, i.e. Italian? Also, it is a relatively late loan, it seems to be rarely used in the 17th century, and became commonly used as a guild rank only in the 18th century for senior apprentices between _usta_ (master) and_ çırak/şagird_ (regular apprentice).


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## momai

Turkish kalfa persists only as a surname (قلفا or قلفة) in Syria and it is not found with the meaning "master-builder" in any classical Arabic dictionary which means two things it is either a Turkish usage/coinage of an Arabic word which is now by far obsolete in most of the Arab world or it is simply not Arabic. 
Arabic has a plenty of similar yet still different words for to caulk a ship (قلف قلفط جلفط جلفظ). This inconsistency, in my opinion, indicates that the word was borrowed multiple times either from different languages or by different groups of people.


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## Mahaodeh

I don’t know if this is helpful, but in Iraqi Arabic a khalfa خلفة is a foreman, mostly trade foreman (carpenter, mason, ironworks...etc) although some may use it to refer to a general foreman and is used in construction specifically. It is not used for artisans. For example, a carpenter that works in his shop making furniture or other detailed woodwork is not a khalfa, a mason that builds walls, usually with a couple of labourers to assist him is a khalfa.

I never researched the word so I don’t know whether it’s related to any of the terms mentioned above.


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## dmlthewowbagger

Torontal said:


> Though Turkish dictionaries trace back the word _kalfa_ (in Ottoman Turkish written قلفه or more rarely قالفه) to Arabic خليفة (khalifa), (for example in the Kamus-ı Türki, I guess later dictionaries are just repeating it) it is certainly problematic, because Arabic kh becomes h in Turkish (so Ar. _khalifa_ regularly became _halife_ in Tur. and it is indeed used in that way).
> So it either comes from another root, or it must entered Turkish through the mediation of another language, i.e. Italian? Also, it is a relatively late loan, it seems to be rarely used in the 17th century, and became commonly used as a guild rank only in the 18th century for senior apprentices between _usta_ (master) and_ çırak/şagird_ (regular apprentice).



Actually it is said that خليفة (khalifa) became both halife and kalfa in Turkish. So we derived two different words from the same word and we use them in different contexts, the former (mostly) within a religious context and the latter meaning the successor of the master.


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## sotos

In Greek means (becoming old-fashined) a young technician in jobs like building. It is also used as surname. There is a diminutive, "kalfoudi", meaning an even younger and inferior technician.


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