Uwe Bläsıng

Keywords: Loda, haycock, bunch, Anatolian dialects, old Anatolian languages

Abstract

This paper deals with the etymology and distribution of the term "loda "'haycock'. Besides its various forms attested in Anatolian and Thracian Turkish, the word appears in Azeri, Kurdish, Zazaki, Armenian (only in dialects), Neo-Aramaic (Mardin dialect), Arabic (Anatolian Arabic-Siirt) and Bulgarian (in dialects, very rare). It is quite interesting, that the range of the word is basically limited to Anatolia with the exception of the Black Sea region. Although this fact supports the idea that the word "loda" possibly originates from one of the Old Anatolian languages, its first historical record, "lwḏ" dates back to the 10th century's North Mesopotamian Arabic. Due to the rapid change in modern agricultural techniques the term, attested in forms such as "loda, noda, coda" etc. can sink into oblivion at any moment