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Concerning the Turkic etymology of the word Qazaq, there is no consensus among scholars. While the historians (Hrusevs'kyj 1909, 76; Stökl 1953, 31) and the etymologists of the Slavic languages (Berneker 1924, 496; Brückner 1957, 262; Vasmer and Trubacev 1967, 495; as well as Mel'nycuk 1985, 495-96) accept without any reservation-but also without proof-the Turkic etymology of this word, some leading Turkologists have their doubts. Räsänen (1969, 243), in his etymological dictionary of the Turkic languages, gives no etymology in his entry qazaq, and Doerfer (1967, 462-68) states flatly: "eine sichere Etymologie für das Wort [qazaq] existiert nicht." The same opinion was expressed by Menges (1979, 196, nos. 11, 12).
From the formal point of view the word qazaq can be easily explained. It is a deverbal noun in /-AK/ from the verb qaz-, as are käsäk 'piece' from käs- 'to cut', jatak 'bed' from jat- 'to lie down', qonaq 'palace; guest' from qon- 'to pass a night', and süräk 'runner' from sür- 'to run' (Zajaczkowski 1932, 61-63).
As we can see, the suffix /-AK/ forms nouns expressing the result of the action, instruments and the actor. The problem is that the verb qaz-, which is also attested in the older Turkic literary languages, has the meaning 'to dig, to dig out'. Also the noun qaz-aq theoretically must have had the meaning 'the digger' (Clauson 1972, 680). And in fact such meaning is attested to in 1395 (Sreznevskij 1893, cols. 1173-74; cf. Doerfer 1967, 468). It means that there existed some Turkic languages where the said meaning was the basic one. It appears especially in Eastern Europe. But I shall not dwell on it here since Larysa Pritsak dealt with it in a recent paper (2006).
But I would like to propose the following hypothesis concerning the word qazaq. The given meaning of the word qazaq entered the given Turkic language at the time when it commonly used that particular meaning. It became "existent" when the literary language of the time included it in its vocabulary.
Hence one Turkic linguistic group preserved the words qazaq and qaz- in the meaning 'the digger', 'to dig out', and this meaning of qaz- has been preserved in the majority of the old and new Turkic literary languages.
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