In the preparing Etymological dictionary of Yeniseian by Edward Vajda and Heinrich Werner the Arin name of metal teminkur ‘ore’ is marked as the word with “unclear structure” (Vajda, Werner [forthcoming]). The paper offers a new etymology of the Arin word.

An interesting fact is that the word with the meaning ‘ore’ is present only in the Kott language in the form šur, and also meaning ‘blood’ (Werner 2002.2: 258). In return, the Kott word has to be connected with Common Yeniseian *sūˑƛ ‘blood’: cf. Ket sūˑl, Yugh sūr, Arin sur (Werner 2002.2: 219; Vajda, Werner [forthcoming]).

The second meaning of Kott ‘blood’ inspired me to connect it with the Turkic compound word *temirqan < temir ‘iron’ + qān ‘blood’. It is important to mention that of the Turkic languages, only Siberian Turkic had direct linguistic contacts with Yeniseian. It seems that two layers may be distinguished: Yenisey Turkic including the Khakas language with its dialects (Sagai, Koibal, Kachin, Kyzyl) and Shor, and Altay Turkic including Qumanda, Quu and Tuba kizhi dialects and Literary Altay language. Rare similarities may be observed with Sayan Turkic, Chulym, Yakut languages and Siberian Tatar dialect. Also Fu-yü data are important because of some similarities with Yenisey Turkic.

In my etymology there are different problems. The first one is the absence of this compound in the mentioned Turkic languages, the others are the phonetic and semantic changes. Below I will try explain my assumption.

The word “ore” in the Turkic languages

The absence of the compound word *temir qan ‘iron blood → ore’ in Turkic can be explained by the lack of an original Turkic word. There are two different forms for “ore” in Turkic. If the first form руда is a Russian loanword, the second ken is Persian.