Etymological explanations and folk etymology at Evliya Çelebi's Seyahatname (Volume V-VI)

Evliya Çelebi provides information about the origins of the names of places, buildings, people and various concepts while narrating his travels to the lands in the Ottoman geography and neighboring countries in his Seyahatname. The aim of this thesis is to compile information on the origin of names in volumes V and VI of Seyahatname, which is a rich work in terms of both its formal features and content, to classify folk etymologies, to compare the names examined with the data obtained from scientific sources and to determine the methods followed by Evliya Çelebi. The thesis is based on the Arabic text and Kahraman, Dağlı and Sezgin's (2001) "Transcription and Index of Topkapı Palace Library Baghdad Manuscript No. 307" and Kahraman and Dağlı's (2002) "Transcription and Index of Topkapı Palace Library Revan Manuscript No. 1457". The compiled data are classified into three groups according to the types of names and the way they are justified in the origin explanations for these names. In the "Origin Explanations" section, place, structure, person, geographical shape, tribe and expedition names are analyzed and classified separately on the basis of the source on which the naming is based. In the second section, "Folk Etymologies", the data are analyzed based on Aksan's (1964) classification. In the last section, "Multiple Explanations", the names for which Evliya Çelebi made more than one explanation are analyzed. As a result of the data obtained, it was revealed that in the explanations of the origins of names in Seyahatname, examples of etymology based on the transfer of real information and examples of folk etymology reflecting Evliya Çelebi's own imagination and unique style were seen together.