On The Use of the Title “Ağa” Among the Turks

“Ağa” can be considered as one of the basis words that represents the historical process in the structure of Turkic culture. In a sense, it is one of the important key words to understand the heritage of the Turkic Steppe aristocracy. The word “Ağa” with its many using forms, it holds a characteristic, special and interesting place in Common Turkic vocabulary. The word “Ağa” has a wide scope of use ranging from that of a high level title, a term used among relatives to a simple call or a form of address. As well as the topic of article, with this study, the word “Ağa” which shows a usage variety will be seen with its examples that it is the reason of riches in vocabulary knowledge of the source of Turkish culture. It has an active usage in various areas that reach from Harem to military hierarchy, from political bureaucracy to family. In historical and modern Turkish language we see that the word “Ağa” is inside of usage areas which we mention above by undergoing changes meaning and task (agaş, agadaş, agaçe, agayın, agayınçıl, akani, ağavat…) with various affixions. The term “Ağa” and the job areas of its derivations, usage styles will be tried to search by following from text in the historical period. We see that this word of Mongolian origin that transfer from Turkish language to Albanian, Arabic, Urdu, Farsi has a wide usage area and also survive in these transferred languages by keeping its common meaning in Turkish. In this article, this quote from Turkish Word in Mongolian Turkish culture place and importance in history will be highlighted.

Keywords

Turkısh Culture, ağa, lanwords, borrowings, phonetics, phonology