User:Kentronhayastan/Names of Armenia

Armenia/Armenians
Armenia and Armenians are the most common names used internationally to refer to the country Armenia and the Armenian people. Armenians themselves do not use it while speaking Armenian, making it an exonym. Historically, however, Armenians have used it in some contexts to refer to their kingdom within the Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia during the Middle Ages.

Etymology
Multiple theories and speculations exist about the origin of the name Armenia, but no consensus has been reached by historians and linguists. Armenologist Nicholas Adontz has rejected some of the speculations in his 1946 book. 

The earliest unambiguous and universally accepted attestation of the name dates to the 6th century BC, from the trilingual Behistun Inscription, where the names Armina (in Old Persian), Harminuya (in Elamite), and Urashtu (in Babylonian) and their equivalent demonyms are used in reference to Armenia and people from Armenia. In Greek, Αρμένιοι "Armenians" is attested from about the same time, perhaps the earliest reference being a fragment attributed to Hecataeus of Miletus (476 BC).

From Indo-European *ar-
Some authors have connected Armenia to the Indo-European root *ar- meaning "to assemble".

From Armani and/or Armânum
Early 20th century Armenologists have suggested that Old Persian 𐎠𐎼𐎷𐎡𐎴 a-r-mi-i-n(a) and the Greek Armenoi are continuations of an Assyrian toponym Armânum or Armanî. There are certain Bronze Age records identified with the toponym in both Mesopotamian and Egyptian sources. The earliest is from an inscription which mentions Armânumtogether with Ibla as territories conquered by Naram-Sin of Akkad in c. 2250 BC identified with an Akkadian colony in the Diarbekr region. Many historians, such as Wayne Horowitz, identify Armanî which was conquered by Naram-Sin of Akkad, with the Syrian city of Aleppo.

Armenia has also been claimed as a variant of Urmani (or Urmenu), attested epigraphically in an inscription of Menuas of Urartu.

From Har-Minni
Alternatively, Armenia is interpreted by some as ḪARMinni, that is, "the mountainous region of the Minni". Minni(מנּי) is also a Biblical name of the region, appearing in the Bible alongside Ararat and Ashchenaz, probably the same as the Minnai of Assyrian inscriptions, corresponding to the Mannai. The Elamite name for Armenia was inscribed as har-mi-nu-ya.

From Erimena
The name Erimena appears in Urartian inscriptions as the father of king Rusa III, which can be interpreted to mean "Rusa, son of the Armenian".

Armen tribe hypothesis
There have been further speculations as to the existence of a Bronze Age tribe of the Armens (Armans, Armani; Armenian: Արմեններ Armenner, Առամեններ Aṙamenner), either identical to or forming a subset of the Hayasa-Azzi. In this case, Armenia would be an ethnonym rather than a toponym. Attestations of such a tribe have never been found.

From Aram and/or Arame
Armenian tradition has an eponymous ancestor, Aram, a lineal descendant of Hayk (Հայկ), son of Harma and father of Ara the Beautiful (according to classical Armenian historian Moses of Chorene). A much older Aram, the son of Shem, is also mentioned from the Book of Genesis, Historian Flavius Josephus, and the Dead Sea Scrolls, as being the sovereign over "all the land of Mesopotamia between the Tigris and the Euphrates to the north of the Chaldees to the border of the mountains of Asshur and the land of 'Arara." Aram is sometimes equated with Arame of Urartu, the earliest known king of Urartu. The endonym Hayk’ (from Classical Armenian) in the same tradition is traced to Hayk himself.

The names Armen and Arman, feminine  Arminé, are common given names by Armenians. Armin is also a Persian given name.

Hayastan/Hayk/Hayer
Armenian people use names derived from the stem hay- as their endonym. Hay (singular) and Hayer (plural) is used to refer to the Armenian people. Hayastan (Hay + -a- + -stan) is used to refer to their country, while Hayk was used historically and is still used today romantically.

From Hatti
According to Diakonoff, the ethnonym may derive from the unattested Proto-Armenian name *hatiyos or *hatyos → *hayo → hay, related to Urartian 𒆳𒄩𒀀𒋼 (KURḫa-a-te, "the land of Hittites"), from Hittite 𒄩𒋾 (ḫa-ti /Ḫatti/). In the Armenian language, the Proto-Indo-European intervocalic *-t- drops and yields /y/. Compare *ph₂tḗr → *hatir → *hayir → hayr ("father"). Other examples include *h₂eh₁ter- → *ātr- → *ayr → ayrem ("burn"), *bʰréh₂tēr → ełbayr ("brother").

The name Ḫāte was given by Urartians to all lands west of Euphrates, including the territory around Malatya (a region assumed to be occupied by speakers of Proto-Armenians). Diakonoff theorizes that when the Urartians were assimilated among the Proto-Armenians, they took over their Indo-European language and called themselves by the same name of the "Hittites".

From Hayasa
Others suggest that the etymology of the hay- stem derives from the name of a realm in proximity of the Armenian Highlands called Ḫayaša.

The presumption is that the name Hayk' would derive from Hayasa, but Diakonoff considers this "not provable and in its very essence not probable." According to Kapantsjan, the suffix -sa in Hayasa as the ancient Luwian toponymical suffix -ssas, widely in use throughout all of Anatolia, but this suffix is not present in the Armenian language. It is also argued that the initial ḫ in Ḫayaša yielding /h/ in Armenian is improbable.

From Haik
According to Armenian historiographic tradition, the endonym Hayk’ (Հայք) comes from the legendary eponymous ancestor of the Armenian nation, Hayk (Հայկ).

Somkheti/Somekhi
This form, and forms derived from it, is used by Georgians and some peoples of the Caucasus.

Etymology
According to Diakonoff, the name is derived by metathesis from the name of the country called Suḫmu in Akkadian and Zuhma in Hittite, located in the upper Euphrates valley, close to South-Caucasian tribes, and is presumed to have been inhabited by Proto-Armenians.

Ararat/Urartu
Used historically during the Iron Age to refer to the region that would become known as Armenia, in the forms of Urartu in the Assyrian dialect of Akkadian and Urashtu in the Babylonian dialect, as well as Ararat in Biblical Hebrew. The name Ararat was changed to Armenia in the Bible as early as the 1st century AD in historiographical works and very early Latin translations. This name was attested as Uruatri as early as the 13th century BC by Assyrian king Shalmaneser I, and it was used interchangeably with Armenia until the last known attestation from the 5th century BC by Xerxes in his XV Inscriptions. Sometime during the early periods of Classical Antiquity, the use of Urartu declined and was fully replaced with Armenia. The name continued to be used as a historical province known as Ayrarat in Ancient Armenia, as an alternative name for the First Republic of Armenia, and for a short-lived Kurdish state known as the Republic of Ararat. Today, Ararat is used as one of the names of the twin-peaked mountain in the Armenian Highlands, in modern-day Turkey, and for a province by the same name in the Republic of Armenia. It’s also a common given name used by Armenians.