Anthroponyms of the Greater Liakhvi Valley Based on 18th-Century Georgian and Turkish Census Records

Abstract

Among the demographic documentary monuments of the valley, special attention should be paid to the census registers of the city of Tskhinvali and its surrounding villages (second half of the eighteenth century), published by the Meridiani publishing house in 2013. Another source of primary importance is the Great Defter of the Tbilisi Vilayet of 1728, prepared for publication by Academician Sergi Jikia and Professor Nodar Shengelia (published in 2009). Both census records document not only the settlements of other valleys but also those of the Greater Liakhvi Valley, together with the surnames and personal names of its inhabitants.
In the first half of the eighteenth century, the political situation in the Kingdom of Kartli deteriorated as a result of Iranian and Ottoman aggression, ultimately leading to the Ottoman conquest of Kartli. Following their arrival in Kartli, the Ottomans introduced their taxation system and compiled registers in which the relevant data were recorded. One such document is the Great Defter of the Tbilisi Vilayet, which contains data from that period and remains of considerable importance not only from a political perspective. The present study examines materials from the Ottoman census records, focusing on the anthroponyms of the villages of Tskhinvali and Tamarasheni of the time, as well as the surnames and personal names documented in the Georgian census records that precede the Ottoman census materials by approximately fifty years.
In the Georgian census records, the structure of surnames is presented as a combination of a given name and a surname, while in the Turkish census records, it appears as a given name followed by the father’s name (patronymic). In his Description of Georgia (18th century), Vakhushti Bagrationi states that the inhabitants of Tskhinvali consisted of Georgians, Armenians, and Jews. In both census records these ethnic groups are reflected through anthroponyms. The Georgian census records additionally employs the distinctive term uria to designate Jewish inhabitants. According to the Georgian records, the residents of Tskhinvali were divided into several social categories.