Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 1.djvu/19

 io'"s.i.jAx.2,i904.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

11

The countess's younger sister, Marie Elisabeth, was born 27 December, 1667, and, having entered into religion, became the Abbess of Ste. Marie dePoussaye in Lorraine. She died before her parents in 1706, and, Walpole records that he was told by an old friend of hers, Madame de Mirepoix, the French Ambassadress, that she was ten times more vain of the blood of Hamilton than of an equal quantity of that of Grammont.* Lady Stafford seems to have been equally attached to the family of her mother.

W. F. PRIDEAUX.

"TATAR" OR "TARTAR" (9 th S. xii. 185, 376). I have read Dr. Koelle's article in vol. xiv. of the new series of the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, and come to the conclusion that he belongs to that class of Orientalists of whom Voltaire made such fun in the preface to his ' Charles XII.' or ' Pierre le Grand,' I now forget which.

The " perhaps greatest European authority on the group of Central Asiatic languages" begins his disquisition with the ex cathedra statement that every one knows that formerly all Europe was agreed in saying and writing Tartar, and it is only in modern times that would-be clever folks have begun to substi- tute the incorrect form Tatar.t "All Europe" must be taken in a somewhat restricted sense, like " the British nation " in the famous manifesto issued by the three tailors of Tooley Street, because it never included Russia, Poland, Hungary, Rumania, or Turkey. It must be assumed, therefore, that the learned Orientalist was not aware of this circumstance, or he would have made some attempt to explain why so many millions of Europeans, all of whom have been in close contact with the Tartars off and on for centuries, use the incorrect form. He gives some kind of explanation why the Tartars themselves, the Turks, Arabs, and Persians, do not use the right name ; but as a matter of fact he has not produced a tittle of evidence to show that the form Tartar was used by any one else than the Armenians, the Greek and Latin writers, and the Western nations of Europe. France and England are still orthodox in this respect, but the Germans are gradually going over to the opposite faction. Even O. Wolff, although "on the right track of the etymology of the word Tartar," has

^Letters of Lady M. W. Montagu,' ed. 1837, ii. 217-220 ; ' Letters of Horace VValpole,' Cunning-, ham's ed., ii. 262 ; Toynbee's ed., iii. 64.

t But Dr. Koelle himself quotes from the sixteenth century ' Thesaurus ' of Rob. Stephanus : " Tartari sive Tattari (rdprapoL), gens fera."

used the heterodox form in the title of his book, and wrote ' Geschichte der Mongolen oder Tataren ' (Breslau, 1872). Dr. Koelle himself confesses that his views on the etymological nature of the name Tartar have resulted " merely " (sic) from his exhaustive study of the Tartar roots, and therefore rest on purely philological data, whilst every historical consideration seems to be opposed to them. When he asked Tartars what they called themselves, their reply invariably was "Tatar" or perhaps "Tattar." On one occa- sion only, two men who seemed to be more intelligent than the rest promised the Berlin doctor that they would make inquiries, and came back with the, to him, welcome news that they had consulted some old men of their tribe, who thought that the form advo- cated by him was the right one.

With regard to the allegation that the Chinese are mainly responsible for the use of the inaccurate form, Dr, Koelle seriously maintains that in the name of the village Ibn Taltal, near Aleppo in Asia Minor, the second word, not being Arabic, must "evi- dently " be the Chinese pronunciation of Tartar ; but he does not explain how other geographical names like Tatar - Bazardjik, Tatar-Bunar, Tatar-Koi, Tatar-Mahalle, fec., have managed to escape the same fate.

Moreover, the doctor does not quote a single instance of the form Taltal from any genuine Chinese source. According to D'Her- belot, in the Chinese dictionaries Tata is the general term for all the Tu ( = dogs), or bar- barians, of the North. Dr. Koelle also quotes "Ta-che," "Ta-chin" (i.e., Ta people), "Tache Linya"=the popular name of a certain Tar- tar Academician, "Tatal au lieu de Tatar "; but the form Taltal is evidently not to be found in any old Chinese source.

Dr. Koelle's explanation for the presence of the final r in Tatar may be ingenious, but is not convincing. Many Tartars, he states, undertook to write their language with Chinese characters. Now, if they found their name written as Tatal (not Taltal, be it noted) by the Chinese, this was a precedent which they were tempted to imitate, first in writing, and perhaps soon also in speaking ; but as the Tartars did not share the inability to pronounce the letter r, they naturally said Tatar where the Chinese said Tatal. Thus the Tartars themselves fell into the habit of pronouncing their own name as Tatar, partly from writing it in Chinese characters, and still more from their daily intercourse with the Chinese.

This theory is evidently founded on an anecdote which I heard many years ago