Etymological Remarks on Tree Names in Khakas

Khakas is a rather archaic – particularly from the lexical point of view – Turkic language, spoken in South Siberia. It displays an intriguing mosaic of loanwords pointing to highly interesting language contacts occurring in the past. Khakas has a large num- ber of Mongolic loanwords and formerly had strong connections with several extinct Yeniseian languages such as Kott, Assan, Arin and Yugh. Nonetheless, from an etymo- logical point of view, the Khakas language contains many words of unknown origin. The paper presents new etymological remarks on the names of trees and demon- strates the uniqueness of the Khakas language, particularly in the context of other Turkic languages, through the presentation of plant names.