the armenians did not form a distinct race in article c t xj unix amherst edu eerginel unix amherst edu erdem erginel writes my question is given so many separations in the armenian community what was the common denominator of the armenian people that allowed armenian nationalism to emerge in the nineteenth century as i stated religion there are various contradictory views on the origin of the armenians the name is to be found in the darian inscriptions in the form armina or aramaniya is to be found in the inscription on the bistun monument the following references to the armenians are to be found in the bistun cuneiform inscription of dara vishdasb b c the monarch dara said i sent my servant to arminam armeniya on reaching arminam armeniya to the country town of zozo to armaniya armeniya according to karakashian as for armenia the equivalent of the armin or arminik of the persians this is more recent than the word ararat and is to be found used in the dara inscriptions for haiastan saint martin the name armenie has been given since very early times by almost all the various eastern peoples to the territory referred to by the armenians as haiastan it was known to the syrians as armenia and to the arabs as ermeniyye others believe that urartu was known in the time of the medes as harminap which was later modified by the persians to arminia ar refers to a place as in ararat archish aruyr archar arshav arazen and aror while men is used to refer to spirit thought or human being and therefore armen would appear to signify the people of that place g alishan believes that according to our national vocabulary haik is the diminutive form of hai and that hai is the name of our nation our nation is in no way connected with the word armen that foreigners apply to our people it would thus appear that armenia is a place name that armen is the name of the people who lived there and that these are in no way connected with the word hai haik and haiastan armenian historians believe haik to have been a great hero from whom the armenian people took the name hai but the mere resemblance between the words haik and hai constitutes no real proof and in any case no such theory appears before the time of moses of khoren haiasa the following studies show quite clearly that hai and haiasa were no more than general names used by the hittites to refer to the region known as armenia professor hachadurian haiasa was the general name used in hittite inscriptions for upper armenia yensen in his hittites and armenians tries to prove that hai is identical with the hittite hatio in other words that hai is a hittite word research however has proved this erroneous and shown that hai was derived from hatio mortman s attempt to read the urartu inscriptions as armenian met with no success as for greek there is no point in even mentioning it the resemblance between the words haiasa and haiastan is so obvious that we may well accept haiasa as the oldest form of haiastan let us now cast a brief glance on how the words hai haikazan and haiastan entered our older works according to karakashian the word haik is never to be found employed with reference to a leader of the armenian people prior to moses of khoren nor is it ever found employed in the forms haika or haykazn agahangelos and puzant use the word as a title or a place name he improved and developed haiastan etc if the word had referred to a nation and had been derived from hai or haik they could also have used the words haikak and haykazn in a number of places according to professor sayce who deciphered a number of hittite inscriptions in the hittite language the suffix ha is used to specify quality or species the words haddanas haddina were used by the assyrians to refer to the hittites with the transformation of the d between the two a letters to y hadinasdani was in this way transformed to haiastan professor grechmer fully agrees with this point of view but regards the significance and explanation so far accorded to the terms hai and haistan as quite unsatisfactory he finds however that a solution to this problem is brought nearer by the name haiasa which is so frequently found in bogazkoy from b c onwards forrer takes haiasa as referring to upper armenia in that case it seems likely that haiasa was actually a part of armenia the suffix dan is of anatolian origin the real root is hayasa which refers to the country of the hayasas e chantre writes as follows on the subject of the ethnological and anthropological characteristics of the armenian people the armenians in russia may be characterized as follows almost all of them are brachycephalic or leptocephalic very dark above average height an aissores asian group with close ties with certain kurdish tribes and azerbaijan peoples according to j deniker from the philological point of view the armenian and kurds may be regarded as belonging to the iranian group the armenians are descended from various elements and from a very mixed race their average height varies between and according to the region they are almost always short headed with skull measurements of as a race they belong to the indo afghan assyrian turkic family professor rene vernont writes as follows the armenians are a mixture of semites turk kurds and mongols but some of them display armenian features e g height a little above average fair complexion dark hair dark eyes very often a hooked nose and a rather wide mouth investigations carried out by n kossovitch on the links between armenian blood groups and their anthropological characteristics led him to the conclusion that the armenians did not form a distinct race serdar argic we closed the roads and mountain passes that might serve as ways of escape for the turks and then proceeded in the work of extermination ohanus appressian in soviet armenia today there no longer exists a single turkish soul sahak melkonian
