I think I might've found the native Laz term for the Laz Bichaq!

[Nihl]

Hi all, so while doing some very superficial google images research on our old friend the laz bichaq, I stumbled upon a DeviantArt post, of all things, that led me down a most interesting rabbit hole!

I suppose I should state that I've always found the claim of "laz bichaq" (or bichagi) being the proper name for this type of sword to be rather suspicious. This is primarily due to the fact that "bichaq" is just a blatant loan word from Turkish, meanwhile Georgian, a language that Laz is actually related to, uses terms like "khmali" and "khanjali" for their weapons, which, one will note, bear no resemblance to the term "bichaq". This is not intended to discredit or disregard the work that I know a number of old forum members here have put in to finding this term, but rather to point out what I see as a clear contradiction. As frivolous as some might find it to be, as far as the "name game" is concerned I've always been a staunch supporter of the notion of native terms above all others. "Laz sword" or "karadeniz yataghan", in my mind, will never be as accurate as any native terms, even if those terms ultimately translate to the aforementioned ones.

Anyways, back to this deviant art post, it is simply a picture of what we have called a laz bichaq, but posted by someone who appears to be ethnically laz, and has added the following description:

This is a very old sword used by laz people or also called colchians who live in turkeys north eastern part. the lazians are a caucasian group whos indigenous to this region for about 4000 years. this sword you can see here is called "lazuri didi xami" meaning: big lazic knife since theres no word in lazic langauge for sword. it is a very old sword which has survived to this day. Actually I dont know when exactly this was used in terms of history, the only thing I know is it that my ancestors kicked much asses with this sword.

It is part of the lazic culture.

Of course, what is most interesting here is the line "this sword you can see here is called "lazuri didi xami" meaning: big lazic knife since theres no word in lazic langauge for sword."

Now, unless we are all to be overly skeptical here and claim that this person is *not* laz and in fact has just typed up gibberish, I think at a surface level there is no reason to believe that what they write is not true. Still though, as I figure there might be some skeptics that read this, I have done my best to substantiate their claims by defining the following laz words; Lazuri Didi Xami, which may very well be the native laz term for what we call "laz bichaq".

"Lazuri" should really go without saying. The wikipedia article for the laz language itself gives the term "lazuri nena" as translating to "laz language", so clearly "Lazuri" is relating to its origin within the laz themselves.

"Didi" is said to mean big or large. Given that there aren't that many Laz -> English dictionaries out there online, this word was at first hard to verify, but I found this page of a whole 500 laz proverbs (with english translations) that support pretty clearly the idea that didi means something to the affect of big or large. Here's one proverb that uses "didi" twice:

Didi tis didi ǯkuni aqven.

A big head would have a big headache.

"Xami" is clearly the star of our "show" here. Said to mean knife or edged implement in laz, with their being no further, specific word for a sword. Is this claim true? After some further looking, with still no luck at finding a Laz-to-English online dictionary, I stumbled across this linguistic website that not only corroborates the definition of xami as knife, but also provides information about its sort of "evolution" and relation to other Kartvelian languages. While I've included a picture of this below, to type it out it is as follows: Allegedly, the word originated as "qem-al" in proto-kartvelian, which over time turned into qmal-i and eventually xmali (khmali - the pronunciation is the same) in modern georgian. Meanwhile, "qem-al" turned into xemu in Mingrelian, and then eventually xemi in Laz. Additionally, the 500 proverb-providing site from earlier has a few proverbs relating to knives, one such example being as follows:

Mekiruşi xami, skani nenas ren.

The knife that cuts is your tongue.

So, in conclusion, is that it? Is the native Laz term for what we call a Laz Bichaq actually Lazuri Didi Xami? I think it's quite likely. Of course, it's entirely possible all of my sources are wrong somehow. Those proverbs I source could just happen to have "didi" and "xami" in them, with different words entirely meaning big and knife respectively; the linguistic website I found could be incomplete or flat out wrong, and there may be an actual laz term for sword that I just simply didn't find. Finally, DeviantArt user "SkudasLazepe2012" could simply be a fraud, not ethnically laz, and just making things up. I, however, very much do not believe any of the aforementioned to be true, and instead I think it's quite likely that the Laz Bichaq should, in fact, properly be called the Lazuri Didi Xami. Or maybe just Laz Didi Xami if you don't have much time .

[Jim McDougall]

Fasten your seatbelts!
Meanwhile, VERY nice work Nihl.

[Ren Ren]

This is an excellent work and it certainly deserves attention and should be taken with all possible seriousness.

[Jim McDougall]

Originally Posted by Ren Ren

This is an excellent work and it certainly deserves attention and should be taken with all possible seriousness.

No levity intended toward this work, which as I noted is in my opinion, brilliant, but more toward previous efforts at discussion on this topic.

[Ren Ren]

Originally Posted by Jim McDougall

No levity intended toward this work, which as I noted is in my opinion, brilliant, but more toward previous efforts at discussion on this topic.

In no way do I consider your words to be frivolous. My phrase is addressed to those who will read Nihl's post.

[Ian]

Nihl:

Thank you for your careful work in defining what seems to be the local descriptor for the (so-called) laz bicaq.

As others have noted, your findings deserve careful consideration. The main discussants of this topic have taken a short holiday from the Forum, so it may be a while before they weigh back in. Please feel free to expand on your ideas in their absence.

Do we have any native-speakers of the Georgian/Laz language who might assist Nihl in his efforts?

[Jim McDougall]

Originally Posted by Ren Ren

In no way do I consider your words to be frivolous. My phrase is addressed to those who will read Nihl's post.

Understood, and thank you for the note. My concerns were of course also toward the troublesome thread of several weeks ago.

[Nihl]

Thank you all for the positive responses!

In regards to Ian's comment: I suppose it is true that without our most vocal members here things will probably be relatively quiet. In hindsight, there really isn't that much to add on to this here other than to perhaps have a discussion about whether or not "the community" should adopt this term.
-My take, for the record, would be that the term should at least be recognized, given that the Laz are the most well known users of these swords. I also think "xami" is a cooler word for knife than "bichaq", but that's just personal preference

Other than that, I have to admit that these Didi Xami are rather out of my area of expertise. I quite like them as aesthetically beautiful - and theoretically quite deadly - swords (my first antique actually was a laz sword), however aside from that I know very little about the intricacies of Caucasian and Caucasia-adjacent cultures. As such, I don't mean to try and forfit my role in this discovery here, but merely to express that I don't have an entire thesis-worth of information to provide beyond what I initially posted.

Perhaps sometime in the future, when I next find myself haphazardly googling things about laz culture, I'll use my young person internet skills to try and find some laz forum or social media group that I can inquire further about these swords on. Or simply ask them what they would call a sword lol.

[Jim McDougall]

Nihl,
I truly applaud your research work and well presented aspects of the particulars of these terms as applied to these weapons. Also for sharing this here in what has been a rather formidable and often hostile theater on this topic.

In the many years I have studied arms and armor, especially in the ethnographic areas, the 'name game' , as we have come to call it, has often been one of the most confounding aspects of study. It becomes a problem of transliteration, semantics, dialects, vernacular and colloquial use etc. which presents issue when particular forms are being discussed out of context or in early accounts or narratives when researchers are relying on those resources.

For example, it is well known by historians that Magellan was killed by tribesmen in the Philippines in 1521, by many accounts with a 'kampilan'. We know what this sword type looks like now, and how they are believed to have looked over the past 150 or more years, but what exactly did a 'kampilan' look like in those times and in the Philippines rather than other regions of use?

I have been told in many cases, ethnic terms for the same weapon type can vary either subtly or sometimes dramatically, almost from one village to another in a sense, in tribal regions of Indonesia and SE Asia.

In the case of the transverse gripped daggers in India we know as the 'katar', these are termed locally jamadhar, but through an apparent oversight, Egerton (1885) transposed the term from the more conventional form dagger named katar. Subsequent writers followed suit and used the katar term without question, and as those references became venerable resources, the term for these changed to what we now term, a collectors term.

The collectors terms used for it seems, almost countless types of arms as described by writers since the 19th century, have been classified by names which are often incomprehensible to locals in the areas they originate.
Another example, in the Sudan and Ethiopia, the broadswords we know as 'kaskara' are simply deemed sa'if, nobody there has any idea what the term kaskara means! One tribesman I spoke with from Sudan, when shown a photo of a kaskara, said he called it a 'cross'.

So the point is, it is not a matter of 'right or wrong' as far as what term is used to describe a weapon, except for the sake of convenience semantically in discussion or published work. However, it is essential to note the varied cases of alternative terms in a cross reference sense, so that further researchers using these references can move accordingly forward.

Returning to my original comments Nihl, nicely researched, well presented and with staunch resolve. As someone always trying to learn on the history of these arms, I sincerely thank you, as do I am sure others reading here in the same manner.

[CharlesS]

Very interesting! Nice research!