Thought about whether to put this in Learning Chinese or Culture & History, but I suppose this is more about history.
Remember my thread about The /t/ → /ts/ → /s/ phenomenon across Sinitic languages?
I gave an example of 單, where all 3 pronunciations, Dan, San and Chan still exists in Mandarin. For years, I’ve been taught that legendary Hun tribal leaders’s title 單于 should be read as Shanyu or Chanyu.
I’m here to say it should be read as Danyu, or Tan-u in Taigi, instead. Because I think 單于 is a phonetic translation of the Altaic (Turkic, Tungusic), Mongolic word, Tengri, which means heaven, or divine.
The key lies with the pronunciation of 于. In classic dictionaries, 于 is described as 羽俱切 or 雲俱切, so it has a vowel component of /u/ or /i/. The consonant component of both 羽 or 雲 is 王, which all Old Chinese reconstruction points to /*ɢʷaŋ/, the /Gʷ/ later shifted to /hj/ in middle Chinese and got lost all together in Mandarin. So evidently 于 should sound close to gi or gu.
A few examples to support that can be found in Taigi (Taiwanese holo). The character 員 is said by classic dictionaries to sound like 王權切, or 于權切, it also sound like 圓. In Taigi, 員 can be read as guân. If you look to Japanese, one reading of 于 is ku.
So with that in mind, 單于 probably sounded more like Tan-gi or Tan-gu during the time the term was first translated, which is a close phonetic match for Tengri. Most Chinese sources said that the term 單于 meant “Great, Broad, Wide”, where 撐犁 (thinn-lê) would instead be the translation for Tengri. If that’s the case, 單于 would be a transcription for tenggis, which meant ocean, wide, broad.
I however think they had it mixed up. The term 孤塗單于 (Thinn-lê koo-thôo Tan-gî) would originally be Ogul Tengri (in Turkic form), which mean Son of Heaven.
Chinese people love to bring up the fact that Tang dynasty’s Tai-zong emperor was entitled 天可汗 (Heaven Qaghan) by the Göktürks, as if Tang Tai-zong was the only person to ever receive such a title (he wasn’t). 天可汗 would be Tengri Qaghan in Turk form.
Thoughts?