Chaghatay Term in French Discourse: Variants and Evolution
Abstract
This article examines the range of variants used for the term "Chaghatay" in French-language sources and within French Oriental studies and Central Asian studies from the fifteenth to the twenty-first century. Its primary objective is, on the one hand, to reconstruct the historical formation of Chaghatay as the name of a literary language in the narrow sense, and, on the other hand, to show how broader territorial and philological designations such as "turc", "langue turque", "turc oriental", "turc-ouïgour", "dialecte djaghataï", "turc chaghataï", "turc chaghatay", and "langue turque orientale (turki ou chaghatây)" coexisted and interacted within French discourse. Relying on French scholarly texts, manuscript catalogues, institutional descriptions, and modern digital platforms, the study reconstructs the stages of terminological evolution and demonstrates that French scholarly discourse did not rely on a single stable term but on a layered system shaped by time, transliteration practices, scholarly schools, and classificatory goals.