COLOR TERMS IN THE NAMES OF TURKISH TRADITIONAL GAMES: SEMANTIC AND ETHNOCULTURAL ANALYSIS

Abstract

The article is devoted to a comprehensive analysis of the semantics and ethnocultural content of color components in the names of Turkish national games. The purpose of the study is to conduct a semantic and ethnocultural analysis of color components in the names of Turkish national games, to identify their functions in the structure of the game, and to describe their linguacultural nature. To achieve this goal, the nominative, symbolic, and cognitive meanings of colors such as white, black, red, blue, yellow, green, variegated, and purple were analyzed. The primary linguistic data were drawn from ethnographic, folkloric, and linguistic works on traditional Turkish games, as well as linguistic corpora from scientific publications. Descriptive, semantic, and ethnolinguistic methods were systematically applied during the analysis. The results of the study demonstrated that color designations in the names of national games perform not only a nominative function but also serve as semantic markers that organize the game space and define the hierarchical roles of the participants. Structural-semantic models of game names containing color components, such as “color name + noun” and “color name + verb,” were classified, and their ethnocultural nature was substantiated with specific linguistic data. The article provides a deeper understanding of the shared symbolic thinking system and cultural codes of the Turkic peoples through linguistic units.

Keywords: Turkish traditional games, game names, semantics, ethnocultural content.