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Concept
Gagauz people
Summary
The Gagauz (Gagauzlar) are a Turkic ethnic group native to southern Moldova (Gagauzia, Taraclia District, Basarabeasca District) and southwestern Ukraine (Budjak). Gagauz are mostly Eastern Orthodox Christians. The term Gagauz is also often used as a collective naming of Turkic people living in the Balkans, speaking the Gagauz language, a language separated from Balkan Gagauz Turkish.
Gagauz is the most widely accepted singular and plural form of the name, and some references use Gagauzy (from Ukrainian) or Gagauzi. Other variations including Gagauzes and Gagauzians appear rarely.
Before the Russian Revolution they were commonly referred to as "Turkic speaking Bulgars". Gagauz agricultural settlers in Uzbekistan called themselves "Eski Bulgars" (meaning Old Bulgars) in the 1930s.
According to Astrid Menz:
Older ethnographic works such as Pees (1894) and Jireček (1891)—both covering the Gagauz in Bulgaria—mention that only their neighbors used the ethnonym Gagauz, partly as an insult. The Gagauz themselves did not use this self-designation; indeed, they considered it offensive. Both Pees and Jireček mention that the Gagauz in Bulgaria tended to register either as Greek because of their religion (clearly an outcome of the Ottoman millet-system) or as Bulgarian because of the newly emerging concept of nationalism. According to Pees informants from Moldova, the Gagauz there called themselves Hristiyan-Bulgar (Christian Bulgar), and Gagauz was used only as a nickname (Pees 1894, p. 90). The etymology of the ethnonym Gagauz is as unclear as their history. As noted above, they are not mentioned—at least not under that name—in any historical sources before their immigration into Bessarabia. Therefore, we have no older versions of this ethnonym. This, combined with the report that the Gagauz felt offended when called by this name, makes the etymology somewhat dubious.
Outside Moldova, a minority of Gagauz people live in the Ukrainian regions of Odesa and Zaporizhzhia.
Official source
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