Abstract:

Turkish medicine terms that are available in the medicine texts written in Old Anatolian Turkish but not used in Turkish any more have been examined in this study. These terms include organ and disease names. The reason why the terms which are not used in Turkish today but of which are available in Turkish dialects died in the process of time and the foreign terms that replace them have been investigated. The process of dying has not been carried out only in the form of replacing Turkish words with foreign ones. The process has also been carried out by the using of another Turkish word that is equivalent to the dying words and the words that are available in Turkish dialects. In this study studies on medical texts written in Old Anatolian Turkish were examined, and organ and disease names available in the texts were categorised according to the criterion that is whether they were used in Turkish or not, based on contemporary Turkish dictionary. After the process of categorisation, the terms that are not used in Turkish were examined. In the result of this study, it is explored that some of the medicine terms that were used in Old Anatolian Turkish are not used anymore and replaced by foreign word equivalents. Also, the results show that the terms not used in Turkish today but available in some Turkish dialects may die in the process of time. The reason lying behind this situation is starting to live only in Turkish dialects due to the fact that the terms are not used any more in Turkish and the decreasing number of people using these Turkish dialects as a result of urbanization.

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