Medz Yeghern, the Silenced Name: Language, Politics, and the Armenian Genocide

Authors

  • Vartan Matiossian Eastern Prelacy of the Armenian Apostolic Church

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.51442/ijags.0028

Keywords:

Medz Yeghern, genocide, Armenian Genocide, denial, semantics, crime, relation of cause and consequence

Abstract

This study overviews some of the issues surrounding the use, abuse, and misuse of Medz Yeghern, the most common proper name for the genocide of the Armenian, tracing the genealogy of the term yeghern and the evolution of its primary meaning from “evil” to “(heinous) crime,” “massacre,” and “genocide” over the past century and half. An erudite conflation of the Classical Armenian homophone words yeghern (եղեռն, “evil, crime”) and yegher (եղեր, “lamentation”) in the nineteenth century resulted in the secondary meaning “tragedy, calamity, catastrophe.” It also marked the conflation of cause and consequence in a single word, despite the use of yeghern accompanied by active verbs only, which indicates cause. The use of Medz Yeghern, therefore, point out to the central role of the perpetrator; the word yeghern has been used to translate “cultural genocide” and “genocide recognition” as synonym to tseghasbanutiun (ցեղասպանութիւն). This ambiguity was exploited during the first two decades of the current century, especially in Turkey and the United States. Interpretive denial adopted the name Medz Yeghern to avoid the use of “genocide,” choosing the meanings “Great Catastrophe” and “Great Calamity” and turning the cause into consequence. The article offers a reconsideration of the semantic and political issues behind the use of Medz Yeghern and suggests, on the basis of linguistic evidence, that the literal translation of the proper name, according to context and time of use, should be “Great (Heinous) Crime” or “Great Genocide.”

Author Biography

Vartan Matiossian, Eastern Prelacy of the Armenian Apostolic Church

Executive Director of the Eastern Prelacy of the Armenian Apostolic Church (New York). He holds a Ph.D. in History from the Institute of History of the National Academy of Sciences of Armenia. His interests include Armenian ancient and modern history, as well as literature and cultural issues. He has published extensively in Armenian, Spanish, and English, including many scholarly articles, reviews, commentaries, almost two dozen books in translation and several edited volumes, as well as five books of his own in Armenian, one in Spanish, and three in English: Armenian Language Matters (New York, 2019); The Politics of Naming the Armenian Genocide: Language, History, and “Medz Yeghern” (London, 2022), and A Woman of the World: Armen Ohanian, the “Dancer of Shamakha” (Fresno, 2022, with Artsvi Bakhchinyan).

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Published

2022-06-10

How to Cite

Matiossian, V. (2022). Medz Yeghern, the Silenced Name: Language, Politics, and the Armenian Genocide. International Journal of Armenian Genocide Studies, 7(1), 26–48. https://doi.org/10.51442/ijags.0028