SOKHUMI

The etymological battle over the name Sokhumi—a city at the heart of Kartvelian history—has sparked fervent debate, with defenders of its Georgianness often pointing to the word tskhumi, interpreted as “beech,” as their proof. Yet, the Between Two Iberias project offers a far more precise and wholly Kartvelian interpretation, one that roots the name in the fertile linguistic soil of Megrelia and unveils a meaning as vibrant as the region itself: Sokhumi as a “place of batun onions.”

Let us break down the name with etymological precision: Sokhumi can be segmented as Sokh(i) + Umi. The root sokhi (სოხი) appears in Otari Kajaia’s dictionary of the Megrelian language, where it is defined as ჭლაკვი (chlakhvi), a term that, in Georgian, translates to “Welsh onion” (Allium fistulosum), commonly known as batun onion. Thus, Sokhumi emerges as “batun place,” a toponym that evokes the agricultural richness of the region, where such onions likely thrived along the Black Sea coast. Kajaia further enriches this interpretation by equating sokhi with variant forms like sorhi and sokhvi, which he translates as უთავო ხახვი (“onion without a head”), broadening the meaning to encompass leeks or any non-bulbous onion. This semantic flexibility aligns with the diverse flora of the area, reinforcing the plausibility of Sokhumi as a “place of leeks” or similar onions.

The suffix -umi completes the name, and its function becomes clear through Kartvelian lexicography. In the Chanturia dictionary, we find entries such as burjgali, burjguli, and burjgumi (ბურჯღალი, ბურჯღული, ბურჯღუმი), which illustrate a pattern: -umi serves as an adjectival suffix, equivalent to the more familiar -ali and -uli, often used to denote association or characteristic in Kartvelian languages. Thus, Sokhumi is not merely a “place of batun” but a locale defined by its association with these onions, perhaps a historical marker of its agricultural identity.

This interpretation stands in stark contrast to the tskhumi (“beech”) hypothesis, offering a more grounded and linguistically consistent explanation rooted in Megrelian vocabulary and Kartvelian morphology. The Sokhumi etymology not only affirms the region’s Kartvelian heritage but also paints a vivid picture of its ancient landscape—fields of batun onions or leeks stretching toward the sea, a fitting namesake for a city that has long been a crossroads of Kartvelian culture. As we delve deeper into Kartvelian toponyms, let Sokhumi serve as a reminder of the layers of meaning embedded in every name, waiting to be uncovered through the lens of Kartvelian linguistics.