Type a word to view definition, etymology, and morphology. You can also switch to language search if you want all words borrowed from a source language.
This dictionary traces Western Armenian words back through many source languages. Below are all the language names and codes you'll encounter, with context about when Armenian borrowed from each.
The categories are organized by historical relationship rather than linguistic family. Iranian and Greek are both Indo-European, as is Armenian itself, but each represents a distinct stratum of borrowing with its own period, political context, and domain. Grouping them separately makes it easier to understand why a word entered Armenian, not just where it came from.
Click any suffix to browse words with that suffix, or see the explanation below if available.
Click any prefix to look it up in the dictionary.
This dictionary cites the following scholars and etymological works. Click any source to browse entries that reference them.
Language family tree showing Proto-Indo-European origins and loanwords from Persian, Arabic, Greek, Turkish, and other languages.
Ardemis is a Western Armenian etymological dictionary integrating twelve primary lexicographic and scholarly sources into a single searchable resource. It covers 58,669 headwords (over 854,000 searchable forms including inflections) spanning Classical Armenian (Grabar), Middle Armenian, and modern Western Armenian, with etymologies and morphological analysis.
Ardemis draws on the following primary sources, in descending order of entry count:
Each etymology is tagged with a confidence level reflecting its evidentiary basis:
If you use Ardemis in academic work, cite the dictionary and the underlying sources as appropriate:
Primary sources to cite as applicable:
Ardemis is the name of my grandmother, who was born in Istanbul in 1923. Her mother, Knar, was from Adapazarı, and her father was from Erzurum.
Upon moving to New York, Americans began to call her ‘Ardell.’ It stuck, and soon enough, according to all official US documentation, her name was Ardell.
In 2010, UNESCO classified Western Armenian as an endangered language. I’ve decided to name this project after her. Ardemis — an Armenian, given a name of Greek origin, and born in the Ottoman capital — represents for me the historic interactions at the heart of Western Armenian’s development. In naming the project after her, I hope to reassert her identity as Ardemis, as I hope to reassert the fascinating language of her people.
Historical Armenian cities, capitals, and landmarks with their etymological origins and historical periods.