Hunara: Journal of Ancient Iranian Arts and History

An Etymological Study of Twenty Words Related to Crafts in the Hanashuri, Sarmaki, and Dohuki Dialects in Southern Iran

Document Type : Original Research

Authors

Sohrab Gholami
Jalal Rahimian
Farrokh Hajiyani
Katayun Namiranian

Shiraz University

https://doi.org/10.22034/hunara.2026.590528.1008
Abstract
Hanashur, Sarmak, and Dohuk are villages in the Tasuj Rural District, in Dashti County, Bushehr Province. The Hanashuri, Sarmaki, and Dohuki dialects are varieties of the standard Persian language in Bushehr Province, south of Iran. This study is an etymological analysis of twenty words related to crafts spoken in the dialects in question. To conduct this research, ten speakers over fifty years of age and two young, literate speakers were interviewed. Their speech was recorded phonetically, and a linguistic corpus was developed using field and descriptive-analytical methods and desk research. These methods, combined with IPA transcription, were employed to collect and analyse the data. This study offers the etymology of twenty endangered words. Evidence shows that these varieties are from the southwestern Iranian language family and are remnants of one of the ancient Persian languages; they are related to other modern Iranian languages and dialects across the ancient, middle, and new historical periods. The vocabularies of these dialects have historically undergone phonetic changes, phonological processes (especially shift and deletion), and morphological and semantic changes. Furthermore, these dialects are more similar to Middle Persian in terms of word similarity and roots, while in terms of the absence of ergative features in their grammar, they resemble Old Persian.

Keywords

Iranian Dialects
Etymology
Hanashur
Sarmak
Dohuk
Hunara: Journal of Ancient Iranian Arts and History
Volume 4, No. 1
July 2026
Pages 49-67

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