well, i've just signed in, and hope i'll find persons that know better.
i'm curious about turkish language, and unfortunately don't know much /if not "a bit"/. i'm bulgarian, and fortunately i know english quite well, as well as latin, oldgreek and other languages. yet, i can't find a reasonable explanation of my family name, which comes out of a turkish origin. who's gotten it, when and in what historical circumstances i don't know. in bulgarian it sounds like "subashki" - that "-ki" is Bulgarian suffix to a turkish word that should write as 'subash" or "subasi" and is a turkish rank within an ottoman system. the "su" part means also "water" and that's all i know. I'll be glad if someone can help me learn more about it. then, of many other things. my first name is andrey.

Greetings,
welcome to the turkishclass forum.

The term you are referring is `Subaşı` (riverhead). It is no more used but was a very important rank in the military refferring to the assistant of chief commandant.

A lond definition can be found here but it is in turkish:
http://www.dallog.com/kurumlar/subasi.htm

It looks like Subaşı was the commandant who was responsible of the security of a place bigger than a village and smaller than a city.

well, thanks a lot. i'll try to read what you've sent.
i don't know, but you really can't imagine how moved i am. mainly, because i've been ridiculed all my life for that family name, which to most of my classmates sounded a bit russian.
any way, thanks a lot.
you know, or may be do not, but one of the worst things that ever had been done in bulgaria was the changing of the family names with bulgarian. i'm not of a turkish background, at least from the beginning of 20th century. it is a crime to try to take people their names.
i'll try to learn whatever i can translate alone.
otherwise, i have studied english for quite a long, as well as latin and oldgreek. but... that turkish ending of my personality... still provokes me a lot.

thank you once again.

You are welcome andrey. I`m not an expert on this issue but as far as I know the ottoman empire archives for a few years are now made public to reseachers. If you know names or places where you relevants have lived it might be worth doing a reseach on it. I always have found this kind journeys to the unknown very fascinating.

Unfortunately many original texts related to the ottoman days use the ottoman language terms. The ottoman languge was a mixture of three different languages, turkish, arabic and farsian(not sure how to write correctly this one). So it is not so clear even for us turks.

farsi. i.e. persian.

it appears eastern civilizations were greater than i ever thought. i feel rather "provincial" in my knowledge. any way, the ottomans created a great empire - a bit like "pumkin" - i mean that grew like a "pumkin".

my relatives lived in the city - prounounced for "casaba" by the turn of 18th cent. of Troyan, under the "mudur" of Lovetch. That is in the middle of Balkan, i.e. Stara Planina, where things and sites still bear their turkish names. if it was up to me - i wouldn't touch 'em. but... they were rapidly renamed, especially during the socialist "era". but that's a long story... and too much "provincial"...