Hittite

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A historical language from Anatolia that is part of the Indo-European family and is linked to the civilization in the region
2. This refers to an ancient tongue spoken by a people who inhabited parts of modern Turkey, associated with a notable society
3. A language once used in Anatolia, belonging to the Indo-European group ; a person from an ancient civilization in what is now Turkey

Etymology: The name "Hittite" reaches English through the Bible. Biblical Hebrew "ḥittî" described the Hittites of the Old Testament, a people the Hebrews knew from the Levant, and English translators inherited that label. The people who built the great Bronze Age kingdom in central Anatolia, however, were not the same group, and they never called themselves by that name. Their own word for their language was "nešili," and they referred to themselves as people from the city of Nesha, which is why scholars sometimes use the rarer alternatives "Nesite" or "Neshite." The modern name is a mistake of identification. The language of the Anatolian kingdom was called "ḫattili" by its speakers, a term tied to "Hatti," the older name for the region, and the early twentieth-century scholars who first studied the texts applied the Biblical label to it. When researchers later realized that a different, non-Indo-European people, the Hattians, had lived in the same region and spoken a language also called "Hattic," the confusion became clear, but the older name had already stuck.