Talk:Sulu

RFV discussion: September–October 2018

The following discussion has been moved from Wiktionary:Requests for verification (permalink).

This discussion is no longer live and is left here as an archive. Please do not modify this conversation, but feel free to discuss its conclusions.

---

Sulu

These people are the Tausugs. Carl Francis (talk) 23:40, 17 September 2018 (UTC)

From Webster 1913. Could it just be out of date (in which case mark as obsolete, but keep)? Equinox ◑ 00:05, 18 September 2018 (UTC)

Sources where the term refers to an ethnic group of people: [1]; [2]; [3]. Hard to judge whether these uses are supposed to mean, specifically, members of “the most prominent of the Moro tribes”, or, generically, any indigenous people from the Sulu Archipelago.  --Lambiam 12:53, 18 September 2018 (UTC)

RFV-resolved Definition tweaked slightly. Kiwima (talk) 22:37, 17 October 2018 (UTC)

Etymology?

@Mlgc1998 Source for "Sulug" or "Suluk"? In Tausug, the native language in Sulu, the word for "Sulu" is "Sūg", so that would be a more proper form, I think. Just wondering whether this is sourced. --Mar vin kaiser (talk) 08:35, 4 March 2022 (UTC)

@Mar vin kaiser I tried to remember again the background of these edits I did here before. I think the English entry for this page initially said that the term was from Malay, then around 2020 when I saw this entry, a Malay-speaking user named Jeluang Terluang added that the Malay term was "Suluk", then when I was making the page for 蘇祿 and later, also when adding the Tagalog entry in Sulu, I remembered from somewhere I read before, probably in some wikipedia articles (maybe at Tausug language#Nomenclature or some other page talking about Sulu or the sultanate there before) or from talks with other people who talked about the etymology of Sulu in chat before, mentioning about "Sulug". Then, when I compared what was said here about how it supposedly came from Malay, I thought it was far more likely to have been a local term than merely from Malay, that doesn't historically seem like it had firm original roots to the place, at least compared to the local Moro groups there, so I wondered if these two "Suluk" and "Sulug" were sort of variant spellings of each other, but I wasn't sure who came first and which was really Malay or Tausug and as to who loaned which, but I'd thought as much it would've been from the local Tausug language more than Malay. From that time before, these etymons also frequently remind me of the similar-sounding Tagalog sulok, tho I remember that usually Visayan friends I talked to online were usually more surprised and felt more familiar of Tausug terms, especially since the language does seem to be part of the Visayan branch. I just googled where the idea of this "Sulug" or "Suluk" was coming from and some sites come up. LayagSug.com has a sort of poem explaining that "Sūg" is supposed to be a contraction of older "Sulug", which means "currents of the sea", referring to the Sulu Sea before. Then, he says that at around 1375, an Arab from Mecca, Sayed Ali, called the place, "Suluk", which he supposedly heard from the natives the word "Sulug". Then, Ibn Majid in 1462 wrote it as "Suluk" as well, but didn’t claim the name comes from him. And so now, the Malays call the place as "Suluk", which the "g" turning into "k" might be a Malay phonology thing (or maybe it's a Hokkien thing lol), then cuz since they also use final Ks to denote glottal stops, they at some point misconstrued it as such and later, used an apostrophe to denote the glottal stop instead, which soon after, people didn't notice anymore and this resulted in just "Sulu". Malaysia's government Malay dictionary at PRPM does write it as "suluk" but pronounces it as "[su.lu/]". The website of The History of Sulu also sort of corroborates what he says about how the "complete form" of Sulu is "Sulug", which is supposedly still rendered in Magindanao, but the Tausug now pronounce and write it "Sūg" and then, there's also mention of the etymology of Jolo, which is apparently the Spanish representation of "Sulu"/"Sooloo", which the Spaniards apparently used to spell it as "Xolo". I guess this is consistent with Spanish orthography during Early Modern to Modern Spanish and I guess this etymology is contrary to the folk etymology they wrote in Jolo, Sulu#Etymology that it was from Hokkien lol. The site does also talk about the history of chinese merchants and some statistics about them there. The site looks like it gets all its content from this book: "The History of Sulu" by Dr. Najeeb M. Saleeby (1908) Mlgc1998 (talk) 15:18, 4 March 2022 (UTC)

@Mar vin kaiser Looks like SEAlang Library for Maguindanaoan didn't give much result for "Sulug", but searching "sulu" under the Maranao dictionary of SEAlang Library gives some results saying these:

"solog" [McKaughan96:16263]

1 N. freeman; commoner (people from Sulu)

"Solog" [Lobel09:927]

1 Sulu, Jolo Mlgc1998 (talk) 15:45, 4 March 2022 (UTC)