Name
The name is borrowed from the Classical Tibetan term legs-ldan. There, the letters s and l had already become silent, g before d could be realized as and a before n got palatalized. In Mongolian sources, the most frequent ways to write the name are Ligda/en and Linda/en, but the intermediate Lingda/en does appear as well. a and e are not differentiated in normal Mongolian writing in this position, but a is attested in a strict transcription from Tibetan letters in the chronicle Bolur Erdeni. However, for any Mongolian reader who doesn’t immediately perceive the name to be a loan, the letter g would (by means of consonant harmony and its interaction with vowel harmony) indicate that the word only contains front vowels. This must have been perceived in this fashion at the time of i-breaking as well, as this phonological process took place in back-vocalic words only and would have resulted in had it been /liɡdan/. Today, western scholars tend to cling to the written form of the Tibetan word and write Ligdan, while Mongolian scholars will usually write Ligden, both pointing to a possible alternative with n. In Chinese, the name is written as 林丹, the standard Pinyin transcription being Líndān.
Read more about this topic: Ligdan Khan
Famous quotes containing the word name:
“What is it? a learned man
Could give it a clumsy name.
Let him name it who can,
The beauty would be the same.”
—Alfred Tennyson (1809–1892)
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