Antique Turkmen Rugs
As a group we now call them Turkmen Rugs. The old name in common usage was Turkoman Rugs but the trend today is to drop Turkoman rugs in favor of Turkmen rugs because Turkmen is the accepted English translation of the name of the people and their language. Earlier the rugs were called Bukhara or Afghan rugs.
When we wish to identify ethnicity political or geographic names are so fleeting as to be meaningless. Recently one national appraisal exam listed the correct answer for all Turkmen rugs as Russian. Obvious this is so maningtless as to be ludicrous. A number of years ago Dr. Jon Thompson was highly influential in the move to language names. It gives us a meaningful framework in which to understand the ruigs so following Thompson I use the language names for the rugs.
Therefore Turkmen rug because the weavers are Turkmen who speak one of the dialects of the Turkmen language. When in doubt we can categorize people by their "milk" language. If a woman's primary language is the Teke/Tekke dialect of Turkmen then we call her a Teke/Tekke Turkmen and if she weaves a rug then it is a Tekke Turkmen Rug. It would be more correct to say Teke Rugs but Tekke rugs is accepted in the rug dealer/collector community. Interestingly the rugs generally fall into groups that correspond to language. This has caused me to come to the conclusion that weaving is an unspoken language.
Turkmen as a language is a branch of the Ohguz language. Ohguz is made up of Turkmen, Northern Azeri and Southern Azeri. From Turkey to the Caucasus, Iran, and Central Asia a huge portion of the 'tribal" rugs are woven by weavers who are ethnically part of the Ohguz group.
Please see: Oguz versus Turkic/Southern a Linguistic Reassessment of the Turkish Languages .
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