This article is a shorter version of the original article by Yilmaz Algin published in 2018. The original article can be read on the website of Êzîdî Press.
One of the most discussed questions about Ezidis is their language. Many people say Ezidis speak “Kurdish.” However, many Ezidis themselves call their language Ezdiki, meaning “the language of the Ezidis.”
This idea is not new. In 1895, the anthropologist Ernest Chantre wrote that Ezidis called their language “zyman e ezda,” which means the language of the Ezidis. According to his research, Ezidis said that Kurds speak their language, not the other way around.
Today, the language spoken by most Ezidis is often called Kurmanji. Kurds usually describe Kurmanji as a dialect of Kurdish. But names of languages can be different depending on who is speaking and how people identify themselves.
In linguistics, the name of a language is called a glossonym. One language can have different names depending on the group that uses it. For example, Serbian, Croatian, and Bosnian are different names for very similar languages. The same happens with Hindi and Urdu.
Because of this, using the word Ezdiki is not wrong. It is simply a different name used by Ezidis for the language they speak.
For many Ezidis from the former Soviet Union, the word Ezdiki has been used for generations. Older Ezidis say they already used this name when they were children, long before modern political debates.
There is also historical evidence. In 1926, the Ezidi writer Arab Shamilov (Êrebê Şemo) wrote about the opening of schools in Armenia where children would study in the Ezidi language. This shows that the idea of an Ezidi language existed publicly many decades ago.
Over time, politics also influenced language names. During the Soviet period, the term Ezdiki disappeared from public use and was often replaced with Kurmanji or Kurdish. Later, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the term Ezdiki began to appear again, especially in Armenia where it became officially recognized as a minority language.
Historical sources clearly show that Ezidis have long referred to their language as Ezdiki; the language of the Ezidis.
