While leafing through a Turkish-English dictionary, today I stumbled upon the word balkan in Turkish. It stands for “thickly wooded mountain range.” I was flabbergasted. For some strange reason, I have never heard about this “translation” of the peninsula’s name. Even though I grew up in the thickly wooded mountain range in question, I remain blissfully innocent of the fact. Apparently, the word is of Persian origin, but it still sticks to the peninsula via Turkish. The Turkish name for “the Balkans” is Balkanlar. Back to my astonishment, the origin of the name still remains a secret in the entire region. To the best of my knowledge, no-one knows about it. Too Turkish, I reckon. Too reminiscent of the not-so-distant past, that is.

Addendum (December 9, 2012)

Whenever I have a chance, I tell friends and acquaintances what I have learned about the Persian origin of our peninsula’s name, which was brought to us by the Turks. And everyone is flabbergasted. “Thickly wooded mountain range,” they repeat after me. Some of them repeated it several times under their breath. And everyone is surprised that the meaning of the name still remains a secret in the entire region. But most Croatians are not even aware that their country has anything to do with the Balkans, let alone that it is actually part of it. Some of them are insulted when they are told that this is the case. One way or another, they do not wish any connections with Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro, Macedonia, or Kosovo. They think of these republics and autonomous provinces of former Yugoslavia as belonging to another continent, no less.