Editing Sogdia (section)

== Name ==
[[Oswald Szemerényi]] devotes a thorough discussion to the etymologies of ancient ethnic words for the [[Scythians]] in his work ''Four Old Iranian Ethnic Names: Scythian – Skudra – Sogdian – Saka''. In it, the names provided by the Greek historian [[Herodotus]] and the names of his title, except [[Saka]], as well as many other words for "Scythian", such as [[Akkadian language|Assyrian]] ''Aškuz'' and [[Greek language|Greek]] ''Skuthēs'', descend from *skeud-, an ancient [[Indo-European]] root meaning "propel, shoot" (cf. English shoot).<ref>{{harvnb|Szemerényi|1980|pp=45–46}}.</ref> *skud- is the zero-grade; that is, a variant in which the -e- is not present. The restored Scythian name is *Skuδa ([[archer]]), which among the Pontic or Royal Scythians became *Skula, in which the δ has been regularly replaced by an l. According to Szemerényi, Sogdiana ({{langx|peo|Suguda-}}; {{langx|uz|Sug'd, Sug'diyona}}; {{langx|fa|سغد|Soġd}}; {{langx|tg|Суғд, سغد|Suġd}}; {{lang-zh|粟特|sùtè}}; {{langx|el|Σογδιανή|Sogdianē}}) was named from the Skuδa form. Starting from the names of the province given in [[Old Persian]] inscriptions, Sugda and Suguda, and the knowledge derived from Middle Sogdian that Old Persian -gd- applied to Sogdian was pronounced as voiced fricatives, -γδ-, Szemerényi arrives at *Suγδa as an Old Sogdian [[endonym]].<ref>{{harvnb|Szemerényi|1980|pp=26–36}}.</ref> Applying sound changes apparent in other Sogdian words and inherent in Indo-European, he traces the development of *Suγδa from Skuδa, "archer", as follows: Skuδa > *Sukuda by [[anaptyxis]] > *Sukuδa > *Sukδa ([[syncope (phonetics)|syncope]]) > *Suγδa ([[assimilation (linguistics)|assimilation]]).<ref>{{harvnb|Szemerényi|1980|p=39}}.</ref>