1) Kort (khord, gurt. gurd) in the mearvng of bure - wolf is met in folklore of other peoples. E. g. in Karachai and Balkar epic the origin of one kin of the Narts is explained in connection with a totemic name (skhurtuk, hurt - wolf). The morpheme khort in this meaning has also been preserved in languages of some Slavonic peoples. Academician B A. Rybakov writes in this connection: "In some cases archaic words are found in charms, which are not comprehensible to witch doctors themselves. Thus in one of the charms recorded in Bryansk province the witch doctor used words "khort with its khort-kids" not knowing the meaning of the words Khort is wolf as it is known from some Russian and Bulgarian dialects"... (B. A. Rybakov. Paganism of ancient Slavs. M: Nauka, 1981. P. 184. pi/6/, in Rus.). In ail probability now forgotten In Slavonic languages, the word "khort" was borrowed from Turkic languages.
HOW THE WORD "BASHKORT" CAME INTO USE?
In the days of old our forefathers kept large herds of cattle and were always on the move, going from one place to another. And so it happened that one day they set out in search of good pastures for their herds of cattle to graze on. They went through many lands, and they once came across a pack of wolves, and the leader of the pack left the wolves and went ahead of our forefathers and led the caravan on, and our forefathers followed in his steps, and thus came to a rich and generous land with full-flowing rivers, and meadows, and berry-fields, and forests which swarmed in all kinds of wild animals. And the mountains there glistened blinding the eye and reached high to the clouds in the sky. And when they came to that land the wo If stopped. The oldest and the wisest of our forefathers got together and thus said, "Never have we seen so beautiful a land before and never we will; there is no other place like that in the world, so here we stay and here we live." And there they stayed, and on that beautiful land that could not be equalled by any other in the world they settled to live, and they put up their yurtas, and they went hunting, and they grazed their cattle on the rich meadows, and from that time on our forefathers and fathers of our forefathers began to call themselves "people who came after the wolve's leaders", the Bashkorts; and "kort" meant "wolf", and "bashkort" meant the leader-wolf, and this is how the word "Bashkort"1came into use.