The College Chronicle

The story beneath the noise.

Tuesday, January 27, 2026

misc

C-M-H-R

An etymological exploration of the word 'cumhuriyet' (republic), tracing its Arabic and Latin roots related to the concepts of people and public.

A 4-letter root that passed from Arabic to Turkish as "cumhur" means crowd or people. The act of bringing people together and becoming a majority is another way to define this word, which then evolved into "cumhuriyet" - an administrative method that our government adopted 102 years ago. Its equivalent in European culture is the republic, where "res" means thing and "publica" means belonging people/public, together they create the word "res-publica": things that belong to the public. It's no surprise, then, that Republics have presidents who are elected by the public.