Abstract
The study of ornithonyms, which represent an important layer of our vocabulary, is of significant value for both biological and linguistic sciences. The disappearance of bird names following the loss of the species themselves makes it urgent to fix and preserve them. If biologists strive to preserve fauna, then linguists are responsible for preserving names, since ornithonyms, as well as the stable expressions and paremiological units in which they are used, reflect elements of national consciousness, cultural beliefs and a historically formed worldview. Ornithonyms are not only the names of specific biological objects, but also a valuable linguistic unit capable of reflecting the lexical richness and features of the ethnocultural picture of the world. This article examines the ornithonyms recorded in the medieval Turkic writing monument “Kitab Tarjuman”, in comparison with their counterparts in modern Kazakh language. The research includes a lexical and semantic analysis of these units, the identification of their correspondences in related Turkic languages, as well as the study of their use in Kazakh proverbs and sayings. The work is aimed at identifying the continuity of lexical units and preserving the linguistic heritage. The results of the study demonstrate that ornithonyms reflect the ethnocultural picture of the world, national mentality and are valuable for linguistics as structural elements of language, enriching the cognitive, ethnolinguistic and diachronic studies on the Turkic heritage. Linguistic analysis of the Kitab Tarjuman monument makes it possible to recreate the worldview of the ancestors, and proverbs and phraseological units with ornithonyms serve as an important source for studying the cognitive and ethnolinguistic aspects of the language.