Abstract
The article examines the theoretical foundations of hybrid terms in Kazakh and the criteria needed to distinguish them from borrowed terms and morphologically adapted loanwords. The study aims to clarify the relationship between etymological heterogeneity, word formation, and specialised naming, while retaining the distinction between the Kazakh designations будан and гибрид. A critical narrative review is combined with comparative and structural-semantic analysis of theoretical accounts and illustrative examples from Kazakh and other linguistic traditions. The comparison identifies three recurrent sources of disagreement: the treatment of borrowed bases with native affixes, the classification of formations imported as complete lexical units, and the relationship between morphological structure and terminological function. English, German, French, Turkish, and Russian approaches are considered alongside the development of Kazakh terminology studies. The analysis supports a recipient-language perspective in which component origin, formation history, structural pattern, degree of integration, and specialised function are recorded separately. On this basis, a working classification distinguishes recipient-language hybrid formations, borrowed terms of hybrid origin, and a boundary class of derivatives based on loans. The historical discussion connects these distinctions with changing practices of translation and adaptation in Kazakh. The proposed framework provides a basis for consistent terminographic description; it is an analytical proposal rather than an empirically validated classification or a new estimate of hybrid-term frequency.