The names of Mount Ararat and where they come from

Ararat: a biblical land name attached to a peak

The English name comes from the Book of Genesis (8:4), where the ark comes to rest “upon the mountains of Ararat”. The passage names a region, not a single summit. Ararat appears in two other places in the Hebrew Bible: in 2 Kings 19:37 and the parallel Isaiah 37:38, the sons of Sennacherib escape “into the land of Ararat”, and in Jeremiah 51:27 “the kingdoms of Ararat, Minni, and Ashchenaz” are called against Babylon.

Early translators read the word as a country. Bryce notes that the Greek Septuagint and the Latin Vulgate render it as Armenia, the Vulgate giving super montes Armeniae in Genesis. St Jerome placed Ararat in the plain of the middle Araxes. The Armenian historian Moses of Chorene speaks of a province called Ajrarat on the Araxes. Both Friedrich Parrot and Bryce report his explanation of the name as Arai-Arat, “the fall of Arai”, after a legendary Armenian king killed in battle. The story is legend and is given here only as the derivation these sources record.

According to GoTürkiye, the name was attached to this mountain in the West from the Middle Ages, because scholars took it to be the mountains of Genesis, although the passage does not point to one peak. Bryce adds that a different tradition placed the landing of the ark in the mountains of Gordyene (Hebrew Qardu) east of the upper Tigris, more than 200 miles away. That tradition passed to the Syrian Church, and Muslim writers usually place the Qur’an’s mountain of the ark, which Bryce spells Gudi, in the same Kurdish country. Which mountain the biblical writer meant cannot be settled from the text. What is certain is that the name Ararat for this peak rests on that identification.

Massis: the Armenian name

Parrot, who lived among Armenians at the foot of the mountain in 1829, wrote that Massis was “the only name by which it is known to the Armenians”. People knew no other name, even though the Armenian Bible uses Ararat. Bryce gives the forms Massis and Massis Ljarn, ljarn meaning “mountain”. He suggests a possible link with the Masius of the Greek geographer Strabo, while noting that Strabo’s description does not fit this mountain.

The name is old in European records as well. Bryce quotes the Franciscan William of Rubruk, who passed below the mountain in 1254 and called it Massis, “the mother of the world”, which no one should climb. The Brockhaus and Efron encyclopedia (1890–1907) gives the Russian form Мазис. Parrot also retells an Armenian legend that derives Massis from a king Amassis descended from Japhet. That story explains nothing about the actual age of the name.

Ağrı Dağı: the Turkish name

In Turkish the mountain is Ağrı Dağı. The Ağrı Governorship and Türkiye’s tourism portal use this name, and the province on the southern side is also called Ağrı. Dağ means “mountain”. The meaning of the first element is less clear than popular explanations suggest:

• Parrot wrote that Agridagh was Arabic for “the steep mountain”. The editor of the 1846 English translation corrected him in a footnote: the name is Turkish, and “the first portion of the name admits of no certain explanation”.
• Bryce reported that Aghri Dagh “is interpreted as meaning ‘curved mountain,’ or ‘painful mountain'”.

These are interpretations reported by nineteenth-century writers, and they disagree. This reference does not choose between them.

Kuh-i Nuh: the Persian name

The Persian name means “mountain of Noah”. Bryce gives it as Koh i Nuh. Parrot wrote Kuhi Nuh, but was careful to say that he had it from written authorities and could not confirm it himself, because the Persians he met understood Agridagh. The Ağrı Governorship lists Kuh-i Nuh among the mountain’s other names.

Bryce also cites the seventeenth-century traveller Jean Chardin, who recorded a further name, Sahat Toppin, and interpreted it as “the Happy Hillock”. No other source consulted here uses it.

Other names in the record

The Ağrı Governorship lists four “principal” names in other languages: Ararat, Kuh-i Nuh, Gli Dağ and Cebel ül Haris. It does not explain the last two, and this reference does not supply meanings for them.

Medieval and ancient writers added names of their own. Bryce quotes Sir John Mandeville’s claim that the Jews called the mountain Taneez. He also cites Nicolas of Damascus, quoted by Josephus, on a great mountain in Armenia called Baris, and wonders whether this is a form of Massis. Such names show how the mountain was talked about in books. They do not show local usage.

Kurdish and modern Armenian forms are in everyday use. They are not yet included here because this reference has not checked them against a source it can cite.

Names given to places on the mountain

Some names on the mountain carry their own traditions. Bryce reports that the village name Arghuri (Arguri) was explained as “he planted the vine”, tying it to Noah’s vineyard in Genesis 9:20. The town name Nakhichevan was explained as “he descended first”. Bryce adds in a footnote that an Armenian scholar told the German scholar Nöldeke that the Nakhichevan etymology is impossible. Such explanations belong to the history of the legend, not to linguistics.

Sources

1. James Bryce, Transcaucasia and Ararat, 3rd ed., London: Macmillan, 1878, ch. VI, pp. 198–209. Internet Archive. Read 25 September 2026.
2. Friedrich Parrot, Journey to Ararat, translated by W. D. Cooley, New York: Harper and Bros., 1846, ch. VII, pp. 142–143, with the editor’s note. Internet Archive. Read 25 September 2026.
3. Ağrı Valiliği, Ağrı Dağı (page dated 14.09.2020). Checked 14 September 2026.
4. GoTürkiye, Mount Ararat (Ağrı Dağı) in Ağrı. Checked 14 September 2026.
5. «Арарат, горы», Энциклопедический словарь Брокгауза и Ефрона (1890–1907). Wikisource. Read 14 September 2026.