(Vol. viii., p. 150.)
The difficulty in investigating the origin of this word is that the letter
_c_, "the most wonderful of all letters," says Eichhoff (_Vergleichung der
Sprachen_, p. 55.), sounds like _k_ before the vowels _a_, _o_, _u_, but
before _e_, _i_, in French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Dutch, as _s_, in
Italian as _tsh_, in German as _ts_. It is always _ts_ in Polish and
Bohemian. In Russian it is represented by a special letter [Cyrillic: ts],
_tsi_; but in Celtic it is always _k_. Conformably with this principle, the
Russians, like the Germans, Poles, and Bohemians, pronounce the Latin _c_
as _ts_. So Cicero in these languages is pronounced _Tsitsero_, very
differently from the Greeks, who called him _Kikero_. The letter _tsi_ is a
supplementary one in Russian, having no corresponding letter in the Greek
alphabet, from which the Russian was formed in the ninth century by St.
Cyril. The word to be sought then amongst cognate languages as the
counterpart of _tsar_ (or as the Germans write it _czar_) is _car_, as
pronounced in English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Dutch. The most
probable etymological connection that I can discover is with the Sanscrit
[Sanskrit: car] _car_, to move, to advance; the root of the Greek [Greek:
karrhon], in English _car_, Latin _curro_, French _cours_. So Sanscrit
_caras_, _carat_, movable, nimble; Greek [Greek: chraôn], Latin _currens_.
And Sanscrit _câras_, motion, Greek [Greek: choros], Latin _currus_,
_cursus_, French _char_, English _car_, _cart_, &c. The early Russians were
doubtless wanderers, an off-shoot of the people known to the Greeks as
Scythians, and to the Hebrews and Arabians as Gog and Magog, who travelled
in _cars_, occupying first one territory with their flocks, but not
cultivating the land, then leaving it to nature and taking up another
resting-place. It is certain that the Russians have many Asiatic words in
their vocabulary, which must necessarily have occurred from their being for
more than two centuries sometimes under Tatar, and sometimes under Mongol
domination; and the origin of this word _tsar_ or _car_ may leave to be
sought on the plateaus of North-east Asia. In the Shemitic tongues (Arabic,
Hebrew, Persian, &c.) no connexion of sound or meaning, so probable as the
above Indo-European one, is to be found. The popular derivations of
Nabupolassar, Nebuchadnezzar, Belshazzar, &c., are not to be trusted. It is
remarkable, however, that these names are significant in Russian. (See "N.
& Q.," Vol. vii., pp. 432, 433, _note_.) The cuneatic inscriptions may yet
throw light on these Assyrian names. In Russian the kingdom is _Tsarstvo_,
the king _Tsar_, his queen _Tsarina_, his son is _Tsarevitch_, and his
daughter _Tsarevna_. The word is probably pure Russian or Slavic. The
Russian tsar used about two hundred years ago to be styled duke by foreign
courts, but he has advanced in the nomenclature of royalty to be an
emperor. The Russians use the word _imperatore_ for emperor, _Kesar_ for
Cæsar, and _samodershetse_ for sovereign.