mankurt

The story

1. Russian · borrowed fromманкурт
2. English todaymankurt

Borrowed from Russian манкурт (mankurt). Coined by the Kyrgyz author Chinghiz Aitmatov in his novel The Day Lasts More Than a Hundred Years (1980), in which people are turned into docile servants (mankurts) by exposing camel skin wrapped around their heads to the heat of the sun; the skins tighten as they dry, causing brain damage, such that the mankurts no longer recognize their name, family, or tribe—"a mankurt did not recognise himself as a human being". However, this term quickly became popular in the sense of "rootless person who forgot their cultural and ethnic identity," in the languages of Central Asia and Eastern Europe.