stylistic:tone, stylistic:style_transfer
Definition

According to Chinese sources, Tūjué meant " combat helmet " (Chinese: 兜 鍪; pinyin: Dōumóu; Wade–Giles: Tou -mou), reportedly because the shape of the Altai Mountains, where they lived, was similar to a combat helmet. Róna-Tas (1991) pointed to a Khotanese-Saka word, tturakä "lid", semantically stretchable to "helmet", as a possible source for this folk etymology, yet Golden thinks this connection requires more data.

Göktürk is sometimes interpreted as either "Celestial Turk" or "Blue Turk" (i.e. because sky blue is associated with celestial realms). This is consistent with "the cult of heavenly ordained rule" which was a recurrent element of Altaic political culture and as such may have been imbibed by the Göktürks from their predecessors in Mongolia. "Blue" is traditionally associated with the East as it used in the cardinal system of central Asia, thus meaning "Turks of the East". The name of the ruling Ashina clan may derive from the Khotanese Saka term for "deep blue", āššɪna.

According to the American Heritage Dictionary, the word Türk meant "strong" in Old Turkic; though Gerhard Doerfer supports this theory, Gerard Clauson points out that "the word Türk is never used in the generalized sense of 'strong'" and that the noun Türk originally meant "'the culminating point of maturity' (of a fruit, human being, etc.), but more often used as an meaning (of a fruit) 'just fully ripe'; (of a human being) 'in the prime of life, young, and vigorous'". Hakan Aydemir (2022) also contends that Türk originally did not mean "strong, powerful" but "gathered; united, allied, confederated" and was derived from Pre- Proto-Turkic verb * türü "heap up, collect, gather, assemble".

The name as used by the Göktürks only applied to themselves, the Göktürk khanates, and their subjects. The Göktürks did not consider other Turkic speaking groups such as the Uyghurs, Tiele, and Kyrgyz to be Türks. In the Orkhon inscriptions, the Toquz Oghuz and the Yenisei Kyrgyz are not referred to as Türks. Similarly, the Uyghurs called themselves Uyghurs and used Türk exclusively for the Göktürks, whom they portrayed as enemy aliens in their royal inscriptions. The Khazars may have kept the Göktürk tradition alive by claiming descent from the Ashina. When tribal leaders built their khanates, ruling over assorted tribes and tribal unions, the collected people identified themselves politically with the leadership. Turk became the designation for all subjects of the Turk empires. Nonetheless, subordinate tribes and tribal unions retained their original names, identities, and social structures. Memory of the Göktürks and the Ashina had faded by the turn of the millennium. The Karakhanids, Qocho Uyghurs, and Seljuks did not claim descent from the Göktürks.