Angora

Angora was the name used for centuries by European travelers, merchants, and diplomats to describe the city now called Ankara, the capital of Turkey. The name derived from the Greek Ankyra (Ἄγκυρα), meaning 'anchor,' which the Romans Latinized into Ancyra. Arab geographers wrote it as Engürü; Ottoman Turkish settled on a form approximating Angora; and in 1930, as part of Atatürk's modernization reforms, the city officially became Ankara. But long before politics changed its name, Angora had already escaped the city entirely and attached itself to the animals raised on the high Anatolian plateau surrounding it.

The Angora goat — with its extraordinarily long, silky fleece called mohair — was the breed that made the region famous across the medieval Islamic and Byzantine trading worlds. The hair of the Angora goat was finer and longer than ordinary wool, with a natural luster that made it prized for luxury textiles. Ottoman sultans controlled the export of Angora goats so strictly that it was illegal for centuries to take live animals out of Anatolia. The word mohair itself derives from Arabic mukhayyar ('selected' or 'chosen cloth'), and Angoran fleece was worth choosing: it supplied the finest cloths available in pre-industrial Europe.

By the 19th century, two other animals had been named for the city: the Angora cat, a distinctive long-haired breed with a silky white coat, and the Angora rabbit, whose fur is harvested for the soft fiber used in fine knitwear. All three — goat, cat, rabbit — carried the Angora name into the global textile and pet trades. When Angora rabbit fiber replaced the city name in the consciousness of most English speakers, the geographic reference had been almost entirely forgotten. The fiber that appears on sweater labels as 'angora' is almost universally rabbit fiber; mohair remains the technical term for goat fleece.

Turkey officially requested that foreign post offices and governments use 'Ankara' rather than 'Angora' after 1930, and for political and administrative purposes the old name was retired. But language ignores postal requests. The Angora cat, Angora goat, Angora rabbit, and angora fiber continue under their old name, carrying the ghost of a city's former identity into every yarn shop and pet catalog. A word that began as a Greek anchor, became a Roman administrative center, served as the Ottoman plateau city's export brand, and ended as a fiber label — all without moving from the Anatolian highlands where the goats still graze.