Zsuzsa Kakuk

Zsuzsa Kakuk (13 August 1925 – 18 April 2025) was a Hungarian linguist and Turkologist.

Biography Early life Kakuk was born in Nagytálya, Hungary on 13 August 1925. At age eight, her family moved to Eger, then later relocated to Szatmárnémeti.

Academic career Kakuk studied at the University of Debrecen from 1944 to 1949 and graduated with degrees in Hungarian and Latin. She went on to pursue a PhD in 1951 at Faculty of Humanities of the Eötvös Loránd University where she studied under Gyula Németh. She graduated in 1955. During this period she was also engaged in work at the Institute of Linguistics at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.

Kakuk's interest in Turkology began with an interest in Ottoman Turkish loanwords in Hungarian. Later work involved visiting Turkish-speaking communities throughout the Balkans to examine their dialects. Other work included compiling an anthology of early and medieval Turkic texts and studying the folklore of various Turkic-speaking groups, including the Kazan Tatars and Crimean Tatars. During a visit to China in 1960, Kakuk was able to gather materials on the Salar language and provided some of the earliest descriptions of the language in Western academic literature.

In 1984 Kakuk founded the Hungarian orientalist journal Keletkutatás ; she served as its editor-in-chief until 1994.

Death Kakuk died in Budapest on 18 April 2025, at the age of 99.

Selected publications

Academic service Vice President, Kőrösi Csoma Society (Hungarian Oriental Society), 1982-1988 Member, Hungarian Academy of Sciences Member, Linguistic Committee of the Ph.D. Commission of the Ministry of Education and Culture Editorial Board Member, Acta Linguistica Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae Editorial Board member, Studia Turco-Hungarica

Recognition and honours Honorary Member, Türk Dil Kurumu, 1978 Honoree,