Somkhiti

Somkhiti (, ) was an ambiguous geographic term used in medieval and early modern Georgian historical sources to refer to Armenia on one hand and to the Armeno-Georgian marchlands along the river valleys of Debed and Khrami on the other hand. In the 18th century, Somkhiti was largely replaced with Somkheti (, ) as a Georgian exonym for Armenia, but it continued, for some time, to denote the frontier region which is currently divided between Lori, Armenia, and Kvemo Kartli, Georgia. This patch of land was sometimes referred to as "Georgian Armenia" in the 19th-century European sources."Georgia", in Encyclopædia Metropolitana, ed. by Edward Smedley, Hugh James Rose and Henry John Rose (1845), p. 538.

Etymology The term "Somkhiti"/"Somkheti" is presumed by modern scholars to have been derived from "Sukhmi" or "Sokhmi", the name of an ancient land located by the Assyrian and Urartian records along the upper Euphrates.G. Melikishvili, Nairi-Urartu (Tbilisi, 1954), pp. 418-19, cited in Suny, Ronald Grigor (1994), The Making of the Georgian Nation, p. 344, n. 20. Indiana University Press, . Per Igor M. Diakonoff, the Georgian name for the country came from the metathesis through Akkadian "⁠Suḫmu⁠" and Hittite "⁠Zūḫma".Diakonoff, I. (1968) The Pre-History of the Armenian People. The History of the Armenian Highland from 1500 to 500 BC. Hurrians, Luwians, Proto-Armenians, p. 234, Academy Press

According to Professor David Marshall Lang,

Somkhiti

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