Karamay

See also: karamay

English

Etymology

Borrowed from Uyghur قاراماي (qaramay, literally “black oil”).

Proper noun

Karamay

1. A prefecture-level city in northern Xinjiang, China.
   • 1986, W G Harvey, “A Taste of Karamay”, in Oriental Bird Club Bulletin‎^[1], number 4, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 8:

     On 18 June 1985 I spent three hours birdwatching at an artificial lake near the power station in the Karamay Oilfield in Xinjiang Autonomous Region, Peoples^{[sic – meaning People's]} Republic of China. The site is approximately 46°N, 85°E, close to the oil town of Karamay and within 300 kms of the border with Kazakhstan in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. It is a desert region with rocky outcrops, dry ravines, rock and gravel desert plains, and saline flats.

   • 2011, Kenneth Pletcher, editor, The Geography of China‎^[2], Britannica Educational Publishing, →ISBN, →LCCN, →OCLC, page 263:

     In 1955 a large petroleum field was discovered at Karamay, to the north in the Junggar Basin; it was brought into production in 1958-59 and has since become one of China’s major domestic sources of oil.

   • 2015 August 29, “The Bean and the Bubble”, in The Economist‎^[3], volume 416, number 8953, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 27:

     This month he is in the news because the city of Karamay in western China is unveiling a sculpture that looks very similar to “Cloud Gate”, a no-tonne stainless-steel structure nicknamed the Bean, in Chicago’s Millennium Park, that is popular with Chicagoans and tourists alike....Determining “fair use” is complicated and to some extent subjective, but a prerequisite is that the artist accused of borrowing (or stealing in the Kapoor controversy) admits to using another artist’s art. That is not the case with “Big Oil Bubble” as the Karamay sculpture is called. Its defenders say that it was inspired by the city’s natural oil well (Karamay means black oil in Uighur, the local language) and that the blobs around the sculpture represent little oil bubbles.

   • For more quotations using this term, see Citations:Karamay.

Synonyms

• (from Mandarin Chinese) Kelamayi, K'o-la-ma-i

Translations

Karamay, Xinjiang, China

• Chinese:

  Mandarin: 克拉瑪依／克拉玛依 (zh) (Kèlāmǎyī)

• Russian: Карамай (Karamaj)
• Uyghur: قاراماي (qaramay)

Further reading

• Karamay in Encyclopædia Britannica
• Karamay, Karamai, Kelamayi, Kolamai at the Google Books Ngram Viewer.
• Saul B. Cohen, editor (1998), “Karamay”, in The Columbia Gazetteer of the World‎^[4], volume 2, New York: Columbia University Press, →ISBN, →LCCN, →OCLC, page 1505, column 2: “Also spelled Kelamayi or Karamai.”