Clauson (1972)
An etimological dictionary of pre-thirteenth-century Turkish
p. 164-165
uma:y
originally ‘placenta, afterbirth’; also used as the name of the (only?) Turkish goddess, whose particular function was to look after women and children, possibly because this object was supposed to have magic qualities. Survives, more or less in the second meaning, in NE Şor umay R I 1788; Khak. imay (sic) and NC Kır. umay; the last also means ‘a mythical bird that builds its nest in the air’, but this is merely a corruption of Persian humây. Türkü viii (my younger brother grew to manhood) umay teg ögüm katu:n kutı:ŋa: ‘under the auspices of my mother who is like (the goddess) Umay’ I E 31; a.o. T 38 (basa:)—Kögmen [. . .] ıduk yer suv [. . .] kan teŋri:d[e: . . .] uma:y xatu:n Inscription on a tile found near Ulan Bator ETY II 161: viii ff. Yen. in Mal. 28, a jumble of two separate inscriptions, one seems to begin at 1. 3 bu atımız Umay beg atım, but Umay Beg is an unlikely name for a man: Uyğ. viii ff. Civ. two parties to a contract described themselves as Baliğ Umay ikigü ‘Baliğ and Umay, the two of us together’ USp. 5, 1 and 6; umay keç tüşser ‘if the placenta is slow in coming away’ TT VII 27, 16: Xak. xi uma:y ‘a thing like a small container (ka’l-ḥuqqa) which comes out a woman’s womb after a birth; it is said that it is the child’s comrade (ṣāḥibu’l-walad) in the womb’. (Prov.) uma:yka: tapınsa: oğul bulu:r ‘if one worships the placenta (or Umay?) one gets a son’; the women take omens (yatafa’’alna) with it Kaş. I 123: Kip. xv xalas (al-mar’a inserted above) umay Tuh. 14a. 9 (xalas means ‘salvation’, which is quite inappropriate, and also ‘end’; the addition ‘of a woman’ suggests that ‘placenta’ was intended).