𐰚𐰅𐰲𐰀

kēçä primarily means ‘evening, in the evening’, with ‘night, at night’ also occurring in early usage. The first vowel was long.

Its formation is disputed:

1. Räsänen and Talat Tekin analyse it as kēç ‘late’ with an ancient temporal or dative-locative suffix +A, originally ‘at the late time, in the evening’;
2. Clauson instead derives it from kēç- ‘to be late’.
3. Erdal rejects an Old Turkic dative-locative +A and connects the word with a reconstructed stem *ke also underlying ken, kedin and kēç.

In later Turkic the meanings frequently developed further to ‘night’ and ‘yesterday’. Chuvash kaś is unquestionably related, but Tekin specifically traces it to bare *kēç, so its assignment to exact kēçä is disputed.