Çavuşköy is a village of the Merkez (central) district of Amasya, lying near the old highway that linked Amasya with Çorum, 35 kilometres from the city centre. In older records its name appears simply as Çavuş; the present form was made by adding the word "köy" (village) to it. One of the oldest traces of the village is an uninscribed milestone lying in a field beside the old highway, which marked the Roman road leading from Amasya towards Ankara. In 2025 the village had 248 registered residents. Since a small village of the same name also exists in the Gümüşhacıköy district, the two places must be kept apart when reading the records; the subject here is the Çavuşköy of the central district.

The Name

In his table of renamed settlements in the central district, Bekir Başalan gives the former name of Çavuşköy as Çavuş and counts this among the changes made with a synonym or a word of close meaning to the old name; Dadıköy/Dadı, Ermiş/Vermiş and Ziyaret/Ziyere belong to the same group. The name has therefore kept its root and has only been extended in form. Asena Yalnız, discussing the name of Karaçavuş in the same district, defines the word çavuş as "a responsible person in a position of authority" and "a person serving the Ottoman state at various ranks". No record has been found showing whether Çavuşköy took its name from a particular çavuş or from a family bearing that title.

The 1530 Entry

In the Karaman and Rum accounting register drawn up in 937 (1530), the only village in the Amasya province bearing the name Çavuş is recorded in the Geldiklan(-âbâd) sub-district of the kaza of Amasya, on page 360 of the register. Because the present villages of Gümüşhacıköy were registered in that document under the Gümüş district, this entry is not expected to belong to the Çavuşköy there. Besides Çavuş, the Geldiklan sub-district also lists villages such as Bulduklu, Beke, Bayad, Boğa and Soma that lie in today's central district. This picture makes it likely that the Çavuş of the register is present-day Çavuşköy. Still, since the index gives only the name and the page, the identification has not been settled by documents.

The Old Highway and the Milestone

David French, who catalogued the Roman milestones of the region, saw a milestone at Çavuş twice, on 13 July 1975 and on 10 July 1977. The stone lies in a field immediately north of the old highway from Çorum to Amasya, some 350 metres east of the old turning for the village. It is a plain, unbroken cylinder of hard grey limestone with no legible inscription. French assigns it to the Roman road running from Satala through Neocaesarea (Niksar) and Amasya towards Ankara. Being uninscribed, it cannot be dated; but it shows that the village stood right beside the old road linking Amasya with the west. Whether the stone is still in place today is not known.

Population

Çavuşköy has shrunk markedly since address-based records began. The village had 440 residents in 2007, and within five years the figure had fallen to 325; the steepest loss came in this first period. After staying between 300 and 336 through the 2010s, the population dropped to 290 in 2019 and to 263 in 2022, and after a brief recovery stood at 248 in 2025, when 125 men and 123 women were registered. According to village records of 2016, the village had primary-school and health-post buildings, but neither was in use; pupils were bused to school elsewhere. Over eighteen years the village has lost more than two-fifths of its population.

Bibliography

Primary sources

Academic studies

  • Bekir Başalan, "Amasya İlinde İsimleri Değiştirilen Yerleşim Yeri Adları Üzerine Bir İnceleme", Folklor Akademi Dergisi, 7(3), 2024, pp. 1382-1391 (Table 1, pp. 1385-1386). https://dergipark.org.tr/tr/download/article-file/4249891
  • Asena Yalnız, "Amasya İli ve İlçelerinin Renk Adlarıyla Oluşan Yer Adlarının Gramatikal ve Bölgesel İncelemesi", Amasya Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Dergisi, 12, 2022, pp. 133-159 (p. 141).
  • David H. French, Roman Roads and Milestones of Asia Minor, Vol. 3: Milestones, Fasc. 3.3: Cappadocia, BIAA Electronic Monograph 3, London: British Institute at Ankara, 2012, pp. 53-54. https://doi.org/10.18866/BIAA/e-03

Other sources

Online sources