Davutevi is among the villages of Göynücek that have lost their population fastest over the past twenty years: the village, home to 201 people in 2007, had only 26 registered inhabitants in 2025. Little has been written about Davutevi, one of the district's thirty-eight villages; its name turns up mostly in the village lists of archaeological surface surveys, in population series and in a similar village name in a sixteenth-century register.

The Name

Bekir Başalan, who compiled the name changes across the province, does not mention Davutevi; the village has carried this name in the Republican period too. Linking the name to a person or family called Davud is plausible on linguistic grounds, but no record documenting this has been found. The index of register no. 387 (937/1530), published by the State Archives, shows a village called "Dâvud" in the nahiye of Geldiklan-âbâd in the sanjak of Amasya on page 358 of the register. Since the villages of Gediksaray (Varay), Ayvalıpınar (Şerefdâr) and İkizyaka (Efkeri), now in Göynücek, were in the same nahiye, there is a geographical proximity. The name in the register, however, lacks the suffix "-evi", and the same register has a second village called Dâvud in the nahiye of Meşhed-âbâd; it therefore cannot be confirmed from the documents that the Dâvud of 1530 is today's Davutevi.

Davutevi in the Surveys

In 1987 and 1989 Mehmet and Nesrin Özsait systematically surveyed twenty-eight towns and villages in Göynücek to locate prehistoric settlements, and they included Davutevi in that list. The survey ended by presenting mounds and settlements around Ilısu, Şıhlar, Başpınar and Ayvalıpınar, with no separate settlement reported for Davutevi. No publication showing whether the village has a mosque, a fountain or a registered building, and no yearbook or temettuat record for the village, has been found either; the recent past of Davutevi can therefore be read largely from its population figures.

Population

In 2007, when the address-based registration system began, 201 people lived in the village. In the following years the decline continued without a break, bringing the population down to 166 in 2010, 99 in 2013 and 65 in 2016. After that the figure went up and down from year to year, recorded as 79 in 2020, 42 in 2021 and 71 in 2023. In a settlement this small, two or three households coming or going are enough to shift the series noticeably. According to the 2025 results, 26 people live in Davutevi, 13 men and 13 women; this is less than an eighth of the population of 2007.

Bibliography

Primary sources

Academic studies

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