''Tabarna'' or ''labarna'' was a royal title used by the

Hittites The Hittites () were an Anatolian peoples, Anatolian Proto-Indo-Europeans, Indo-European people who formed one of the first major civilizations of the Bronze Age in West Asia. Possibly originating from beyond the Black Sea, they settled in mo ...

. It was used from at least the 17th century BC until the end of the Hittite empire, except for the brief period from Suppiluliuma I to

Muwatalli II Muwatalli II (also Muwatallis, or Muwatallish; meaning "mighty") was a king of the New Kingdom of the Hittite empire c. 1295–1282 ( middle chronology) and 1295–1272 BC in the short chronology. Biography He was the eldest son of Mursili II ...

. It was in origin possibly a personal name, borne by the first two Hittite kings,

Labarna I Labarna was the traditional first king of the Hittites, (middle chronology), the most accepted chronology nowadays. He was the traditional founder of the Hittite Old Kingdom (fl. c. 1680(?)-1650 BC). His wife was Tawannanna. The existence of La ...

and Labarna II. In that regard, it is comparable to the Latin title ''

caesar Gaius Julius Caesar (12 or 13 July 100 BC – 15 March 44 BC) was a Roman general and statesman. A member of the First Triumvirate, Caesar led the Roman armies in the Gallic Wars before defeating his political rival Pompey in a civil war. He ...

''. Its

etymology Etymology ( ) is the study of the origin and evolution of words—including their constituent units of sound and meaning—across time. In the 21st century a subfield within linguistics, etymology has become a more rigorously scientific study. ...

, however, is uncertain. Ilya Yakubovich calls it "the single most discussed word of the Hittite lexicon".Ilya Yakubovich
"Labyrinth for Tyrants"
in A. S. Kassian and A. V. Sidel'tsev (eds.), ''Studia Linguarum'', Vol. 3 (Moscow: Languages of Slavonic Culture, 2002): 93–116.

References

{{reflist Hittite Empire Titles