Before 1991 the town was called Vartashen (Armenian: Վարդաշեն), which means town of roses in Armenian; 'Vard' meaning rose and 'shen' meaning town or village. This is in reference to the abundance of roses that naturally grow in this place.[3] A colophon on Armenian manuscript dating to 1466[4] suggests possibly earlier bilingual variants of the name: Giwlstan (Armenian: Գիւլստան), and Vardud (Armenian: Վարդուդ).
The town was renamed to Oghuz in 1991 during the expulsion of the Armenian and autochthonous Udi-speaking population.[2][5] The name Oghuz, given to the town in 1991, was taken from the old Turkic tribe of Oghuz.
Population
Until 1991, Vartashen was mainly a Udi village, where the Vartashen dialect of the Udi language was spoken by about 3000 people in the 1980s. The Udis of Vartashen belonged to the Armenian and Gregorian Church and had Armenian surnames.
During the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, most Udis of the town were expelled by the local activists of Popular Front of Azerbaijan. The Udis, bearing Armenian names and belonging to both the Armenian and the Gregorian Church, had been viewed as Armenians and hence suffered the same fate as other Armenians in Azerbaijan. Some 50 Udi people remained in the town.[2]
There were also Tat-speakingMountain Jews in Vartashen. Most of them have emigrated to Israel, but possibly 80 have stayed.[6][7]
^Jost Gippert «Relative Clauses in Vartashen Udi Preliminary Remarks» «Iran and the Caucasus» Brill Publishers 2011. Стр. 208: [The Armenian-based etymology given there (Arm. vard ‘rose’ and šēn ‘village’, i.e. ‘rose-village’) seems first to have been proposed by A. Berger (Berže) as it is also found in Seidlitz 1863: 171 (where, however, the name is spelt ‘Wartaschîn’). The Udi pronunciation of today is vartašen.] Error: {{Lang}}: invalid parameter: |date= (help)
^Michael Zand: Language and Literature. In: Liya Mikdash-Shamailov: Mountain Jews: Customs and Daily Life in the Caucasus. The Israel Museum (Muzeon Yisrael), Jerusalem 2002, p. 37.Archived 2018-01-19 at the Wayback Machine
