 Peter Golden, citing Németh, suggests that "qarluğ/qarluq" possibly means "snowy" (from Proto-Turkic *qar "snow").However, Marcel Erdal critiques this as a folk etymology, as "[i]n Old Turkic the suffix +"lXk", which is implied in this account, had fourfold vowel harmony, and the +"lXk" derivate from "kar" would in Old Turkic be *"karlık" and not "karluk"".Having noted that the majority of Chinese transcriptions 歌邏祿, 歌羅祿, 葛邏祿, 葛羅祿 and 哥邏祿 (all romanized as "Geluolu") are trisyllabic, while only one form 葛祿 ("Gelu") is disyllabic, Erdal contends that although the latter one transcribed "Qarluq", the former four transcribed *"Qaraluq", which should be the preferred reading.