 The name Soumak may plausibly derive from the old town of Shemakja in Azerbaijan, once a major trading centre in the Eastern Caucasus.Other theories include an etymology from Turkish "sekmek", to skip up and down, meaning the process of weaving; or from any of about 35 species of flowering plant in the Anacardiaceae or sumac family, such as dyer's sumach ("Cotinus coggygria"), used to make dyestuffs.If this last is the source of the name, then it is derived from the Arabic and Syriac word "summāq", red.