What is "kanasubigi"

Kanasubigi or Kana sybigi, as it is written in Bulgars' Greek inscriptions, was a title of the Bulgars.

The title khan for early Bulgar rulers is an assumed one, as only the form kanasubigi or "k(h)anasybigi" is attested in stone inscriptions. Historians presume that it includes the title khan in its archaic form kana, and there is a presumptive evidence suggesting that the latter title was indeed used in Bulgaria, e.g. the name of one of the Bulgars rulers Pagan occurs in Patriarch Nicephorus's so-called breviarium as (Kampaganos), likely an erroneous rendition of the phrase "Kan Pagan". Among the proposed translations for the phrase kanasubigi as a whole are lord of the army, from the reconstructed Turkic phrase *sü begi, paralleling the attested Old Turkic sü baši, and, more recently, "(ruler) from God", from the Indo-European *su- and baga-, i.e. *su-baga (an equivallent of the Greek phrase , ho ek Theou archon, which is common in Bulgar inscriptions). This titulature presumably persisted until the Bulgars adopted Christianity. Some Bulgar inscriptions written in Greek and later in Slavonic refer to the Bulgarian ruler respectively with the Greek title archon or the Slavic title knyaz.