Umay is the goddess of childbirth and the guardian of infants, the one female divinity named alongside Tängri in the earliest Turkic writing. Her name is that of the placenta, and her sphere is the fragile passage of birth: she confers the soul upon the newborn, brought as a drop from the heavenly Milk Lake, and shields mother and child through the dangerous first days against the demons of the birth-chamber. The Tonyukuk inscription likens the ruler's mother, the katun, to Umay, and later Turkic queens were held to embody her. Beneath Islam her figure endures in Uyghur and wider Turkic birth-customs and protective charms.