[gothic-l] Re: Godheimar

[dirk at SMRA.CO.UK]

--- In gothic-l at y..., Bertil Häggman <mvk575b at t...> wrote:
> Keth,
> 
> 
> 
> Godheimar = regions where the Goths live.
> The literal meaning is "god home".
> 
> Gudmund Schuette, who dealt with the fate
> of the name of the Goths in Old Norse established
> the law if transmogrification of epic names. Under
> the influence of the Celtic model, a compound form with -theud, 
"people",
> was introduced for the Gothic name Gut-thiuda, which in
> Old Norse developed into  Gothjod > Godthjod. Now there
> developed a new sten *God (< Got), from which the
> forms God-heimar, God-heimr and God-lond were derived.
> Sometimes the original form Gotland was preserved for Denmark.
> 
> Snorri's epic source preserves unknowingly the old geographic
> nomenclature from Eastern Europe disguised as a popular
> etymology, just as the lay The Battle of the Goths and the Huns did.
> Godheimar should not be understood as "god home" but as the "home
> of the Goths" (see Omeljan Pritsak, _The Origin of Rus_, p. 250.
> 

Bertil,

One has to be very carefull with these kind of attributions. In 
Germany there are place names like Gotinga, Gutinge, first attested in 
775AD and now called Goettingen, or Godewicum/Goduwicus now called 
Goettwig (Austria), or Gotenheim (!), or Gottorpia now called Gottorp, 
or Goteaugla now called Gottesau, or Gotaha/Gota (8th century) now 
calld Gotha, etc..... All these places have nothing to do with the 
Goths, and there obviously was a common placename component of 
Got-/Gut-/God-/Gud-, which should also be considered in finding 
explanations for such placenames.

cheers,
Dirk 





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