[gothic-l] Re: Gothic word for King

[keth at ONLINE.NO]

Hi Francisc,
and thank you for your comments!
I believe however that the Alaric/Halaric of Getica § 117 is not
the same one as the Alaric of Busento. Here I was using the
Halaric of § 117 who is said to have been king of the Heruls
as example of an initial aspirate (H) that is included in the
spelling in Getica. 

My thought was that the probability of an H disappearing, is much
greater than its spontaneous appearance. As an example take a
normal purse: you lose coins from it much more often than coins
appear in it through random events. (which is an example of
phase space concepts)

But if the scribes were actually paid for adding random letters,
then that is a different matter. But why didn't they add all
kinds of letters? It reminds me a bit of what you can read about
in the book "The mythical manmonth", where it is related how
IBM programmers were paid for the amount of code they wrote. The
result was voluminous and bulky code. (mamouth code)

Any way, I think that in Germanic language an initial H is of
great importance. And it is that way in all Germanic languages I
know. Thus in English: native speakers of English will see
Harry and Arry as two different names ( but perhaps not
in Cockney or some such dialect?). In Nowegian certainly:
"hånd" is perceived as a totally different word from "ånd"
(hand & spirit). In German too: "Haus" is never mixed up 
with "aus". Same thing in Dutch: "hals" is never mixed up
with "als". (in English "hear" and "ear" may be a better example
or "hall" versus "all" or "his" versus "is".)

Regarding Halaric, the Herul king of Getica § 117, I suppose the
Greek name I quoted referred to the Visigothic king instead, and
the latter's name must have been Alaric without an H. Any way
Halaric was only meant as example, but now it appears that I only
have one source referring to him, and that is too little. Hence
I propose to drop the example.

Jordanes' note about the Heruls being called Heruls because they
inhabited swampy places is far more interesting, because there
is a reference to the Greek chronograph Dexippos there, who says
that the "Helouroi" (sic) are a Skythian race. Well, what I
learn about Dexippos is that he was from Athens and was eye-
witness to the Herulian campaign of 267 A.D. His works are
however only preserved fragmentarily, and I have not seen them.
One of his books is called "Skythica" and that may be
the book in which he mentions the Heruls. The Greek word "hele"
was the name of certain wetgrounds on which the Herules lived,
and after which they were called. I think perhaps this etymology
is fictitious, but what it does show, I think, is that their 
name was pronunced with an initial aspirate. Right now I seem
to have misplaced the dictionary, but I hope to return to
the question later, Do you know the etymology of "herul"?
If someone knows more about Dexippos, that would also be
interesting to hear.

Best regards
Keth



>
>--- In gothic-l at y..., keth at o... wrote:
>> ...
>> I was also interested in the source for the name "Halamardus".
>> This was said to be from some West Germanic inscription, but
>> I do not know which one. I find it interesting, because the first
>> part is clearly similar to the first part of "Halaricus". Also, we 
>know
>> the meaning of both -ricus and -mardus from other Germanic PN's.
>> ('mardus' is from "famous", related to German "Märchen", Dutch 
>"vermaard".)
>> Thus it seems established the Hala- is a first component in Germanic
>> PN's. I'd like to compare it with Old Norse "halr" that was a word 
>that
>> meant "man" or "hero".
>
>I still believe that Alaricus is the correct form, and not, 
>"Halaricus", and that is in fact *Ala-reiks "all-ruler", with ala- for 
>"all" like in ala-mans "all men" (mankind, totality of humans) or 
>ala-brunsts "all-burning" (burnt-offering, holocaust) or ala-þarba 
>"all-needy" (very needy, very poor). In the mediaeval Latin texts, 
>when in Latin the "h" sound ceased actually to be pronounced, the "h" 
>letter sometimes is missing where it should be, sometimes appears 
>where it should not ("hypercorrect" forms). Sometimes, when the 
>scribes were paid proportionally with the number of letters they 
>wrote, they added some supplementary letters, in order to get more 
>payment. So they added an initial "h" before vowels, or a "h" after 
>"t" or "c" (in Getica, we have "Halaricus" and "Alarichus" beside 
>Alaricus), or doubled some letters etc.



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