[gothic-l] Re: Question about Catualda

[Frank Kermes]

>About the Marcomanni name, I always took 'Marco' to mean 'border'
>(i.e. Mark in German), and Mar (Maere) can also mean horse in German.

Actually, OHG <marah/mahre>, German <maere>, and Old Irish <marc> seem most
likely to have been a word of German Origin borrowed into the Celtic
language, largely because of the /k/ (or "c") ending (the "h" in the OHG
forms).  D.H. Green writes in _Language and History in the Early Germanic
World_ (p. 148) "Although cognates are unknown elsewhere in IE, the
formation of animal names with a -g suffix suggests transmission through a
language which underwent the sound-shift of /g/ to /k/, which again is safer
to identify as Germanic..."

Cheers,
Frank
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