[gothic-l] Re: Spanish surnames

[faltin2001]

--- In gothic-l at yahoogroups.com, "Denis Glenard" <denisglenard at y...>
wrote:
> Hi Dirk,
> Hi everyone,
>
> I'm not a scholar in these things, but there are a couple points
from your previous Emails I'd like to press here:
>
> "Dirk:
> I doubt that this is correct to be honest. The Roman period in
Spain
> is very important and Spanish, as a romanic language is a direct
> result."
>
> Spanish is definitely a romance language. We should perhaps be very
precise and call it castilian, as there are many other languages in
Spain.
> Castilian is only a romance dialect, mainly spoken by the southern
basques/castilians at the beginning of the 2nd millenium, hence the
pronunciation of modern "spanish" is derived from basque (that's why
they "sound" the same). The fact that the Reconquista was undertaken
from the northern territories, including the Basque Country, helped
impose this dialect as the main one in the kingdom, although many
others were and still are spoken locally (whether these are languages
or dialects is not relevant here, there are many battles going around
this, quite a few of them political).



Hi Dennis,

thanks for elaborating the point. This is exactly what I thought as
well. Thus, Spanish is a Romanic language of course and Spanish is
due to the Roman presence in Spain.






>
> The Iberian language, the language spoken before the Roman invasion
of Spain, is quite well known. It has it's own alphabet and although
some of it is still not understood, progress is made every year.
>


Dirk:
Yes, an intesting alphabet too which bears casual similarity with
Germanic runes, although it has nothing to do with Runes.





> Modern Spanish language is therefore made of bits and pieces taken
from the languages spoken by it's invaders and original inhabitants,
Celts, Iberians, Basque, Goths, Moors, etc. in varyiing degrees,
obviously.



Dirk:
Yep, but nontheless Spanish is clearly recognisable a Romanic
language it is infact so close to Italian that Italian often claim to
understand Spanish without any prior study.







>
> Dirk, you state in your other Email  : "modern Spaniards (...)
include a
> rich mixure of ethnic groups including people like Celt-Iberians,
> Romans, Greeks, North Africans, Jews and of course Germanics."
>
> I resent your leaving out the Basque, who were there before almost
all of the other ethnic groups, who have fought every battle to free
Spain from every kind of invader.



Dirk:
True, I just foregot the Basques. In fact, I probably foregot a few
more other groups and I did not claim to have presented a
comprehensive list. The Basques are however, more important and
should not be left out.







Denis:
You also leave out the Phoenicians (the palm fields in Elche (Elx)
were planted by them as a food resource for their maritime trips) and
the Cartaginese (although one could say they're part of the "north
Africans").


Dirk:
As I said the list was not meant to include all.




Denis:
> I'm not sure either I agree with you assertion of the mixture with
the Moors and Jews. The mixture was rare, for religious, not race
reasons.




Dirk:
We certainly know that Visigoths and Moors intermarried at the
highest levels of society. Many Spanish Jews converted to Catholicsim
thus removing the religious barrier. Spain traditionally had a very
strong Jewish population and I guess a lot of intermarriage took
place over time, but I cannot be certain.








Denis:
> The Moors (who weren't that many to start with) did not take in
converts, simply beacause christians paid more taxes.





As I said we know that the Moslem elite married with Visigothic
elites. So the barrier cannot have been too high. Also, I included
the Berbers with the actual Arabs.






Denis:
As for Jews, it is a well known fact that they do not proselytise and
you are only Jewish because your mother was Jewish. This is why it
was easy for the Catholic Kings to root out Muslims and Jews in 1492;
had they been mixed within the general population, it would have been
impossible.



Dirk
That is probably correct, but we are discussing ethnic (non-
religious) backgrounds. Thus, many Spanish Jews converted to
Catholicism (I think there was even a special name for them) and
those will to a large extend have been absorbed into the modern
Spanish population.






> This of course does not mean 100% separation, just that mixing was
so small than it would probably be impossible to trace nowadays.


Dirk:
That might be the case, but this is probably also true for the
Visigothic input.




>
> Sorry if I've been a bit long on this one, but the Basque can never
be taken for granted ;-)))
>



Newer research suggests that the Basques may have played a much
bigger role in holding of the Moslems from the North than was
traditionally acknowledged.

Cheers
Dirk





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