[gothic-l] Re: Gothic Naming Elements

Tue Nov 2 08:38:14 UTC 2004

Le,

As ever, Gerhard Koebler's "Gotisches Woerterbuch" is worth a look.  
It has a large appendix devoted Gothic names, cross-referenced where 
possible with entries in the main dictionary.

http://www.koeblergerhard.de/publikat.html
http://www.koeblergerhard.de/germanistischewoerterbuecher/gotischeswo
erterbuch/GotischeNamen.pdf

A list I think Nualle might have used:

http://www.geocities.com/Paris/Salon/2385/gothnames.html

...which is also worth looking at, as Nualle (sorry Nualle!) has 
missed off some of the stem vowels (e.g. from Auda- (This is 
attested in the compound auda-hafts 'happy, blessed')).  But Guntha- 
is wrong in the original list; it ought to be Gunthi- (At least this 
is how we would expect it to appear in 'classical' Gothic).  This 
list gives reconstructed Gothic forms with Old English cognates.  I 
believe it comes originally from Henry Bradley's "The Goths" 
(1891).  It is more normal to spell words which appear here with 
<y>, with <j>.  Thus: sunja-, -gauja, etc.  Also, -friths should be -
frithus (it actually appears as -frithas in the Gothic calendar 
fragment, but this reflects a confusion of unstressed vowels in 
later Gothic).  Similarly for Frith-, read Frithu-.  And Gaisu- 
should really be Gaisa- or Gaiza-, corresponding to Indo-European 
cognates.  Bradley's Gaisu- reflects an old misunderstanding caused 
by a misreading of an Old English name (according to Campbell's Old 
English Grammar).

Sigisa- appears in the attested compound sigislaun 'reward of 
victory' without the connecting stem vowel.

On the basis of niuja-satiths 'novice', I would suggest Gauja-, in 
place of Bradley's Gawi-.

>From Old Norse cognates, Thrasa- might have meant something 
like 'furious', 'raging', rather than 'confident'.  But Gothic 
thrasa-balthei seems to mean 'impetuosity' (it is used in a bad 
sense).  So I don't know.

-berga (and cognates) in female Germanic names is usually taken to 
mean something like 'protection, preservation, saving, help', cf. OE 
beorgan, Go. bairgan.  I think the word for 'mountain' is related 
through the idea of 'covering/sheltering'.

It's not possible to tell from cognate Gmc. languages whether Go. 
would have had *hildi, *gunthi, or *hilds, *gunths.  But the -is 
endings in these names, together with forms like Diindihildi suggest 
that they were probably jo-stems in Wulfilan Gothic: *hildi, *gunthi.

Hmmmm, what else?  I'm sure there was once a really nice academic 
site that aimed to catalogue Germanic names from all the early 
sources, but I can't remember what it was called...

Nualle,

Good work, anyway.  Pay no heed to my nit picking!!  You're right 
about -ram = chramn.  It's the same word as English RAVEN.  Huna-, 
Hune- probably does mean 'Hun', as you guess.  It also appears in 
East Germanic names.  Chrodo- = OE hroth (as in: Hrothgar).  OE ecg 
may have a Gothic cognate *Agja- (cf. Koebler's names appendix).  
OHG Hadu- = OE Heatho-.  OE -laf = Go. -laifs (recorded in Lat. as -
laiphus).

If you get really obsessed with Germanic names here's some addresses 
that might help you to fill in the gaps:

http://hem.passagen.se/peter9/gram/l_namn.html

(A good introduction to Old Norse name formation.)

http://www.ling.upenn.edu/~kurisuto/germanic/aa_texts.html

The Germanic Lexicon Project: loads of dictionaries here and text 
books which will fill you in on the sound changes needed to convert 
names from one language to another.  Also the etymology of words, 
showing what the stem vowels are.  Wright's Gothic Grammar has the 
rules on how to make compound words, when the stem vowel is 
abbridged, etc.

Another handy resourse, albeit in Swedish:

http://www.sofi.se/SOFIU/lup/urnord.pdf

This is a "Lexicon of Proto-Norse personal names", including Proto-
Norse reconstructions of names in Beowulf.  And also here, a 
dictionary of names found in Norse runic inscriptions generally:

http://www.sofi.se/SOFIU/runlex/

Hope there's something of use in that lot,

Llama Nom

--- In gothic-l at yahoogroups.com, Nualle Schallenberger <nualle at y...> 
wrote:
> 
> --- Le Bateman <LeBateman at A...> wrote:
> 
> >  Is there a book or website on Gothic Naming
> > elements? Would they be similar
> > to Anglo-Saxon naming elements? Ælfgar, Ælfhere,
> > Ælfheah, Ælfric, Ælfred.
> > Ælfwyn, Ælfwold, Æþelwold, Æþelwulf, Æþelgar,
> > Æþelred, Æþelric, etc...
> > Le
> 
> I've just put up a naming elements page.
> 
> http://www.geocities.com/nualle/gmc_naming_elements.html
> 
> By way of disclaimer... I'm not a trained linguist,
> nor do I play one on TV.  My sources have mostly been
> other naming elements web pages, which I found by
> googling and neglected to bookmark.
> 
> 
> 		
> __________________________________ 
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