[gothic-l] Re: Hairus in diminutive

[Troels Brandt]

Thanks Llama Nom!
This has been a great help.
Troels

--- In gothic-l at yahoogroups.com, "llama_nom" <penterakt at f...> wrote:
> 
> Hi Troels,
> 
> > We are discussing three possible words as background in these 
> > examples. *Hari, *ErlaZ and Hairus. Is it a coincidence that all 
> > three words are connected with warriors and weapons? Could there 
> > exist a common background?
> 
> 
> 1) Gmc. *harjaz 'army'; Go. harjis, PrN harijaR (Skåäng stone in 
> Sweden), OE here, ON herr, OHG har, NHG Heer); PIE *koro- "war" 
(cf. 
> Lith. karas "war, quarrel," karias "host, army;" OCS kara "strife;" 
> MIr. cuire "troop;" OPers. kara "host, army;" Gk. koiranos "ruler, 
> leader, commander").
> 2) Gmc. ?*erlaz, ?*erilar; PrN erilaR, OE eorl, OS erl, OIc. jarl
> 3) Gmc. *heruz 'sword'; Go. hairus, OIc. hjörr, OS her- (in 
> compounds), OE heoru; cf. Skr. caru 'missile, spear, arrow'; Gk. 
> keraunos 'thunderbolt'.
> 
> Fick, Falk & Torp: "Wörterbuch der Indogermanischen Sprachen: 
Dritter 
> Teil: Wortschatz der Germanischen Spracheinheit"
> Harper: "Online Etymological Dictionary"
> Various: "Oxford English Dictionary"
> 
> 
> 4) Lat. (H)Eruli
> 5) OE herelingas, ?MHG harlungen.
> 6) Personal name: Herila
> 
> 
> Well, 1 & 2 have come to sound more alike than they did at the time 
> of the Eruli, due to umlaut.  But maybe there was an ancient 
> connection via ablaut - I don't know if that is possible in this 
> case?  Which of course takes us back to long before the time of the 
> Eruli.  On the other hand, just as we can see a superficial 
> similarity between these words - whether there is an etymological 
> link or not - so could people in the 6th century.  So a connection 
> might be inherited, or it could arise by chance - helped by the 
> related meanings - or be constructed.
> 
> 5 is probably derived from 1.
> 6 might be from 3, or 2.
> 4 is widely linked to eorle in Beowulf, used with a special meaning 
> as the name of a people.
> 
> I guess there's also a bit of an assumption in 2, that erilaR is 
the 
> same as jarl, the -i- presumably being lost before palatal 
mutation.  
> 
> 
> 
> > Let us assume that the Heruls were Eastgermanics close connected 
> with 
> > the Goths in the 3rd century at the Black Sea (as the Romans 
> regarded 
> > them), but moved away from the Goths and were assimilated among 
the 
> > Scandinavian Northgermanics as a minority in the 6th century. In 
> that 
> > case the attested ErilaR, eorl etc. were not the Herulian words, 
> but 
> > the words formed by North- and Westgermanics as they heard the 
name 
> > of the Heruls. If a Scandinavian runemaster wrote "Herul" in his 
> > local written language as he heard the Herul pronounce his name 
> (the 
> > runes were used in Scandinavia before the Heruls arrived), or if 
> the 
> > Scandinavians used their translation of this name as the title of 
> an 
> > officer, should we in that case expect the written name to follow 
> > normal sound changes? Shouldn't there be room for some 
> > misunderstandings in the translation process?
> 
> 
> 
> If so, the Eruls must have had a weaker pronunciation of [h] than 
the 
> Northwest Germanic peoples.  I don't know of any parallels 
supporting 
> this.  There is only one possible dropped [h] in the Gothic corpus, 
> that I know of: manauli, which has been recunstructed as *manahuli -
 
> but a single instance (if this reconstruction is correct) is 
probably 
> more likely just a spelling mistake.  That's not to say that there 
> wasn't some difference, or that the Eruls had some peculiarity in 
> pronunciation not shared by other East Germanic peoples.  If they 
> were bilingual in Latin - maybe even adopted it as their first 
> language?! this might explain it.  Of course, each of these maybes 
> has an equally valid maybe-not!  But you're right that quirky an 
> unpredictable things do sometimes happen in the history of 
languages, 
> and words do get swapped back and forth in ways that obscure their 
> history.
> 
> Llama Nom





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