Gothic names

[ualarauans]

--- In gothic-l at yahoogroups.com, Michal Cigan <michalcigan at ...> 
wrote:
>
> 1) I herad, that a german (maybe archaic, i dont know exactly) 
word for Tuesday,
> parallel to Dienstag, is also "ertag", "eritag", or "erchtag". And 
from this
> results (not to me, but to czech-german prof. Karbusicky), 
that "er", or "erch"
> is another name form protogerman sky god, for example Tyr - in 
modern nordic
> form. What's your opinion?

Hi Michal,

The forms you're citing are Bavarian, coming from older 
erintag "Tuesday". The word is most commonly believed to be one of 
Gothic loans found in Southern OHG dialects. I don't know much about 
it but I did a bit of delving into our list's archives in search 
of "ertag" and I ran into a detailed and professional report by 
Francisc Czobor concerning linguistic traces of a Gothic influence 
in South Germany. Here it is:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/gothic-l/message/2225
(I hope the link will work on-line, if not, it is the post # 2225, 
Jun 21, 2000; Subject: Gothic and Old Bavarian)

To briefly quote it and summarize some of the discussion that 
followed, the word for "Tuesday" along with several other weekdays 
names were borrowed by the Goths from the Greek in a manner like 
this:

ARHOS hHMERA "the day of Ares" > *Arjaus dags or *Areins dags.

PEMPTH hHMERA "the fifth day" (> via a colloquial compound 
*PENTHMERA - ?) > *paintedags > still more "Gothicized" *pintadags;

PARASKEUH "(the day of) preparation" > paraskaiwe (Mc 15:42) > 
*pareinsdags

SABBATOU hHMERA "the day of Sabbath" > sabbato dags (Mc 2:27 et 
passim) > *sambatadags.

The late-Gothic reconstructions cited above are based on 
corresponding words in old and/or modern Bavarian which are supposed 
to have been borrowed from Gothic:

*areinsdags > OB erintag > NB ertag, erchtag, ergetag, irtag, 
irchtag etc;

*pintadags > NB pfinztag, pfünztag;

*pareinsdags > OB pferintag;

*sambatadags > OB sambaztag > NHG Samstag.

An interesting remark concerning "the day of Ares" was made in
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/gothic-l/message/7080:

> among the Bavarian words considered to be introduced by the Gothic
> mission (VIth century) is: O. Bav. erintag (Mod. Bav. Ergetag,
> Erchtag, Ertag) "Tuesday" < OHG *Ariótag < Go. *Arjaus dags < Gk.
> Areo:s (he:mera) "day of Ares", reinterpreted by the Arians as "day
> of Arius" (otherwise Christians would not keep the name of a pagan
> god).

what could support the reconstructed form *Arjaus as a genitive of 
*Arjus, *Arius < Greek ARIOS, not ARHS. But we have the -n- in the 
Old Bavarian erintag which speaks for the weak declension in Gothic: 
*Areins or *Arins (?). Maybe the two forms coexisted in Old Bavarian 
and/or Gothic?

It is interesting if there could have been other weekdays names of 
Gothic < Greek origin which had not made it into Bavarian and are 
thus unattested? Maybe the whole Gothic week was originally Greek? 
If so, we should probably reconstruct smth like:

*eljaus dags < hHLIOU hHMERA "Sunday"
(but there's a Swiss word "Frontag" which may be < Go. fraujadags, 
fraujins dags, calqued from Greek hH KYRIAKH hHMERA "Lord's day")
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/gothic-l/message/7817

*airmins dags < hERMOU hHMERA "Wednesday", which could naturally be 
converted into *airminadags "great day" or *Airminis dags "the day 
of Irmin (= Mars?)"

etc...

Is there a chance that the Goths did actually know and use words 
like *Sunnons dags, *Menins dags and still less neutral *Teiwis 
dags, *Wodanis dags etc?

Another opinion on ertag was that this er- may have come from the 
word for "sword" (Go. hairus), which was a worshipped symbol of Mars
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/gothic-l/message/347

or that it is short from Ermin, Irmin (epithet of Germanic Mars)
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/gothic-l/message/5957

If I remember right, the sword worship was a specific feature of 
European Iranians (Scythes, Sarmatians). It could be borrowed by 
East Germanic in the migration epoch, of course. But this etymology 
would seem to me less probable than the Greek. Where is the anlaut h-
 lost in ertag, I wonder?

The Irmin hypothesis is perhaps what Herr Prof. Karbusicky meant 
when talking of "protogerman sky god". It would be nice to hear more 
opinions on the possibility of *ermintag > erintag > ertag.

Ualarauans






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