Boz = Bus < *Baus?

[ualarauans]

Excuse my contributing again to this rather Slavic than Gothic 
topic, but it just came to my mind that the “Slovo o polku Igoreve” 
may have been told after a hypothetical ”Yngvárs saga ok fólks hans” 
with inherent reminiscences kept of the Goths being akin to the 
actual Varangian dynasty.

In case it happens to be of interest for somebody who isn’t well 
familiar with the source (or doesn’t read Cyrillic), I tried to put 
the fragment of the Lay in question as follows: (errors in the 
transliteration and the Gothic (back-?)translation are to be imputed 
to me)

Se bo gotÜskyję krasnyję děvy
vÚspěšę na brězě sinemu morju:
zvonę RusÜskymÜ zlatomÜ,
pojųtÚ vrěmę Busovo,              
lelějųtÚ mÜstÜ Šarokanju

Sai auk gutiskos skaunjos (1) maujos
ufsuggwun ana statha blewaizos mareins:
fetjandeins sik(2) rothsiskamma gultha,
liuthond theihsa Bausis(3),
lustond fraweitis Sarwakonis(4)

An English version is here (I still doubt I understood everything 
right, so plz don’t be evil to me, OK):

Behold the beautiful Gothic maids
singing at the coast of the blue sea [the Black Sea?]:
ringing with Rus’ish gold [which the victorious Goths stole from the 
treasury of the Antes??]
they praise the time of Bus [under whom the Antes were defeated???]
they wish that Sharokan could (be) avenge(d) (?) [a place quite not 
clear to me]

Phonetic notes:
_ę_ stands for nasal /e/, _ų_ for nasal /o/ which both were most 
probably spoken already as /a/ resp. /u/ in the time of the Lay; _ě_ 
marks a long vowel which became /’e/ in Russian, /i/ in Ukrainian 
and /ia/ in Polish (what was it then?), in Gothic loanwords it 
reflects diphthongal -ai-, as in OCSl. xlěbÚ “bread” < Go. hlaib-; 
_Ü_ and _Ú_ are conventional signs for Slavic reduced /i/ resp. /u/.

Semantic notes:
(1) Russian Vorlage hat it literally “raudos maujos”
(2) literally “ringing with”, what means they have put on some 
jewelry made of that gold?
(3) *Baus (i-stem) is an attempt to create a Gothic etymology of the 
name, its literal meaning then being “evil-minded” (NHG böse) – 
quite to the point when talking of a leader of some enemy tribe 
which later became mythicized  (“The Evil One” (*Baus) ruling over a 
people of “giants” (*Anteis) – how you like that?). Then pre-
Wulfilan *Baus [baus] > Late Gothic [bo:s] written down as Boz by 
Jordanes, and [baus] > quite regularly Slavic [bus] in the Lay (???).
(4) ŠarokanÜ* seems to be Turkic, from sary “yellow” and ka(gh)
an “sovereign”, “khan”. It could be rendered like [fraweitis] Gilwis 
Thiudanis, my *Sarwakons is just slapdash constructed from the words 
sarwa- “weapon” and *kons (i-stem) “brave”, “known”, “renowned”.

For a non-Germanic etymology of Boz there might be of some reference:
Ossetic buz “thankful”, buznyg “thanks!”;
an etymology involving Turkish boz “grey” could also be considered 
in the context of the question about (proto-)Turkic identity of 
(some) Huns (we know the Huns meddled in that case of Uinitharius 
vs. Boz – Get. 248-9)

Ualarauans

P.S. I discovered lately Ossetic ændæ “beyond” (Sanskr. 
ánta “end”, “border”, hence Antes = “frontier tribes”) pointed out 
in G. Vernadsky’s  “Das frühe Slawentum“ (V. Bern., 1956, p. 256), 
but I couldn’t find the word in my dictionary (why?)






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