Bisinus - Bessinus

[ualarauans]

--- In gothic-l at yahoogroups.com, "faltin2001" <d.faltin@> wrote:
>
> Venantius Fortunatus mentioned a Thuringian king Bessinus and a 
queen
> Basina, who would have ruled around 460 AD. The name Bessinus, also
> rendered as Bisinus is quite an unusual name. Since B and V are 
often
> interchangible some scholars have argued that the name means 
Visendus
> or Visandus. Others have pointd out that it is strange that 
Bessinus
> had a wife named Basina and therefore argued that these were not 
names
> but some sort of titles.

It was early Byzantine Greek where the B/V confusion took its 
origin. To the time, Greek B (beta) came to be pronounced as [v], 
but since the Greek alphabet didn't dispose of another separate 
letter for [b], they used beta for both [b] and [v]. Procopius in 
V.18.29, 31-33 mentions a Goth named OUISANDOS BANDALARIOS, which 
probably stood for *Wisandus Wandalaharjis. To render Gothic [w] he 
used both OU and B in neighboring words. And he writes names 
BALERIANOS, BENETIAI etc. with a beta for Latin v.

But is there some evidence that this change was spread outside 
Greek? When writing Bessinus, Fortunatus was probably meaning just 
Bessinus, not *Wessinus, unless he copied his account from some 
Greek original.

That these names may be titles seems likely. If the form they are 
written already postdates the 2nd shift, it could be PG *bat-, 
maybe, the same as in suppletive *batiza-,
*batista- "better", "best" (?)

> Now, the Gothic Vesi, meaning 'the nobles', were the elite of the
> Tervingi. There name formed the basis for the ethnogenesis of the 
Vesi
> people, who would later be called Visigoths. The ancient sources
> render their name also as 'Vessi' and 'Besi'. I wonder if the name
> Bessinus could be rendered with V, i.e. Vessinus and if it was a 
title
> rather than a name, maybe it meant 'the noble'.

Yes, the authors mention a people called Bessi and the like. Are 
they really identical with Visi? The latter name is usually derived 
from PG *wesu- < PIE *wesu- "good", cf. Sanskr. vasu-, Avestan vohu 
etc. (the idea I saw in Wilhelm Streitberg's Gotisches 
Elementarbuch, p. 7).

Interestingly, both etymologies - Go. *Batins and Go. *Wisins - 
suggest some "good" semantics...

> Cheers,
> 
> Dirk

OUALARABANS





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