Was the word "kunig/kunigas/kunigur" a gothic word?

[ualarauans]

Hi again!

Isn't it *þeuðanaz (Go. thiudans, ON þjo:ðann, OE þeoden, OS thiodan 
etc) which was the true PG name for "king" as the "head of a tribe 
(*þeuðô)"? It has a transparent IE word-forming pattern: "collective 
noun" + suffix –ano-/-ino- expressing more or less the meaning "head 
of ..." We have a number of Germanic terms shaped in this way: 
*druxtinaz (ON dro:ttinn, OE dryhten, OS druhtin, OHG truhtin 
etc) "military leader", lit. "head of a *druxtiz (host of warriors, 
cf. Go. gadrauhts "warrior", lit. "member of the same *drauhts F.-i 
< *druxtiz)"; *kinðinaz (represented solely by Go. kindins, if it's 
not a Gothic new-making after the known pattern) "head of a *kinðiz" 
(< PIE *gentis, cf. Lat. gens; there must have been a Gothic word 
*kinds F.-i meaning "clan" or the like, as the Swedish examples 
cited by Ingemar show); *xarjanaz (ON Herjann, epithet of 
Odin), "head of a *xarjaz (army)"; and even *Wôðanaz himself, 
understood as "head of wôða- (if we take it as a collective noun 
meaning "the furious ones", in the sense of die Wilde Jagd, as Emile 
Benveniste suggested in his Vocabulary of the Indo-European 
Institutions). Outside Germania, we see Latin dominus ("head of 
domus, family house"), tribunus ("head of tribus") following the 
same model. A Germanic ethnonym rendered through a Celtic mediation 
was Teutoni ("kings"?). And we've got feminine Illyrian tautana in 
the sense "queen". Summing up, the word Go. thiudans is very very 
old in its reference to the leader of a tribe.

Then, what about *kuningaz? It is formed from PG. *kunjan "kin" 
through adding the patronymic suffix –inga-, which is Germanic, not 
IE. The original meaning of *kuningaz must have been "descendant of 
a (noble) kin". That is, it didn't necessarily imply a sole person's 
leadership. It could have meant just "nobleman" in the beginning. 
And the term itself could have originated in the West-Germanic area, 
where the word is documented best. ON konungr can be a later 
borrowing from the continent. Surely you know that place in 
Ynglingasaga 20:
"Dyggvi's mother was Dro:tt, daughter of the king Danp(r), son of 
Ri:gr, who was the first called konungr in the Danish tongue... 
Dyggvi was the first of his kinsmen to be called konungr; and before 
that they had been called dro:ttnar, and their wives 
dro:ttningar..." (the imperfect translation is mine)
which reminds of Konr ungr (lit. "Konr the Young", hence konungr by 
folk-etymology), son of Ri:gr in Ri:gsðula. Doesn't it suggest that 
the term konungr as compared to dro:ttinn and þjo:ðann was 
relatively late, which fact was still remembered in mythologized 
history? Note that in the context of both sources Danr and Danpr are 
mentioned, which is certainly a reminiscence of Don and Dnepr known 
ultimately from the Goths after their adventures in East Europe (Go. 
*Dan(u)s jah *Danapr(u)s, used together in Gothic epic songs). 
Didn't the Goths play a role (and what then?) in this shift of the 
power terminology for the rest of Germania?

A kind of conclusion so far: the Gothic word *kuniggs originally 
referred to "nobleman", "one of the elite", "prince", a term closely 
associated with religious-tribal structure of the pagan Goths, and 
that was the reason why Wulfila didn't use it when translating Greek 
BASILEUS and ARCWN. But it happened to get borrowed by some peoples 
with whom the Goths maintained contacts and eventually became a part 
of their power vocabulary. The rise of *kuningaz to "king" was 
exclusively West-Germanic, later spread to the North, and that was 
called forth by some social transformations in the West-Germanic 
area...

Ualarauans





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