Political Vocabulary

[Michael Erwin]

Hails,

Two ongoing discussions involve this. As it is we only have two good  
sources: Wulfila's translation and the known names (mostly  
politically-important people). A few notes:

- thiudans - Only one name comes to mind, that of Theudis (iirc),  
Theodoric's viceroy in Spain. The word obviously derives from  
'thiuda' (a or the people). Any associations with Ostrogotha, Cniva,  
etc. are purely speculative, and any associations with Ermanericus  
must explain '-ricus' instead of '*-theudanus.'

- reiks - Many more names come to mind, from both before and after  
Wulfila. The word's obviously cognate with 'rix,' 'rex,'  
'rich,' (more distantly) 'archon,' etc. and may be borrowed from some  
Celtic language or from Latin into Common Germanic, or may be  
inherited from earlier Indo-European.

- On the 14th, Fredrik wrote

"Relation, (german verhältniss).

"E.g. In the sentence: They have destroyed all the patriarchal and  
idyllic relations."

With apologies for both Fredrik and Ualarauans, I have spoken English  
all my life and I have no idea what the example sentence should mean  
in English, let alone what form it would have in Gothic.

I don't know why I'm having such trouble; it could reflect (1)  
dialect variation (2) that another language identifies certain  
concepts with either patriarchy or relation, but English separates  
these concepts from whichever word or (3) that Fredrik thinks one way  
(where the above have something to do with each other) and I think  
another way (where they don't) and I can't wrap my head around  
Fredrik's thinking just now.

Any of these barriers to understanding English would imply greater  
barriers to understanding Gothic, and political concepts have varied  
more than, say, near-relative kinship. And frankly English is my  
first language, and Gothic isn't.

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