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

[ualarauans]

Hails Iggwimer!

Thanks a lot for your reply which made me clearer understand your 
viewpoint. Of course you're right making a difference 
between "people" and "tribe", to use these conventional terms. It's 
a good point to try and look what Gothic words could have been in 
use here. I'm not pretending to pontificate in questions of 
terminology challenging renowned scholars of the subject such as 
Wenskus, Wolfram and Yourself, for what I apparently lack knowledge, 
but only trying to make things a little bit more "consistent", to 
use this improper word, as seen from the point of the language.

So, a "people" consisting of several "tribes" is thiuda. The supreme 
ruler of such a tribal confederation is thiudans. No problems so 
far, moreover that, taking into consideration the numerous parallels 
in other IE languages, we may think of the pair "thiuda – thiudans" 
as a common heritage of the PIE epoch
(*teuta: - *teutanos/*teutonos).

A "tribe" as a component part of a thiuda-people is most likely the 
unattested *kinds F.-i, a totality of interrelated big families, 
kinsfolk in a broad sense as you pointed out, absolutely convincing 
for my part. A head of such a tribe is called kindins, a word we 
have in the Bible translating Greek hHGEMWN, which termed a Roman 
governor of a particular province. Pontius Pilatus was kindins of 
Judaea (Mt. 27:2ff.) and Quirinus - kindins of Syria (Luc. 2:2). 
>From these examples and the fragment of the Gothic Calendar we know 
which word choice was made by Wulfila to approximately render the 
Roman power institutes in Gothic. It was the Emperor who was called 
thiudans, and his governors in provinces became kindinos. Which 
implies that a Gothic kindins was in charge of a lesser "unit" than 
a thiudans, and that several kindinos stood in fact under the 
leadership of their supreme ruler – thiudans. It is interesting 
enough to see that, if thinking in Gothic terms, the Roman Empire 
was understood as a big thiuda (people), and a province like Syria 
or, say, Thracia, was thought as a *kinds, a component tribe of the 
larger body. More important though for our ends is that we may 
roughly draw the following scheme: the people (thiuda) standing 
under the (both administrative and religious -?) power of the king 
(thiudans), is subdivided in several closer-related communities or 
tribes (*kindeis pl.) led by their particular leaders (kindinos 
pl.). That is, in my opinion kindins was more likely not a successor 
of thiudans to perform his functions in whatever way, but rather one 
of his subordinate officers, sworn to allegiance together with his 
kinsfolk (*kinds) to follow the rest of the thiuda, to fight for the 
common cause etc. This relation (*kinds – kindins) can prove no less 
ancient, it has its IE cognates too and may be reconstructed as 
*gentis - *gentinos.

The new-formed "Odinistic" Gefolgschaften which you justly mention 
as distinct from original kindred tribes were probably termed 
*drauhts F-i, their leader being *drauhtins, which words are absent 
in Wulfila's, though we meet their cognates – drauhtiwitoth 
STRATEIA "military expedition"; drauhtinassus "idem"; drauhtinon 
STRATEUESQAI "to make war"; ga-drauhts STRATIWTHS "warrior" – all 
with militaristic semantics, what may suggest such Gefolgschaften 
(*drauhteis pl.) were primarily charged with warfare. Every male 
member of such a group was a warrior (ga-drauhts). That was truly 
the "Stoss- und Triebkraft" of the whole people on their migrations. 
That we lack the attestation of these terms in the Bible is due to 
the fact that there was nothing there that could be translated with 
them.

Now it's kuni which has to find its place in the whole picture. Was 
this word to designate the big family, probably the smallest social 
unit, a component of the above-discussed *kinds? Or it was a term of 
quite another size and order? However it may be, this is the word 
which *kuniggs is derived from. Please note again that this way of 
forming words (kuni + -igg- = *kuniggs), unlike PIE-style thiudans 
and kindins, is exclusively Germanic, a later one as compared to 
them.

In fact, it's the fragmentariness of the survived texts that can be 
blamed for some "inconsistency" in this matter. We have two pairs of 
words *kinds – kindins and kuni - *kuniggs. But only kindins and 
kuni are actually attested. So the researchers not eager to tread 
the insecure soil of word reconstructions speak of Gothic kunja 
(pl.) led by kindinos (pl.) which may happen to be a 
misrepresentation of the relations once existed. A *kinds headed by 
a kindins might have been an institute quite different from a kuni 
with *kuniggs as its derivate. To determine the presumably original 
meaning of the latter word, we have to clarify what kuni precisely 
referred to within the social structure of the Gothic wandering 
communities reconstructed by specialists. And of course, Ingemar, 
you are right that this word is not attested in the meaning other 
than "king". The "nobleman" semantics which I suggested result from 
its formal linguistic shape (lit. "descendant of kuni"). It could 
have been the very first meaning of the word, and it didn't last 
long enough to make it into written sources, and was very soon 
shifted to "king", at least in West- and North-Germanic. And of 
course I can easily prove wrong here, for the Germanic pre-history 
is a rather insecure soil for myself. I'll be happy to get a drag 
over to a safe path.

I'll keep thinking on the subject, especially what you said about 
correlations of power institutes and certain religious concepts – a 
theme quite interesting and breathtaking. I'll be most happy to hear 
your opinion again.

Ualarauans






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