Back to Attila

Wilson Gray hwgray at GMAIL.COM
Wed Jun 20 14:04:13 UTC 2007


"Atta" is Early Germanic. In addition to supplying the legendary Hun
with his nickname of "Little Father," it also supplied some Slavic
language, e.g. Russian, with their words for "father," "otets" in
Russian, wherein the etymological origin is also "little father" or,
perhaps better, "daddy." Gothic used both "atta" and "fathar."

-Wilson

On 6/20/07, Jim Parish <jparish at siue.edu> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Jim Parish <jparish at SIUE.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: Back to Attila
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>
> Your Name wrote:
> > At one point in this thread, someone said:
> >
> >
> > <<"Attila", I am told, is German for "little father" and may be a  title
> > rather than his name.
> > >>
> >
> >
> >
> > I asked a native German speaker.  His reply:
> > << nope, i've never heard that word.. >>
>
> My understanding is that it's Gothic, not German: "atta" ("father"), plus a
> diminutive.
>
> Jim Parish
>
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> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>


--
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die"---a strange complaint to
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-----
                                              -Sam'l Clemens

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