[gothic-l] Athanareiks = Heidrek?

[Frank Kermes]

>From: sig <sigmund at algonet.se>
>Reply-To: gothic-l at egroups.com
>To: gothic-l at egroups.com
>Subject: Re: [gothic-l] Athanareiks = Heidrek?
>Date: Fri, 01 Dec 2000 23:33:23 +0100
>
>Frank and Matt,
(snip)
>  Maybe you're right. However, it's interesting to note that
>modern Swedish has kept Heidur and *aiza- in the sense of
>honor both. But there is a distinction between honor and
>honor:
>
>  Heidur is today's "heder" in the sense of 'honor' in an
>ethic-social context, like family honor.
>*aiza- is perhaps today's "ära" which also means 'honor' but
>more in a purely social meaning, =repute.
>Frequently one sees those two together in a proverbial
>context as "heder och ära".

Hmm.  Brain still assimilating here, but "Athanareiks" could possibly carry
the sense of "repute rich" and "Heidrek" "(filial) honor rich"?  I realize
that the mdn. Swedish sense "ara" is not identical with the Atha-athana-
group . . .  wait, cognitive flash!

If Gothic Athana- is related to atta- as Matt indicates with the patrimonial
connotation (inheritance), that could semantically go either way (repute or
family honor-reputation from your family, or the family honor itself . . .),
could it not?

>
>  This theory relies heavily on my assumption that Go. "z"
>has
>some relation with r, which it could have if drawing from
>the little I have seen in superficial sanscrit
>studies, where they seem to treat toning r (with a dot under
>it) as a vowel pronounced vocalized rs, ~= vocalized z. If
>this holds up there might perhaps be some chance that a
>gliding from r to z to th has occured, creating athana out
>of ärana, 'with honor'. Hence Athanareiks and Heidrek could
>indeed convey the same or similar meaning of honorfull
>leader or
>honor-rich.

I think it does; at least in Old Norse, "primitive" Norse (basically the
pre-literary Runic language) seems to use a terminal /R/ separate from
initial or medial /r/ that represents proto-germanic -az, as does Gothic -s.
  In fact, (I'm only just beginning to learn Gothic, so my knowledge is
still weak), it looks like many strong masculine nominative singular nouns
are nearly identical, with Old Norse -r replacing Gothic -s (and all the
other phonological changes and syllabic excision that separates the two),
cf. Gothic "Wods" and Old Norse "Odhr," which both basically mean "fury?"

So switching from "ara" with a tonal /z/ to /th/ "atha" probably is not any
different than that, or /k/ to /ch/ to /h/, or the other bizarre consonantal
interchanges going on . . .

Sorry for spouting off about such basic stuff--I'm primarily a historian,
but this linguistics stuff is just so fun!

Cheers,
Frank
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