SV: [gothic-l] Name of the Semnones

[Bertil Häggman]

Frank,

Oh, I see. Well, there might be something
to the model for the people name.

Well, Jordanes has similar names which have also
been interpreted as Svear. Tacitus had been an
intelligence officer in the Roman army so he
certainly had access to various persons and the
technique of asking questions.

But he writes were little on all the peoples
between Elbe and the Baltic Sea and suddenly
he has this wealth of information about a people,
not in southern Scandinavia, but 600 to 800
kilometers to the north of Smygehuk, the southern-
most point of th eScandinavian peninsula. Somehow
it seems peculiar. It would be more likely that he had
something to say about the Goetar in southern Scandinavia
which were so much closer to Germania proper.

Well, this is leading away from your main
interest.

Semnonically

Bertil

> Actually, I was just trying to use the word "Suiones" as an example for the
> way Tacitus Latinized the names, i.e. "-ones" as the weak ending, equivalent
> to "-an" (as another post pointed out), though becoming the "-r" in Old
> Norse.
>
> As far as the case of the Suiones, isn't it possible that this was a group
> that had a name similar to the Svear?  I've seen countless attempts at a
> geographical reconstruction of the locations of Tacitus' tribes, but they're
> all based on modern ideas of cartography and don't seem to take classical
> geography into account--in other words, we don't really know who he was
> talking about where. . .



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