[gothic-l] General question about [CG][ae](l)?tier

[David Salo]

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>Ok, a hard question, we have :

    Manuel, there's an awful lot of work that's been done on the history of
languages.  Much of it would be accessible to you just through an
etymological dictionary; the rest, through a small amount of research at a
reputable research library.  There is no reason to "reinvent the wheel" and
try to build up etymologies from scratch, particularly when -- without a
due appreciation of the method by which etymologies are deduced -- you can
stumble into all sorts of pitfalls.

>Gutierrez, Gautier, Gaultier, Gaut, Celt, Gall(us), Gaupt, Gotor,
>Goths.
>
>I see a patter here :
>First letter : G or C
>then (o-u-e, but always a closed sound).
>then an optional l or p
>then t , always.
>
>Is this a hallucination? Is the same stuff sung different voices ?

    It's not a "hallucination"; it's a mistake.  The fact that a word has
consonants similar to another word does not mean that they are related.
Yes, sometimes /k/ in one language corresponds to /g/ in another; but in
that case the change will be general, or will be occur in a definable
context; it won't sporadically occur in one word.  For instance, in the
relationship between Germanic and Celtic, Germanic /k/ will correspond to
Celtic /g/ but _not_ the other way around.  So a relationship between
"gaut" and "celt" is impossible...

    Gutierrez probably comes from a Latin *Vitterici (for "filius
Vitterici"), and *Vittericus (that's the nominative) is probably a
Latinization of Gothic *Witireiks "ruler of/with understanding".
    The unrelated Gau(l)tier is very reliably attested, through historical
documents, as being a French borrowing from an old German name --
Presumably Frankish, though the name had wider currency.  It was probably
borrowed in the German form Waltheri, and corresponds to Gmc. *Waldaharjaz
"power-host".  The change -al- > -au- is one that occurs (only) within
French.

    Gaut is simply the tribal name *Gautaz, and never had an "l" in it at
all; it isn't related to either Witi- or Walda-.  A connection is sometimes
made with the IE root ghew- "pour". *Gautaz should reflect PIE *Ghoudos,
but of course Germanic itself was completely capable of forming new nouns
based on existing ablaut patterns, so the word does not need to be traced
back that far.

>At least, it's very suspicious.

    Yes, but the suspicion should fall on your method; anything which gets
that many "positive" results, but lacks any means to distinguish a true
connection from the false appearance of a connection, lacks any usefulness
as a linguistic tool.

>Hellens <--- Chellens ( like a german ch) <-- kellens <-- keltens

   The word "helle:n" never contained a /x/ sound; the initial h is a
spiritus asper, or breath h, not a fricative; in Greek, such h's usually
arise from s, sometimes from y or w.
   Celtic /k/ corresponds, by and large, to Greek /k/.

>Are hellens the  gupta under another voice ?

   No.  Gupta is a normally constructed Sanskrit past participle from the
root GUP "keep, defend"; it became used as a proper name.

   While I'm happy that you're so enthusiastic about your Gothic
preoccupation, it would be a help to you to learn a little bit about the
languages you're discussing, and the relations between them.  Intuition may
be a good point to start investigating the relationships between words and
names, but it's not sufficient; you need to have a method that will help
you test your hypotheses.  These methods already exist; you just need to
learn them.

/\     WISTR LAG WIGS RAIHTS
\/            WRAIQS NU IST                               <> David Salo
<dsalo at softhome.net> <>



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