[gothic-l] Re: Godheimar

[keth at ONLINE.NO]

Hi Dirk,
>
>I know of course that early German placenmames like Gotinga, Gutinge,
>Gotaha etc. are not derived from the Gothic tribal name and stated so
>earlier. I was just wandering what this syllabyl 'Got-, Gut-' may
>represent and if it is a meaning that can also account for placenames
>in Germanic areas outside Germany?

I do not have any literature on German place-names.
But lacking that, perhaps the German personal names
are ruled by some of the same laws of change?

In that case we could regard "Gottfried" as analogous
to "Göttingen", where I'd explain the "ö" as an ordinary
i-Umlaut. From the PN's we know that nearly all German
person names on Got- or Gott- have to do with  English "God",
sometimes maybe "good".

There is also the "Benrather Linie" that I read about last
year, and North of that line, which runs E-W through the
middle of Germany, the local languages have the "d" instead
of the "t" in those positions. That is, Dutch, Niederdeutsch,
Danish, Swedish, etc all have the form God- there, sometimes
Gud- and in the older Scandinavian it used to be the "ð".
(which in many Mss. was actually written as þ)

Thus we hear, for example, about the Danish king "Godefridus",
which exactly corresponds to Hochdeutsch "Gottfried".

I also gave the example of "Godøy" outside Sunnmøre,
and it has the same stem God-. For Old Norse P.N.'s,
see for example Heimskringla, where you can see the
correct Old Norse spellings, e.g. Guðrøðr, Guðrún,
etc..all these names have a stem with the meaning
"god".

Best regards
Keth



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