[gothic-l] Re: Gothic word for King

[Francisc Czobor]

Hi Keth,

--- In gothic-l at y..., keth at o... wrote:
> ...
> I was also interested in the source for the name "Halamardus".
> This was said to be from some West Germanic inscription, but
> I do not know which one. I find it interesting, because the first
> part is clearly similar to the first part of "Halaricus". Also, we 
know
> the meaning of both -ricus and -mardus from other Germanic PN's.
> ('mardus' is from "famous", related to German "Märchen", Dutch 
"vermaard".)
> Thus it seems established the Hala- is a first component in Germanic
> PN's. I'd like to compare it with Old Norse "halr" that was a word 
that
> meant "man" or "hero".

I still believe that Alaricus is the correct form, and not, 
"Halaricus", and that is in fact *Ala-reiks "all-ruler", with ala- for 
"all" like in ala-mans "all men" (mankind, totality of humans) or 
ala-brunsts "all-burning" (burnt-offering, holocaust) or ala-þarba 
"all-needy" (very needy, very poor). In the mediaeval Latin texts, 
when in Latin the "h" sound ceased actually to be pronounced, the "h" 
letter sometimes is missing where it should be, sometimes appears 
where it should not ("hypercorrect" forms). Sometimes, when the 
scribes were paid proportionally with the number of letters they 
wrote, they added some supplementary letters, in order to get more 
payment. So they added an initial "h" before vowels, or a "h" after 
"t" or "c" (in Getica, we have "Halaricus" and "Alarichus" beside 
Alaricus), or doubled some letters etc.

> I have before me the text of Hesiod's "Erga kai emerai" (which is
> incidentally also what Bertil asked a while ago, when he said 
> he could not find my Hesiod quote about the bronze men in Theogonia.
> But that was because the quote wasn't from Theogonia, but rather 
from
> Erga kai emerai.) It has lots of proper names in it. Looking at 
random
> I find for example " 'Efaiston " (f="phi"). Here the apostrophe in
> the Greek text is the forward sloping one: " ´ " (don't know if
> that one came through, it being non-ascii). 

Yes, on my computer it came through.

Any way, the translation
> says "Hephaistos". So clearly the forward sloping apostrophe 
represents
> the "H". Another example is  " 'Iapetoîo "  -> "Iapetus".
> But here the accent is a different one, as you point out.
> Here it is rather a normal comma raised up to the top level of the
> letters that form a given line. Another example is Pallas 'Athene,
> where a normal comma occurs in a raised position before the u.c. 
alpha.

Yes, you've got it.

> So those are good pointers, and I will take good care to 
differentiate
> between them. There are however also two kinds of forward-sloping
> apostrophes. Do you know what the difference is? (I suppose one of
> them is merely the aigu that finds no room above the capitals, and
> is hence put in front of them.)

Yes, you're right: the first is the "spirit", the second the "accent 
aigu".

With best regards,

Francisc


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