[gothic-l] Gepids

[Alburysteve at AOL.COM]

Hi Bertil:

Many thanks for the extensive quote from Jordanes:

>  Further to my comments on the Gepids Jordanes
>  wrote in Getica XVII:94,95:
>
>  "You surely remember that in the begining I said
>  the Goths went forth from the bosom of the island
>  of Scandza with Berig, their king, sailing in only
>  three ships toward the hither shore of Ocean,
>  namely to Gothiscandza. One of these three
>  ships proved to be slower than the others, as is
>  usually the case, and thus is said to have given the
>  tribe their name, for in their language gepanta means
>  slow. Hence it came to pass that gradually and
>  by corruption the name Gepidae was coined for them
>  by way of reproach. For undoubtedly they too trace
>  their origin from the stock of the Goths, but because,
>  as I have said, gepanta means something slow and
>  stolid, the word Gepidae arose as a gratuitous
>  name of reproach. I do not believe this is very far wrong,
>  for they are slow of thought and too sluggish for
>  quick movement of their bodies."
>
>  So it was after all correct that at least Jordanes claimed
>  they were slow of mind. But the introduction of a Gepidic
>  word, gepanta, meaning slow seems dubious. Rather
>  the late Latin gepidus=slow, would be one explanation.

Gepidus is late Latin?  My (classical) latin dictionary fails to even include
a gep- root.  Is it a loan word?  Sorry for all the questions.

>  My personal belief, however, is that gepid is related to the
>  god Gaut or Gapt, the Gothic progenitor. Gaut or Gapt is of
>  course also another name for Odin.

I suspected that the tribal name was a corruption of something and this makes
much sense.  My initial reaction to Jordanes' version of Gothic origins was
to see it as a reflex of the wider creation legend where the world is made
from the corpse of the giant Ymir.  Gapt might be head (haubith), Hulmul the
"helm" (hilms), Augis the eyes (augo), and Amal the shoulders (ams).  Being
several christian generations removed from the pagan source, it is hard to
say how jumbled the terms might have become by the time Jordanes (being no
Snorri) records them.  Comparisons have been made between the
"deconstruction" of Ymir in Norse mythology to similar Vedic reflexes
(Puhvel's Comparative Mythology:284ff) and, of course, the propensity to
carry tribal geneologies back to the "first man" is well documented (cf
Turville-Petre's Myth and Religion of the North, Ch 9).

Thanks again for all the help.

Rgds,

Steve O'Brien
Albury, Ontario

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