[gothic-l] Re: Gepids

[dirk at SMRA.CO.UK]

--- In gothic-l at y..., Alburysteve at a... wrote:
> 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


Hello Steve,

ancient authors were apparently also very uncertain about the meaning
of that name. Isidore of Seville (I think) said that the name Gepids
comes from Ge-pedes meaning something like foot-soldier. Another
classical interpretation is Ge-paides, which is supposed to mean
'Decendents of the Getes' (a non-Germanic people in Dacia).

Heinrich Sevin (die Gebiden, 1955) argued that the name should really
be *Gebids* rather than *Gepids*. Sevin calles the settlement areas of
the Gepids in the Weichsel/Masuren area as Gebidoios. After the
Gepidic kingdom in Pannonia Sirmiensis had been destroyed by the
Langobards and Avars, Sevin shows that some of them had been
forcefully resettled to Italy, others stayed behind in the Avaria,
where a reported incident with the Khan Bajan and the Byzantine
emperor shows that they were regarded as subject if not slaves of the
Avars. Seven argues that some of them may have returned to the old
Gebidoios where they are 'attested' in the Masur-Germanic culture of
the 6th/7th century.

Under Theoderic, Gepids had also been resettled to southern Gaul and
parts of the Gepids also ended up in the Rhine/Elsass area according
to Sevin. Interestingly, the Gepids did produce coins for a while in
the Sirmium area in the 6th century. In fact, I am in contact with a
numismatist of the Austrian Numismatic Institute in Vienna who argues
that the issues were in fact rather substantial. Some coins seem to
show the monogramme and initial of Cunimundus.

I think most authors nowdays believe that the Gepids formed in the
Vistula region out of the  Goths who did not move to the Black Sea
area in the 2nd/3rd centuries as they are not mentioned by Tacitus.
With regards to their name, I suppose we will never now for sure what
it means.

cheers
Dirk



> Albury, Ontario


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