[gothic-l] Aestii Not Estonians

[Bertil Häggman]

Francisc,

Thank you for the Jordanes references. The reason
for my bringing up the Livs was that they were much closer
to the Goths in Gothiscandza than the Estonians, so I
was just wondering about the connection geographically.

However, I think the answer is with Tacitus, who
in  _Germania_ 45.2 wrote:

"To continue, then, the right shore of the Suebic sea
washes the tribes of the Aestii..."

The general view has been to identify the Aestii
just as Baltic peoples, that is Old Prussian,
Lithuaniana and Latvians. But the name as
such sounds very much like Estonians. Jordanes
actually have them as well in _Getica_ 36,
(post quos ripam Oceani item Aesti
tenent) and claims they live on the shore of the Ocean
beyond the Vistula. Tacitus wrote that the Aestii
called amber glesum, but that is of Germanic
origin. (Old Prussian gentars and Lithuanian
gintaras). So in spite of the sound similarities
to the Estonians (in Swedish ester) the
reference seems not to be to them but to
Lithuanians, Old Prussians and Latvians.
So van Bree actually mistakingly, in my
opinion, equates the Aestii with Estonians.

Aestically

Bertil




the languages of the Baltic (or Balto-Finnic) subgroup of the
Finno-Ugric language group, such as Finnish, Estonian, Livonian, etc.,
and even Saami (Lappish) underwent a strong Germanic influence in the
last two millenia. In Finnish and Estonian, for instance, there are
many borrowings, mostly from Common-Germanic (the oldest ones, that
can be found also in Lappish), Old Norse, Swedish, but also from Low
German and Gothic. Such borrowings that are rather from Gothic than
from other Germanic sources are, I think, for instance the Finnish
words miekki "sword" (Goth. mekeis) and ja "and" (Goth. jah). I have
no special information on Livonian, so I can't tell anything about the
linguistic evidence of the presumed contact of the Livs with the
Goths.



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