[gothic-l] Goths in the East

[Bertil Haggman]

The people's name Goths derive from the
same etymological root as the ethnic names gautar
and gutar in Vaest- and Oestergoetland and on
the island of Gotland.

The name Goths appeared early in Greek and Roman
literature.

At the beginning of the 3rd century AD after
the Goths, probably migrating from southern
Scandinavia, settled north of the Black Sea
and formed the First Great Gothic Kingdom,
ruled by Ermanarik. If one adds the
Second Great Gothic Kingdom, the Ostrogothic
kingdom in Italy and the Visigothic kingdom in Spain
there would be four larger Gothic kingdoms
founded. What we have would be the following
chronology:

150 - 350 AD

The Slavic name for the Goths is formed with
two variants from the Proto-Slavic stems *rusu
and *rudu, red. This name began to spread
among the Slavs in the form of *Rusi and *Rudi,
'the Red-Blond (People).

Ca. 450 AD

The palatilized Proto-Slavic forms *Rus and *Rud is
a common name by this time among the Slavs for
Goths, irrespective of the ethnic origin. The Proto-
Slavic name *Rus corresponds to the names
Visigoths and Ostrogoths, but it is different as it is
of Slavic origin.

Ca. 400 - 600 AD

The Goths in Russia accept the Slavic name
for themselves, i.e. *Rus, which they render *Rauths
in their own language.

600 - 800 AD

The Greeks in the South and the Finno-Ugric tribes
in the north borrow the Gothic form of the ethnic name
from which emerges Greek Rhos and Estonian Roots and
Ruotsi in Finnish. The Arabs borrowed the Slavic form
directly into Ar-Rus, the Rus.

Gothically

Bertil Haggman

> Nobody denies that "greutungi" and "tervingi"
> go back to Gothic originals. This is elementary
> pablum. As mentioned before, the Varyags and Kolbyags
> emerge long after the disappearance of the Goths as
> any kind of dominant or creative force in the East,
> political or cultural. Scholars who do not want to
> accept this equally elementary fact will not be taken
> seriously no matter how many times they repeat
> themselves (or repost themselves). Theses which spring
> from zero evidence are ideological, not
> scientific.



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