[gothic-l] Eruli: Etymology and Scandinavia V

[Bertil Haggman]

"The scholarly consensus since the beginning of
this century has been that the forms *erlaz, erilaR and
Eruli exhibit suffix ablaut, as was already guessed by Zeuss; 
there has been some doubt, however, as to whether we
are dealing with three words or only two....the vowel-less
form *erlaz would have been a distinct word already in
Proto-Scandinavian...But all is not clear about the...
supposed ablaut. Friesen objected that -il-/-ul- ablaut is not
a certainty in Old Icelandic noun paradigms adduced by Noreen
to prove its existence, and as an explanation of the relationship 
between erilaR and Eruli it is 'only a guess'. Wessén's analogy 
between this 'suffix ablaut -il:-ul' and Latin exsul: exsilium is
problematic, since such alternations in Latin are generally
attributed to a pattern of assimilation associated with vowel
weakening...

Friesen suggested that there never had been a Germanic form
*erul, but rather that Erulus -i was the Latinization (which later
entered Greek) of erilaR, adapted to the fact that in Latin -ilus
is almost exclusively an adjective ending, whereas -ulus is a 
regular derivative noun suffix....

To sum up, we cannot reconstruct a meaning for Eruli on 
Germanic evidence alone; the name is related to the jarl
words and erilaR, but cannot be equated with any of them. On the
other hand, their close relationship means that we ultimately
are looking for one etymology, not three."

The next contribution will include Taylor's discussion of the
Indo-European Etymology of the people name Eruli.

Erulically

Bertil


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