[gothic-l] Eruli: The IE Etymology VI

[Bertil Haggman]

Continuing my presentation of Taylor's views on the word
Eruli. I am leaving out the notes but hope later to provide a
short bibliography.

Gothically

Bertil

"Until recently, most proposals centered on one or both
of the semantic fields 'war' and 'man'. The 'war(rior)'
etymology was supported by the following considerations
leaving aside the 'sword' and 'army' etymologies based
on inorganic h- in the form Heruli:

1) The supposed existence of a name *Er for the Germanic
war *Tiwaz, based primarily on...'Tuesday'. The suspicion soon
arose, however, and was eventually confirmed, that the Er- in
Ertag is not Germanic, but a corrupt and umlauted form of the
name Ares from a half-translated Areos aemera. There
remains, to be sure, the Germanic word ermin- 'large', as in the
Saxons' custom of constructing an Irminsul 'universalis columna',
to which victory sacrifices were apparently made. But attempts to
etymologize ermin- as 'warrior' (through Olc. jara 'battle' remain
dubious."




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