[gothic-l] Re: Old Prussian
faltin2001
dirk at SMRA.CO.UK
Fri Jun 11 15:11:14 UTC 2004
--- In gothic-l at yahoogroups.com, "llama_nom" <penterakt at f...> wrote:
>
> Hi Dirk,
>
> Some other words from the Elbing Glossary (Old Prussian, 14th or
15th
> century). Some look quite like Gothic, or Germanic, at least:
>
> sarwis - armour
> catils - kettle
> sticlo - glass
> rikis - lord
> alu - mead
> konagis - king
> waldwiko - knight
>
> Sticlo, aside from Gothic _stikls_, has cognates in Slavonic.
> According to Terrence Wade's "Russian Etymological Dictionary",
these
> do derive ultimately from Gothic, which comes from "a Gmc. root
> meaning sharp" - refering to the point of a drinking horn.
Koebler's
> dictionary has this idea too.
>
> _Catils_ might well be from Gothic *katils (ultimately < Lat.
> catillus). Czarnecki's article places Polish kocioł among
just six
> words which can be ascribed with CERTAINTY to Gothic!
>
> I have read that _alu_ could just as easily be
> a Baltic cognate, rather than a borrowing from Germanic necessarily.
> Apparently the word, though not attested, did exist in Gothic (as
> *aluth), and is thought to account for similar forms in Caucasian
> languages ("Etymology", ASC Ross).
>
> _Sarwis_ looks like Gothic _sarwa_ 'armour'. More than that I
can't
> say.
I also mentioned Brunja, which seems Germanic as well. If Sarwis is
originally Germanic, than I would expect it to be Gothic, rather than
a later borrowing when Germans arrived in large numbers in the
region, since the word was not used as far as I know in the middle
ages. Brunja could be a West Germanic borrowing I suppose, but it
looks closer to Gothic Brunjo.
>
> _Konagis_ is presumably Germanic, but maybe West Germanic rather
than
> Gothic? (see Czarnecki's comments on Polish equivalents).
Some Russian archaeologists have argued that Saxons may have moved to
the Vistula region in the 6th century, because of the occurance of a
certain (supposedly) Saxon urn type. These Saxons are said to be
responsible for the so called archaeological Olstyn or Mazur-Germanic
group. I think this is still speculative, but if correct it could
explain West Germanic influence.
> Waldwico,
> I don't know.
I think the Old Prussian word Waldwico, means knight, but also lord
and landlord. The Wald- is supposed to relate to Gothic waldan (to
rule).
> Rugis does seem to be a borrowing, one way or the
> other, but is there any indication for the direction of borrowing?
I think it was borrowed from Germanic (possibly Gothic) to Old
Prussian. Rye in German is Roggen and the name of the Rugi tribe is
believed to mean rye-growers.
> Even if it was from Germanic to Baltic/Slavonic, I guess it might
not
> be possible to know whether Gothic was implicated.
Probably not, but the from Rugis does not look like a borrowing from
medieval German, which almost leaves only Gothic.
>
> Re: Polish, yes Czarnecki discounts many supposed Gothic borrowings
> into Polish, although he does consider a Gothic origin PROBABLE for
> the river names: Pełtew (*fultho), Skrwa (*Struko) & Tanew
(*Tânu-) - =
>
> sources are cited, but no reasoning/explanation given - and
POSSIBLE
> Gothic origin for the name Przeginia (<fairguni), although a native
> Slavic origin for the latter is also considered. Incidentally, I'd
> be interested to hear if anyone knows any more details about the
> etymology of those rivers, the meaning of the names, or alternative
> derivations.
>
> If *Tânu- is Gothic, that long _â_ looks odd, but I can't really
> comment as there are so many factors here that I don't know about,
> such as Slavonic phonology, or indeed the phonology of East
Germanic
> dialects at this early date (e.g. the progress of æ > e, and what
> might have been the closest phoneme in Prussian and in Slavonic) -
> after all this is a long time before Wulfila. Also it might be
> necessary to consider the possible effects of these names coming
into
> Polish through Prussian.
Yes, good point.
>
> Re: nationalism. Ugh, politics! Well, I suppose it's human nature
> for people to see what they want to see. Equally, of course, the
> fact that someone makes bad arguments in favour of something
doesn't
> affect its likelyhood one way or the other, so we just have to look
> at the evidence. To look at it more generously, I guess this
subject
> requires expertise in several different languages, so there's extra
> room for error - even if we ignore mad nationalist amateurs from
long
> ago. I know next to nothing about Polish (so far...) sadly, and
only
> very basic stuff about any Slavonic languages - on the other hand
> I've already spotted a few errors in Czarnecki's article regarding
> Gothic itself.
>
> That said, there's nothing inherently impossible about place names
> lasting hundreds of years, and river names are often notoriously
> ancient. E.g. there are Celtic river names all over England in
> places that have been devoid of Celtic speakers for almost as long
as
> Poland has been empty of Goths!
That is true, but I was not speaking of river names, but of names for
settlements. Since there was a time gap of several centuries between
the departure of the Goths and the arrival of the Slavs, I think it
is unlikely that settlement names were passed on.
Cheers
Dirk
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