[gothic-l] Re: Hairus in diminutive

[Troels Brandt]

Hi Llama Nom

--- In gothic-l at yahoogroups.com, "llama_nom" <penterakt at f...> wrote:
......
> The connection to the Eruli has been argued, but for a
> different opinion, see Chambers (Widsith, p. 31, n3):
> "The Harlungs cannot be derived from the Heruli as
> suggested by Grimm...  Harlung and Erl are too different
> linguistically to be easily identified, and there is no
> evidence demanding such an identification."


We are discussing three possible words as background in these
examples. *Hari, *ErlaZ and Hairus. Is it a coincidence that all
three words are connected with warriors and weapons? Could there
exist a common background?

> .........
>
> I guess the difficult thing is to establish a connection between
> Germanic names with initial <h> and the Germanic names/words
> without.  This is not a normal sound change.  Unfortunately, the
> Latin spellings with & without <h> can't really show which was the
> true name of the Heruli/Eruli.  The usual candidate is Eruli, but
if
> this assumption is wrong, maybe the tribe and/or the individuals'
> names recorded by the Romans were based on the heru- 'sword'
> etymology you suggest.  Which is an interesting idea.  But in that
> case, the connection with the Herelingas/Harlungen looks doubtful
> (*Harilingoz?), as does the connection with eorl, jarl, erilaR.
Just
> my thought at the moment.  Unless there was some complicated
> borrowing back and forth between Roman and Germanic to account for
> all the anomalies?

Let us assume that the Heruls were Eastgermanics close connected with
the Goths in the 3rd century at the Black Sea (as the Romans regarded
them), but moved away from the Goths and were assimilated among the
Scandinavian Northgermanics as a minority in the 6th century. In that
case the attested ErilaR, eorl etc. were not the Herulian words, but
the words formed by North- and Westgermanics as they heard the name
of the Heruls. If a Scandinavian runemaster wrote "Herul" in his
local written language as he heard the Herul pronounce his name (the
runes were used in Scandinavia before the Heruls arrived), or if the
Scandinavians used their translation of this name as the title of an
officer, should we in that case expect the written name to follow
normal sound changes? Shouldn't there be room for some
misunderstandings in the translation process?

Troels






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