[gothic-l] Re: Hairus in diminutive

[llama_nom]

Hi Troels,

> 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?


1) Gmc. *harjaz 'army'; Go. harjis, PrN harijaR (Skåäng stone in 
Sweden), OE here, ON herr, OHG har, NHG Heer); PIE *koro- "war" (cf. 
Lith. karas "war, quarrel," karias "host, army;" OCS kara "strife;" 
MIr. cuire "troop;" OPers. kara "host, army;" Gk. koiranos "ruler, 
leader, commander").
2) Gmc. ?*erlaz, ?*erilar; PrN erilaR, OE eorl, OS erl, OIc. jarl
3) Gmc. *heruz 'sword'; Go. hairus, OIc. hjörr, OS her- (in 
compounds), OE heoru; cf. Skr. caru 'missile, spear, arrow'; Gk. 
keraunos 'thunderbolt'.

Fick, Falk & Torp: "Wörterbuch der Indogermanischen Sprachen: Dritter 
Teil: Wortschatz der Germanischen Spracheinheit"
Harper: "Online Etymological Dictionary"
Various: "Oxford English Dictionary"


4) Lat. (H)Eruli
5) OE herelingas, ?MHG harlungen.
6) Personal name: Herila


Well, 1 & 2 have come to sound more alike than they did at the time 
of the Eruli, due to umlaut.  But maybe there was an ancient 
connection via ablaut - I don't know if that is possible in this 
case?  Which of course takes us back to long before the time of the 
Eruli.  On the other hand, just as we can see a superficial 
similarity between these words - whether there is an etymological 
link or not - so could people in the 6th century.  So a connection 
might be inherited, or it could arise by chance - helped by the 
related meanings - or be constructed.

5 is probably derived from 1.
6 might be from 3, or 2.
4 is widely linked to eorle in Beowulf, used with a special meaning 
as the name of a people.

I guess there's also a bit of an assumption in 2, that erilaR is the 
same as jarl, the -i- presumably being lost before palatal mutation.  



> 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?



If so, the Eruls must have had a weaker pronunciation of [h] than the 
Northwest Germanic peoples.  I don't know of any parallels supporting 
this.  There is only one possible dropped [h] in the Gothic corpus, 
that I know of: manauli, which has been recunstructed as *manahuli - 
but a single instance (if this reconstruction is correct) is probably 
more likely just a spelling mistake.  That's not to say that there 
wasn't some difference, or that the Eruls had some peculiarity in 
pronunciation not shared by other East Germanic peoples.  If they 
were bilingual in Latin - maybe even adopted it as their first 
language?! this might explain it.  Of course, each of these maybes 
has an equally valid maybe-not!  But you're right that quirky an 
unpredictable things do sometimes happen in the history of languages, 
and words do get swapped back and forth in ways that obscure their 
history.

Llama Nom





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