Reconstructions of contemporary Gothic words

[Roman Rausch]

>For a complete list of names recorded in
>the Gothic Bible, including many Greek placenames, see Koebler's
>Gotisches Woerterbuch, Anhang 2 "biblisch-gotischen Namen" [
>http://www.koeblergerhard.de/gotwbhin.html ]. If you want to try your
>hand at reconstructions, you might want to look at this essay on the
>declension of foreign names in Gothic [http://www.nthuleen.com/
papers/755gothpaper.html].

Thanks, these links are indeed useful. So far two attempts:

Looking into the Norse 'Hervarar saga ok Heiðreks' (http://norse.
ulver.com/ontexts/forn/hervarar.html, maybe a millenium too late, but 
still it's better than nothing) I've found there:
_Húnar_ 'huns' (obviously strong masc.)
Zoëga's Old Icelandic dictionary (http://www.northvegr.org/zoega/
index002.php) gives also the alternative form _Húnir_ (m.) as well as 
the adjectives _húnskr, húnlenzkr, hýnskr_.
According to Nancy Thuleen's quote from Gaebeler 'Völkernamen' usually 
decline like masculine i-stems, sometimes mixed with u-stems. All this 
taken together, would it be as simple as the following paradigma:
N *Huns       *Huneis
A *Hunu       *Hununs
G *Hunáus     *Hune
D *Hunáu      *Hunum
and the adjective _*hunsks/*hunisks_? Otherwise it seems that it could 
be 'ordinary' masculine i-stem as well.

Zoëga also gives _Dun-á_ (f.) 'the Danube'. In the 'Hervarar saga' 
this is however only attested in the compound _á Dúnheiði_. The first 
element is, as it seems, _heiðr_ (fem.) 'heath, moor'. Maybe it's 
attested somewhere else with a more clear hint on it's gender and 
ending. I also wonder whether it's connected to _duna_ 'a rushing, 
thundering noise'..
Again according to Nancy Thuleen's article foreign place names in 
Gothic are a mix of feminine o- and i-stems. So (similar to the 
declensions of _Achaia_ and _Ruma_):
N *Duna
A *Duna
G *Dunáis
D *Dunái
(Interestingly the Russian word for the Danube is 'Dunaj'.)




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