About the name Poland

[Егоров Владимир]

*****

The derivation of  <Poland> (in Polish <Polska> i.e. literally just 
"Polish", probably an abridgement of the original "Polish land") 
from the Slavonic <pole> "field" is commonly accepted. 
However, in conjunction with your remark
  "unless the tribal name had been passed down from early times"
and the adduced
  *falwa- "pale, yellow, dun, sickly",
I'd like to attract your attention to an intriguing coincidence. 
The ancestors of the Poles on the same territory were known as 
the Wenden (or Winden) originated from the Celtic <Wind> 
(or <Guind>) "wite, pale". Thus, we can deal with a calque 
from Celtic via Germanic. By the way, in Lithuanian, 
<baltas> (the stem is <balt->) means-- "white". 
The Baltic peoples are hence also "the Wites"). 
Perhaps all that region, the southern Baltic seaboard, 
was populated by some "Wites" since the Venetic tumes?

Vladimir



-----Original Message-----
From: gothic-l at yahoogroups.com [mailto:gothic-l at yahoogroups.com]On
Behalf Of thiudans
Sent: Saturday, November 12, 2005 2:19 AM
To: gothic-l at yahoogroups.com
Subject: [gothic-l] Re: About the name Poland


--- In gothic-l at yahoogroups.com, "Fredrik" <gadrauhts at h...> wrote:
>
> According to a source I have the name of Poland comes from a slavic 
> word pol- that is equal to the germanic fal-. Fal- is a part of some 
> city names in Sweden such as Falun and Falkцping. I'm not sure what 
> stem this word belonged to but a guess would be u-stem. In gothic this 
> would be *falus in that case and couldn't we have Faluland for Poland? 
> Maybe you think this i way too far and unsimilar to the name in other 
> languages...maybe I think so too. This was just a thought that came to 
> me right now...
> 
> /Fredrik
>
I know these Gmc. roots:

*fala- "buyable, for sale"
*fal-l- "fall, sink, flee"
*falwa- "pale, yellow, dun, sickly"

But I understand the word Poland to come from *pole "field, flat
land", thus Gmc. *fel┼a- "field". The country name could be *Fil┼jans
"Field-men", but the Goths only knew *hai┼i or *akrs in this sense,
unless the tribal name had been passed down from early times.








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