Again China in Gothic

[Baira]

In my opinion the strongest possibility is that the hypothetic 
Gothic name for China came through contacts with the Goths' nomadic 
neighbours in the Black Sea steppes, Alans, what was left of 
Sarmatians and so on, nomads who spoke Iranian languages. They did 
not have direct connections with China (excepted the possible case 
of a few individuals who travelled all the way from the Don area to 
China), but the notion was surely there. The name they used for 
China is not known, but we know that their relations with that 
country came either through Iran, that had a great cultural 
influence on the steppe nomads, or through  the Sogdian merchants 
(also Iranian), who were the middlemen between China and the west. 
So the ultimate question is the name in Iran (Middle Persian) and in 
Western Central Asia (Sogdian) in the first half of the first 
millennium A.D.

In Middle Persian the name for China is `Chen' (cfr. `Darchen', the 
China tree/wood = cinnamon, Neo-persian Darchin, Encyclopaedia 
Iranica http://www.iranica.com/ , s.v.) and I presume that in 
Sogdian it was the same, so we can suppose the Goths heard this 
name. But I don't have the slightest idea on how ch- could be 
transmogrified in Gothic. Maybe *Sen? Or *Ken? Or with a 
palatalization *Kjen? And this could have adapted as *Sen- *Ken- or 
*Kjenland 

If we prefer to think of a name borrowed from Greek, easy 
done. `Seres'  were the Chinese in Greek (sing. Ser, both with long 
e), so the result could have been *Serland or *Sairland. 

Anyhow I think that an Iranian origin of the hypothetic name is less 
improbable.








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