Emigration av (some) Goths

[macmaster at RISEUP.NET]

Names can stick around after peoples move on (or those left behind
transform into something else).  Just looking at the peoples of the
Volkerwanderung, we also find Rugen as the homeland of the Rugi and
Bornholm as the Burgundian homeland.  Other names left behind include the
several Burgundies  in France and the "Homeland of the Boii", a Celtic
people, giving the name to a Slavic area (bohemia) and a German area
(Bavaria) as well as a name in French for a group ultimately from India
(the Romany "Bohemians").  "Frank" meant a Germanic people now but
"French" means a romance speaker.  And so on.

Similarity of names may indicate a historic link but doesn't prove it (if
one reads Jordanes literally, one would assume that the Sarmatian "Getae"
were Goths rather than just similarly named; if he'd known about them, I'm
sure Jordanes would have tossed in the Guti, 'barbarian' raiders of
ancient Mesopotamia).

As the names of bavarians and French suggest, there probably is a
hoistoric link between Gotland and the Goths but it may be much less
straight forward.

I'm inclined to leave it in the "Unprovable speculation" category.

Tom


akoddsson wrote:
>     Hi Wilhelm and Tore.
>
>  > Your answer, that the Goths came from Gotland, is remarkable, to say
>  the least. Most scientists acknowledge that they don't know from where
>  the Goths came. What we know is that that they surface in history a
>  couple of centuries AD in the area of the Donahue or north of the
>  Black Sea. This is what we think we know. That is what we have as a
>  working hypothesis.
>
>  Two things seem obvious to me in connection with the Goth's homelend.
>  The first is that there is a land, Gotland, that is called the land of
>  the Goths. As far back as sources go, the land appears to have born
>  this name. As parallels we have Sweden (the land of the Swedes),
>  Ireland (the land of the Irish), and likely thousands of other such
>  names from throughout the world and in numerous languages. This makes
>  me wonder why Goths should be such an exception, emigration aside. The
>  second is that as one specializing mostly in Germanic linguistics, and
>  as one who has studied both Gothic and Gotlandic, it seems painfully
>  obvious that Gotlandic, while absorbed into North Germanic, deviates
>  from it, especially phonologically but also in other matters, in ways
>  which agree with Gothic. As a non-specialist in Gothic history, and as
>  a layman in Gothodemia, I still see no reason why the Goths should not
>  have a homeland in Gotland, where Goths still live, emigration aside,
>  and even if their original territory was wider, as it likely was.
>
>  Sincerely,
>  Konrad
>
>





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