Aiwropais Ahvos

Mon May 15 12:24:11 UTC 2006

Ualarauans,
The name Itil was known at least since the Khazar times, as one of their capitals disposed on Volga (more exactly modern Akhtuba) was called also Itil. In particular, Ibn-Fadlan knew in the early 10 c. both the river and town Itil. However, origins of the name itself are veiled in obscurity, though Turkic sources are commonly accepted.
According to Gumilev, the Hunns inhabited the steppes on the left Volga's bank as early as in the 3rd c., with the Alans interlaid between the Hunns and Ostrogoths. Maybe Volga had those times another name, something like Ra or Ras of an unknown origin, perhaps Alanic.
The Ossetins, having a powerful Caucasian substrate, are not so direct descendants from the Alans, but their language preserves some features and lexical borrowings from Alanic, _don_ as running water in particular. Nevertheless, "epics reminiscences of their fights with a people GUT" look as a big overstatement.
Yes, Finnish _valkea_ is also one of conjectural etymological derivations for Volga. Note that the region of the upper Volga knows the White lake (_Beloozero_) and the White river -- the left confluent of Kama (Belaya i.e. White [river] in Russian or Ag-Idel i.e. White Itil in Bashkir).
Derivation of Volhov from East Germanic is very interesting for me. Could you add anything on this topic?

Vladimir

-----Original Message-----
From: gothic-l at yahoogroups.com [mailto:gothic-l at yahoogroups.com]On
Behalf Of Guenther Ramm
Sent: Monday, May 15, 2006 2:10 PM
To: gothic-l at yahoogroups.com
Subject: RE: [gothic-l] Aiwropais Ahvos

Hails, Vladimir!
  Thanks a lot for your correction! I feel defeated at the "Long River" :)
  The form Itil as far as I know is Turkic (?) and therefore also too late to get into Gothic. What was the population of the Lower Volga basin in the 3rd - 4th centuries? Some place Alans east of Ostrogoths up to the time of the Hunnish invasion - could not they intermediate between whatever name of Volga and Ermanaricus' "sagacious mapmakers"? You know there's the people of the Ossets in North Caucasus which are direct linguistic descendants of East Alans and which are said to still keep in their epics reminiscences of their fights with a people "GUT". Does anybody know how they call Volga? The names of Don, Dnepr and Dnestr (and maybe Danube) at least, seem to come from North-Iranian, i.e. Scytho-Sarmatian and Alanic speech, and, note, today's Ossetic _don_ means just "river" or "water". This river row could be Gothic *Danus, *Danaprus, *Danastrus (in fact there's no sure evidence of u-stems for any of them, Jordanes has Danaper, Danaster and similarly other writers of
 the time, IE proto-form *danu- could not be of any effect here, unless we presume there were "sagacious Gothic linguists" at work as well :)
  Still, I'd like *Dulgjo to be used for any of the East-European rivers and surely there's a lot of scholarly literature on the Eddic Dylgja and the precise localization of that legendary battle between Angantyr and Hloedhr. I thought they fought (I mean the proto-event of the saga) somewhere between Don and Volga, on the Eastern frontier of the Ostrogothic sphere, and the Goths had actually to lose that battle (ca. 375 AD). This Volga-Don "Mesopotamia" could be called there Dunheidhr, Gothic *Dunahaithi...
  I know a Finnish word valkea "white". Is Russian vlaga not rather to be connected with NHG Wolke "cloud", Lett. velgme "moisture" etc.? The Finnish form of Volkhov seems to look like Olhava, and that could be Gothicized into *Alhawi "a river of a sacred place" (?), of cause, without claiming to be a possible historic name (that was too far even for Ermanaricus :)
  Ualarauans

еЗПТПЧ чМБДЙНЙТ <vegorov at ipiran.ru> wrote:
  Hi Ualarauans!

With the "long river" Volga there are two aberrations, 
both spatial and temporal. The name Volga related initially 
only to the upper part of the river and was etymologically 
close to the name of another river of that region Volhov. 
However, the etymology is not defined exactly. The most 
probable supposition is a Finnish word with meaning moisture, 
which was also borrowed by Russian as _vlaga_. Extension of 
the name Volga to the downer river named earlier Itil took 
place somewhere in the 16-17 centuries. Hermanaricus and his 
subjects had to be very sagacious to foreknow this for 
thousand years ahead. Anyhow, the origin of the name Volga 
is not Slavic.

Btw. I seem _Albs_ should be pronounced [alfs] with declension 
changes to [alvis] etc.

Regards,
Vladimir

-----Original Message-----
From: gothic-l at yahoogroups.com [mailto:gothic-l at yahoogroups.com]On
Behalf Of ualarauans
Sent: Sunday, May 14, 2006 11:31 AM
To: gothic-l at yahoogroups.com
Subject: [gothic-l] Aiwropais Ahvos

In gothic-l at yahoogroups.com, "llama_nom" <600cell at ...> wrote:
> the final
devoicing rule (AuslautsverhДrtung) doesn't apply when 'b', 'g', 'd'
follow another consonant, so my guess for the nominative singular
would be *Albs.

Yes, of cause. Thanks. Hence a question - how you pronounce this: 
[alvs], [albs] or maybe even [alps]? Intervocalic -b- I like most to 
have as [v], but what I like or dislike that's no argument. We have 
Naubaimbair for November and a lot of Latin renderings like Liuva, 
Erelieva etc., but what about -b- in the position you described, 
i.e. after a consonant? And what is Silbanus for SILOUANOS - leaning 
on Gothic silba? But this happened to be written by Romans as 
Silva... Does the rule work only when -b- stands between two 
consonants? And what is then the pronunciation? I guess it could be 
again a question of chronology.
Talking about rivers I think we should not at once translate or 
transliterate their present name, but to look first if there's any 
possible evidence of how the river was called at the time the actual 
Goths could reach, or hear of, it.
For example, French Seine was Lat.-Celt. Sequana. Was it still so in 
the 5th century when Alareiks sa Fruma and his Visigoths came first 
to the West? Or maybe it was already some compromise late-Latin / 
early-Romance form (*Seghwana?) which could be adopted by them 
undergoing some folk-etymological changes? Or perhaps there had been 
a West-Germanic name of the river which the Goths received from 
their Frankish and Alemannic cousins and rivals? I'm tempted to call 
it *Saihvana F. -o (with a consonant shift), but firstly, if my 
Latin dictionary doesn't lie, the -e- in Sequana was a long one; 
secondly, the time of the shift was long over; and, thirdly, wasu so 
ahva bi sunjai SAIHVANA? (was this river really SEEN by them?). So, 
*Seqana, *Se(g)wana or something like?
Here's another question. As you know continental Gaulish was mostly 
a p-Celtic language (i.e. every PIE kw- turned to p- unlike q-
Celtic). The PIE stem *sekw- "to follow", represented by Lat. sequor 
and Goth. saihvan (lit. "to follow with the eyes"), as it is 
commonly held, was additionally borrowed by Goths from some p-Celtic 
dialect as siponeis "a disciple" < "a follower". Is Sequana of the 
same family? And why not *Sepana? I see it's Gothic not "Celtic" 
list, but if this name belongs to the same stem, it could perhaps be 
possible to postulate some parallel, not borrowed, form in Germanic 
and, thus, Gothic.
Let's travel over to another side of Europe and consider Volga. It 
seems to me very probable that the Goths, this time the Ostrogoths, 
had all chances to see it or at least to know about it at the time 
of Ermanaricus' Greater Gothic Reich (((smile))). Maybe the trace of 
it is ON Dylgja (Hlцрskviрa 26, 28) < Goth. *Dulgjo F. -on, which 
could be a phonetically correct borrowing of a supposed Old Slavic 
alternative name *Dlgaja (l is vocalic), lit. "the long (river)". 
The actual Russian Volga is sometimes supposed to be borrowed from 
Baltic *Ilga with the same meaning ("long"). Well, that seems rather 
complicated... As a variant we could use a partly etymologized 
loanword from Russian like *Wulgi F. -jo (cf. ON ylgr "she-wolf").
Ualarauans

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