Bisinus - Bessinus

[faltin2001]

--- In gothic-l at yahoogroups.com, "ualarauans" <ualarauans at ...> wrote:
>
> --- In gothic-l at yahoogroups.com, "faltin2001" <d.faltin@> wrote:
> >
> > Venantius Fortunatus mentioned a Thuringian king Bessinus and a 
> queen
> > Basina, who would have ruled around 460 AD. The name Bessinus, 
also
> > rendered as Bisinus is quite an unusual name. Since B and V are 
> often
> > interchangible some scholars have argued that the name means 
> Visendus
> > or Visandus. Others have pointd out that it is strange that 
> Bessinus
> > had a wife named Basina and therefore argued that these were not 
> names
> > but some sort of titles.
> 
> It was early Byzantine Greek where the B/V confusion took its 
> origin. To the time, Greek B (beta) came to be pronounced as [v], 
> but since the Greek alphabet didn't dispose of another separate 
> letter for [b], they used beta for both [b] and [v]. Procopius in 
> V.18.29, 31-33 mentions a Goth named OUISANDOS BANDALARIOS, which 
> probably stood for *Wisandus Wandalaharjis. To render Gothic [w] 
he 
> used both OU and B in neighboring words. And he writes names 
> BALERIANOS, BENETIAI etc. with a beta for Latin v.
> 
> But is there some evidence that this change was spread outside 
> Greek? When writing Bessinus, Fortunatus was probably meaning just 
> Bessinus, not *Wessinus, unless he copied his account from some 
> Greek original.
> 
> That these names may be titles seems likely. If the form they are 
> written already postdates the 2nd shift, it could be PG *bat-, 
> maybe, the same as in suppletive *batiza-,
> *batista- "better", "best" (?)
> 
> > Now, the Gothic Vesi, meaning 'the nobles', were the elite of the
> > Tervingi. There name formed the basis for the ethnogenesis of 
the 
> Vesi
> > people, who would later be called Visigoths. The ancient sources
> > render their name also as 'Vessi' and 'Besi'. I wonder if the 
name
> > Bessinus could be rendered with V, i.e. Vessinus and if it was a 
> title
> > rather than a name, maybe it meant 'the noble'.
> 
> Yes, the authors mention a people called Bessi and the like. Are 
> they really identical with Visi? The latter name is usually 
derived 
> from PG *wesu- < PIE *wesu- "good", cf. Sanskr. vasu-, Avestan 
vohu 
> etc. (the idea I saw in Wilhelm Streitberg's Gotisches 
> Elementarbuch, p. 7).
> 
> Interestingly, both etymologies - Go. *Batins and Go. *Wisins - 
> suggest some "good" semantics...
> 
> > Cheers,
> > 
> > Dirk
> 
> OUALARABANS
>


Hi Oualaravans,

many thanks for that. I think I would agree that the name 
Bessinus/Bisin and Basina are more likely to be titles than personal 
names. Not only is the pairing of Bessinus and Basina curious for a 
royal couple, but these names seem to be entirely unique. I guess 
there are other ancient Germanic names which are unique, but the 
name components are usually at least known from other names.

Friedrich Lotter mentiones in his book on Germanic peoples at the 
middle Danube (2003) that there is potential to confuse the Bessi 
with the Vesi, but he states that there is also a mentiong of "Besi" 
that referes unmistakeably to "Vesi". The Venantius Fortunatus wrote 
about 100 years after king Besinus and I cannot say what sources he 
would have used. 

Cheers,
Dirk











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