Drus Griutinge - swesa namna (Sunjahildi)

[llama_nom]

--- In gothic-l at yahoogroups.com, "ualarauans" <ualarauans at ...> wrote:
>
> BTW, you reconstruct *Sunjahildi, not *Swanahildi after ON 
> Svanhildr. Probably it was a change like Sigurðr for continental 
> Siegfried (not Siegwart) or Gottormr for Burgundian Godomaris, right?

My thinking here was that Sunja- is a regular naming element in
Gothic, but not in North or West Germanic where it may well have been
reinterpreted.  Gerhard Köbler lists the following: Sunhivadus,
Suniagissius, Siniefredus (=Sunjaifriþas), Suniemirus, Sunieredo,
Suniericus, Suniulfus, and maybe Sunila and Sunnila.  There is one
Suanila (for which the root swan- is proposed), and Sunilda (for which
the root son- "atonement" is proposed) -- manuscripts of Jordanes also
have Sunielh and Sunihil (Chambers, p. 17).  Chambers mentions the
theory that the name was *Sonahildi or *Sunihildi "the woman who
atones", but dismisses the view espoused by several scholars that this
"is a feigned name, like the names of the brothers Sarus and
Ammius--'the armed ones'" which in this view supposedly proves that
the story is fictitious and mythological with no historical
foundation.  As Chambers points out, there was a historical individual
called Sarus, and it's not clear that Jordanes' Sunilda is necessarily
to be understood in that way.

The oldest example of the name in OHG is from a charter dated 786,
Suanailta, "an ambiguous form" -- since this could be understood as
either *Swan- or *Suan- / *Suon- < So:n- -- "and ... there are reasons
for connecting the first element in the name rather with 'sunja'
"truth" than 'so:n' "atonement" (Chambers, p.18, note 1).  He doesn't
go into those reasons (grr...); maybe they're the same as mine?  If
the name was reinterpreted in Continental West Germanic as
*So:na-hildi, the High German sound change /o:/ > /uo/ would explain
the attested forms there, as well the Old Norse form, supposing this
was taken from Continental West Germanic tradition.  The further
adaptation Swanhild is attested already as a personal name in Germany,
although not explicitly in connection with the legend; Chambers
doesn't give any dates for other WG versions of the name, but notes
that "different forms of the names Sonhild and Swanhild continue in
frequent use", citing Pertz(ed.): Monumentae Germanic Historica, fol.
S.S. t. VI, 1844, p. 23.  So it may have been borrowed as such into
Old Norse.

So, yes, I suspect this name was changed much as were other names you
mention.

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