Drus Griutinge - swesa namna (Danapr-?)

[llama_nom]

Thanks for your massively detailed post!  A lot to ponder here... 
Interesting that Danaper / Danaprum should buck the trend of feminine
river names.  Could be significant then...  Alternatively, turning to
a little devil's advocatry myself (and ignoring the possible neuter):
could that be because -er was just too convenient in suggesting a
masculine noun of the Latin second declension?  Old English river
names include a lot that seem to be weak feminine: Úse (Ouse), Lýge
(Lye), Deorwente (Derwent), Wísle (Vistula), Humbre (Humber), Temes(e)
(Thames).  Humbre also indeclinable, Temes also strong feminine,
sometimes also with Latinate endings.  But Fifeldór (Eider), neuter
due to its second element 'dór' "door".  Ilfing (Elbing), ?  Rín
(Rhine), m. or f. -- OHG m., ON f.  Dónua (Danube), f. indecl. --
obviously taken from Latin.

What do you think to the etymology suggested in the Wikipedia entry
Dnieper [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dnieper_River#Name_etymology ],
which derives the name from Sarmatian *Da:nu apara "the river to the
rear"?  What would the gender of Sarmatian *da:nu be, I wonder?  Since
the East Germanic peoples had close contacts with the Sarmatians, the
Goths might just have been influenced by that.  Or maybe not...

Should we also consider the possibility of *Danapair or *Danapar
(masculine or feminine i-stem?; masculine a-stem?), with deletion of
nominative -s after /r/ following a short unstressed syllable?

I'm not convinced that the kings names would have a bearing on the
gender of the rivers, since even if the rivers had been feminine, the
kings names would probably be masculine.  But then, it's curious that
these two names should occur together.  I wonder if it's just chance
that "riding" ships is mentioned as one of their skills.  Perhaps
there is some memory behind this verse of a line in some other poem
where the two names were understood as rivers.  In which case, I might
very cautiously be leaning towards a masculine i-stem (rather than a
u-stem, because of the lack of u-umlaut in Old Norse; lack of i-umlaut
is typical in short masculine i-stems).

Again, thanks for all these helpful details.

LN



--- In gothic-l at yahoogroups.com, "ualarauans" <ualarauans at ...> wrote:
>
> --- In gothic-l at yahoogroups.com, "llama_nom" <600cell@> wrote:
> >
> > --- In gothic-l at yahoogroups.com, "ualarauans" <ualarauans@> 
> wrote:
> > 
> > > Ana Danaprais staþam (et passim) "on the banks of the Dniepr" – 
> it's
> > > after ON Danparstaðir, isn't it? *Danaprs as I can gather is 
> thought
> > > to be an –i-stem fem. Jordanes used Danaper masc. and one time
> > > Danaprum neutr. (Get. 30: magnumque illud Danaprum Taurumque
> > > montem..., if illud is not a typo for illum acc. masc. here). The
> > > formation is probably the same as in Danaster /-trum. In ON a re-
> > > distribution (Neuverteilung) of morphemes took place and the 
> final
> > > –r- of the stem became a flective ending, hence Danpr, gen. 
> Danpar.
> > > Cf. also later Slavic forms: ORuss. DnEpru > Russ. Dnepr, Ukr.
> > > Dnipro  - all masc. All this leads me to think that Gothic had a
> > > form like *Danaprus M.-u or *Danaprs M.-a/-i, in which case gen.
> > > would be *Danapraus or *Danapris. BTW., are you sure that it was
> > > staþa "banks", not stadeis "places" (as in ON). Ana Danapraus
> > > stadim? Or better as a compound *Danaprustadeis/-staþa?
> > 
> > Atlakviða, stanza 5 'ok staði Danpar' points to Go. stadeis, but 'á
> > Danparstöðum' of Hervarar saga could be either.  In one version 
> this
> > is the name of the district, with Árheimar being the citadel, in
> > another version Árheimar is the district, 'á Danparstöðum' the 
> citadel
> > -- so perhaps it was already unclear to compilers of the saga.  G.
> > Turville Petre notes in his edition of Hervarar saga, p. 83 "the 
> word
> > probably means 'on the banks of the Dnjepr".  I guessed at 
> *Danaprs,
> > fi., since river names are typically feminine in Old Norse -- 
> assuming
> > that this was an ancient Germanic trend; also because of the noun
> > 'ahva'.  Are there tendencies regarding the gender of river names 
> in
> > Latin that Jordanes might have been following, or breaking with?
> > Thomas Czarnecki reconstructed *Donawi for Danube (fi.?).  I'll 
> look
> > into this though.  Are there any more rivers mentioned in the 
> Gothic
> > Bible fragments besides Iaurdanus ahva?  Any Gothic river names 
> that
> > have survived in Eastern Europe?
> 
> I've tried to make a little investigation of rivernames by Jordanes, 
> without claims to completeness (there must be professional studies 
> of this subject), and I found that in cases where there had been no 
> classical tradition he uses mostly feminine names. Examples: Get. 30 
> Uagosolam F. acc. sg.; Get. 33 Tisia F., but ibid. Flutausis M.; 
> Get. 35 (also 96) Uiscla F. (clearly from a Gothic source, alongside 
> classical Uistula); Get. 114 Marisia F., Miliare N. (?) et Gilpil 
> (?) et Grisia (F.); Get. 178 Tisia Tibisiaque et Dricca (all F.). 
> The last ones exactly parallel Priscus' hO TE DRHKWN LEGOMENOS KAI 
> hO TIGAS (misspelled for TISAS?) KAI hO TIFHSAS in Fr. 8 – all 
> masculine). Some of them are usually identified by scholars with the 
> rivers known today under similar names, e.g. Tisia = Rom. Tisa, 
> Hung. Tisza; Tibisia (TIFHSAS) = Rom. Timis, Hung. Temes etc. 
> Marisia for Mures, Maros has been dealt with here recently.
> 
> As a side question it's worth asking if this ending –ia after –s- in 
> Getica was somehow to represent [sh] heard in auslaut in Romanian 
> and Hungarian names (except Tisa/Tisza), and whether it was 
> Jordanes' invention or a late-Gothic scribal convention? Something 
> like –sj- in Modern Dutch? When writing Gothic prose or poetry with 
> the plot back in the Migration period, we'd strongly need these 
> names in Gothic. Also for the reconstructed language of course, like 
> in Sagkta Anna (maybe Sagktanna F.-o?) af Marisjai (Marisjos).
> 
> But back to our question. So, Jordanes feels free (and even 
> seemingly prefers) to use feminine river names but he sticks with 
> masculine for Dnieper (and Dniester). Is he following spoken Gothic 
> here? Maybe he is and maybe he isn't. He uses classical masculine 
> Danubius (and Hister) for Danube while the Gothic form was feminine 
> Donawi as you've pointed out. Incidentally, you know that the latter 
> was borrowed from Gothic by the Slavs, but they made a masculine 
> name from it again (Dunavu)! This is probably a reason to dismiss 
> Slavic evidence also for Dnieper.
> 
> But then let's recall Rígsþula where Danr and Danpr (likely 
> reminiscence of Don and Dnieper) are mentioned (Rþ. 48) as two 
> brother kings:
> á Danr ok Danpr / dýrar hallir, / æðra óðal / en ér hafið; / þeir 
> kunnu vel / kjóli at ríða, / egg at kenna, / undir rjúfa
> Note this þeir – it clearly shows that they are both men. If this 
> Danpr and Danpr in Danparstaðir are one and the same name (and it 
> seems most probable), then in ON it's an –i- or an –u-stem noun 
> masculine. Hence a Gothic reconstruction is likely (but not solely 
> possible) to be *Danapr(u)s M., and, to represent or reflect (or 
> provoke?) somehow the shift of the –r- into the ending in ON, we 
> could go with a compound *Danaprustadeis or the like.
> 
> ???
> 
> Ualarauans
>


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