Use of Gothic language in Spain (baurgs, Burgos, burgus)

[Rydwlf]

Dear all,
   
  I'm glad that the information I posted was of your interest.
   
  Heinrich Lausberg in his "Romance Linguistics" talks about the tendency in Low Latin to avoid final consonants. He says that this tendency consolidated more intensely in Italian, a little less in Spanish and Portuguese and even less in Rumanian, Provençal and Catalan.
  Coming to the final -s, Lausberg states that the Latin final -s remains in Sardinian and in the Western Romance languages (Romansh, French, Provençal, Catalan, Spanish and Portuguese) while in the Eastern Romance languages (Romanian, Center and South Italian) it became [i]. The noun example that Lausberg provides is Latin "feminas" (females, women) that becomes "hembras" in Spanish. Although "feminas" is an accusative plural, and not a nominative singular like in "burgus", should we conclude that it is more feasible that "burgus" evolved into Sp. "burgos"?
   
  In the formation of Old Spanish from Low Latin, there was a preference to form the masculine plural from the Latin nom./acc. plural, using the particle -os (which shows some Celtic substrate biasing, and as opposed to p.e. Italian that preferred the nom. plural -i). In Modern Spanish the standard masculine plural mark is -os.
   
  I don't know to which declination belongs "burgus". From the Nom. final -us, itcan only be 2nd (stem -o-) or 4th (stem -u-). The acc. pl. would be in that case "burgos" and "burgus", provided the name is masculine (if it is neuter, in both cases the Acc.pl. would be "burga"). I have read somewhere that masculine names both from the 2nd and 4th declination took the final -os anyway. I don't know in which stage did they, but even in the "Glosas Emilianenses"  (late X century) we can find the text "enos sieculos delo sieculos", that is "in the centuries of the centuries", being Latin "saeculum" of the 2nd declination (but neuter), so the use of final -os seems old enough and consolidated in the first stages of the formation of the Spanish language. This can also be taken as a proof that all the names from the Latin 2nd declination took the -os plural mark in Old Spanish, be them masculine or neuter in Latin.
   
  This explain the plural form of "burgos", but, what about the singular form, burgo/s?
  According to Lausberg, although he focuses in final -s in plurals and verbs, the final -s should be preserved also in the singular Spanish names. But the general theory is that the masculine -us and neuter -um endings evolved to -o in Old Spanish. Even in the same Glosas Emilianenses we find "dueno" ("lord", from Latin 2nd dec. dominus), "Cristo" ("Christ", from 2nd dec Christus), "sancto" ("holy", adjective but from Latin masc. sanctus). To add some confussion, the Golsas include an adjective in nom.plural "gaudioso", (joyous) finishing in -o, not in -os.
   
  In conclussion, it seems that it's highly probable that at an early stage of the language, the forms were "burgo" for the singular and "burgos" for the plural. I haven't been able to find any masculine name that preserve the final -s of the Latin nom. sg.
   
  About the concentration of Spanish place names with the "burg" component in the North of Spain, I have the feeling that it is significant, but Ï have reached no conclussion. There is a distinctively high number of such places in A Coruña (17) and some presence also in the rest of the provinces of Galicia, which corresponds almost exactly to the limits of the Roman Province Gallaecia (in which the Suebian Kingdom was founded in 410), at least the part in modern Spain. It would be interesting studying the number of place names with "burg" in the Portuguese part of what Gallaecia was; I suppose it was also high. I think this relatively high number of "burg" place names in modern Galicia is related to the Suebian Kingdom. How exactly, though, I don't know. I'm also dubious about the origin of "burg" place names in other Northern areas, but it's interesting to note that Soria and Burgos (which sum up to 13 "burg" place names) are considered areas in which the Visigothic
 settlement was high and deep, if I remember well.
   
  Was the initial mindset of the Germanic peoples in Iberia comparatively more focused in the military than in later imes? Could that explain the abundance of "burg" based place names in an old stage, coinciding with the military nature of their entrance in Iberia both of Suebi (although later recognized as foedi) and Visigoths (first as a countenance measure against Vandals and Alans, later against Suebi)? In that case, the "burg" based place names (excuse my adoption of the term) would be the result of this military campaigns and would be of very old origin. This is an hypothesis, but the Moorish sway in the South could be also a possible reason of the different name distribution. For example, the term "medina", Arab for "city", appears in 24 toponymes. Similar words for fortifications appearing in Spanish modern place names are 
  mahsan -> fortified place
  rabita -> frontier military settlement
  qalat -> castle
  meriya -> watching tower.
   
  There are toponymes with these roots all over Spain, but they are more frequent in the Half South, specially in modern Andalusia and Eastern regions.
   
  Cheers,
  Rydwlf.
   
   
   
  
llama_nom <600cell at oe.eclipse.co.uk> wrote:
  > There are currently two main theories about the origin of the
Burgos toponyme. Both of them, though, take the name "Burgos" as
coming from Germanic burgs through Latin.burgus. The first theory sees
"Burgos" as evolving directly from burgus (with the final -s). The
second theory assumes that the word descending from burgus was burgo,
not burgos. In that case, the name "Burgos" would be a plural and
would be a reference to an agglomeration of fortresses or castles.

Thanks Rydwlf! At first sight, the second of these theories seems the
more logical, and maybe it's supported by those placenames where the
article appears: los burgos, el burgo. At the very leastm that must
be how such names where interpreted in later times. But are there any
other inherited words where Latin -s of the nominative singular is
preserved, and under what circumstances would that happen?

Do you think it's significant that the names are concentrated in the
north? Could this imply that they were indeed originally connected
with the Gothic and/or Suebic settlement? Or are there other factors
which could account for that, e.g. Moorish sway in the south, later
Frankish influences elsewhere; or simply geographical factors? Are
there other words applied in placenames to the same sorts of locations
in the south?

LN



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Rydwlf 
  
"It is not people who break ethical standards who are regarded as aliens. It is people like me who are isolated." - Grigori Perelman.

       
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