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

Sat Aug 18 18:24:51 UTC 2007

May I point out the relation of "qualat" and greek galata (Galata in 
Constantinopole, Galtis on Alutha in Jordannes). 

--- In gothic-l at yahoogroups.com, Rydwlf <mitsuhippon at ...> wrote:
>
> 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 ...> 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
> 
> 
> 
> You are a member of the Gothic-L list. To unsubscribe, send a 
blank email to . 
> Yahoo! Groups Links
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Rydwlf 
>   
> "It is not people who break ethical standards who are regarded as 
aliens. It is people like me who are isolated." - Grigori Perelman.
> 
>        
> ---------------------------------
> Choose the right car based on your needs.  Check out Yahoo! Autos 
new Car Finder tool.
> 
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/gothic-l/attachments/20070818/fa51181b/attachment.htm>