Amali and Balti

[Decebal-Radu C]

In my opinion, these family names are toponimics of the fiefs. 

Use of Romanian toponimics appears to me to be useful in disambiguating antic references to the Romanian space (a method which worked for Champollion also).

As such Balti means  Slough/marsh and Amali approaches Amara=bitter, both referring somehow to water. Since toponimics are assigned by shepherds for orientation purposes (here the taste or the landscape of water), it seems a working hypothesis.

These toponimics are current today but I don't have a correspondent for today's counties in Romania.

However, I detected that Jordanes' geography is better than the Ptolemaic map and correpondingly we have 4 kingdoms in  Today's Romania (personal reading and contribution, see my previous posts):
1. Dacia/Gepidia/ Wallachia==Transylvania, Rom. Argheal/Ardeal-through the root "arg"(silver) matches the 'silver land' description, capital at Cluj-Napoca (a large and rich museum, 2 large salt mines nearby).
2. Visigotic== Rom Banat (from Mures/Maris at North, Danube at South, Olt/Alutus East)-capitals at Deva/Orastie and later at Craiova/ Tismana (nearby Trajan's Ulpia Traiana Sarmisegetusa)
3. Ostrogothic==Tara Romaneasca, North and East on Olt/Alutus, South on Danube, East on Siret( Jordanes Flutausis, Kogeanus/Kogaion for Greeks ) and Danube. Capital at Fagaras (Jordanes' Galtis) or around, later moved south at Campulung and Curtea de Arges in XIth century. 
4 Caucaland, West and South on Siret( Jordanes Flutausis= eng. Raftsmen, Kogeanus/Kogaion for Greeks ). Capital at Targu Neamt (near Cucuteni-Baiceni), antic citadel at "Batca Doamnei" recently found. This kingdom is mostly confused with Scythia since mostly the Greeks referred to it as the Getic/Scythian kingdom having the Kogaionon sacred mountain (actually a border, forbidden to pass, 'koga' or 'neamt' meaning "foreign"). Orphaeus kingdom. Antic geography is insufficient.

Note the king Scilurus of Scythia (80BC), having many children and splitting the kingdom among them. Very close we have Burebista comes in, from whom we have the spectacular sanctuary near Deva/Orastie - he as teaching Dacians the 365 stars and so on (the first reform of the educational system in Europe :). According to Jordanes he was chasing the celts. Since Celts/Kelts and Gets nouns both mean noble, it might mean chasing the old gentry and dinasty descending from Scilurus.


--- In gothic-l at yahoogroups.com, "Frithureiks" <gadrauhts at ...> wrote:
>
> According to http://www.koeblergerhard.de/germanistischewoerterbuecher/gotischeswoerterbuch/GOT-A.pdf there is an adjective 'amals' meaning brave. Perhaps the name of the Amali would be Amaliggs in gothic, then declined as masculine a-stems.
> 
> The Balti have their name from gothic balths, meaning bold. In gothic they would perhaps have been called balthiggs. Declined likewise.
> 
> The brave and the bold ones.
> 
> --- In gothic-l at yahoogroups.com, "anheropl0x" <anheropl0x@> wrote:
> >
> > Has there been any work to figure out what these names are in Gothic? And how they are declined, what declension of noun they are, etc.?
> >
>


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/gothic-l/attachments/20110428/f899973e/attachment.htm>