Gothic names

[autoreport]

Although Gothic was spoken in the Crimea into the 18th Century (but unfortunately rarely written), we unfortunately have a very limited vocabulary recorded compared to OE, Saxon, Old Frisian, Old Norse or even the various schools of High German. That can make it very difficult to match onomastic themes with a corresponding word in prosaic Gothic. Quite a number of themes are not recorded as independent word in any of the Germanic languages, even if they are, the semantic development is often quite different in Gothic than in West or North Germanic. In addition few Gothic names are recorded in something close to the original Gothic—most have been Latinized or altered by flawed analogy with Greek. Other Gothic names are recorded in a Latinized version of the Frankish form, conversely some Frankish names are recorded in a Latinized version of their Gothic form. We also know that names sometimes cross ethnic boundaries—Attila the Hun is best known by his Gothic honorific. Latin names are combined with Germanic themes, Gothic onomastic themes are adopted by other Germanic speakers (not always accurately) and the Indo-Iranian Alans brought onomastic themes from a more distant branch of Indo-European to the Germanic-speaking world. The popular "reiks" is ultimately Celtic (rix<rigs, cognate with Gothic ragin). Gothic itself is not as uniform as the resources may imply—there are clear differences between the few recorded Ostrogothic words and standard Visigothic of Ulfilas-itself Gothic as spoken in Moesia in the 4th-5th centuries and often called Moeso-Gothic. Visigothic spoken in other areas and other times was almost certainly different in some respects, just as many different varieties of High German are spoken alongside the "standard" Eastern-Middle High German of Luther.

--- In gothic-l at yahoogroups.com, "Mike" <abrigon at ...> wrote:
>
> The fun of names, is that just cause one source says it is spelled one 
> way, does not make it so. To many researchers have had limited space, 
> as well as limited samplings.. Theodorick or Theodorik, same name, but 
> different spelling. Fun is when the name goes thru atleast 2 
> intermediaries before it comes to English. Some languages don't have 
> letters and sounds for some sounds in Gothic (I suspose), so the names 
> get mangled.
> 
> Mike
> aka Morgoth (for now).
>


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