Goths

[David L. White]

>  According to what was said long back, the earliest attestation of
> "o" in Latin was 250 (or was that 150) B.C.,

         That did indeed sound not quite right, since it would put the
earliest appearance of the Goths in Latin near the earliest attestation of
Latin itself.
        However, we would expect that the word would have been borrowed into
Balkan Romance, where short /u/ does not change to /o/, but stays /u/.  I
suppose it is possible that it was borrowed into a more generic Vulgar
Latin, and went through the change of short /u/ to /o/, without anyone
realizing that this was wrong (unless they had seen it in Greek, they would
have no basis), and therefore without anyone restoring /u/.

Dr. David L. White