Piotr,
thanks for your reply to Goths 'R' Us. If you know anything more that could
make the historical and etymological relations between Goths-Geatas-Gotar-Gutar
a little clearer I'll be glad to hear from you (or if you are able to show that
this question is even more complicated - I like complexity and facts that
don't fit together just as much as I like straight answers).
Some questions. If Gothiskandza comes from
*gutiska- + *andija- how did *andija-
turn into andza? There's no z in
andeis (in my Gothic grammar the word for "end" is
andeis; inflected forms such as dative andja
had a j but no z). I've seen some
failed etymologies of Gothiskandza so I'm a little suspicious. And naming a
place "Gothic End" seems weird. Why would they call it "end"?
Was this a usual way of naming places? As far as I
know (O.K., that's not very far) all old Swedish place names that are based on
the name of a people or tribe use the plural genitive of that people's name,
none of them uses the -isk adjective. E.g. Gota-land, where gota is an old pl.
genitive form.
I remember seeing this word explained as
Gothi-skandza, where skandza means "fort", "fortress" (skans in Swedísh,
Schanze in German) but I think this explanation has been rejected by later
research.
Hakan