Re: Alans, Aryans, etc

--- In cybalist@..., "Steve Woodson" <wood2@...> wrote:

> I know that this won't be of much help but here goes. I once had a
> book on Alan settlements in France. Sadly, it has disappeared. It
> was a small book with maps of many villages, clustered in a general
> area, all with the name Alan in them (eg. Alanville). ...

Perhaps. But there are likely other linguistic tracks that could lead
to that element in place names.

Someone mentioned Aryans, and the matter is getting flamy.
This reminds of an incident when Tolkien wanted to publish a book in
Germany in the 1930's. Someone in Germany wrote to him:-

> ... Are you Aryan? ...

and Tolkien answered:-

> ... I am not Aryan, that is to say, Indo-Iranian, ...

and to me that seems to settle the matter.

> ... (already spoken about the origin of the Hrvat name) ...

To me "Hrvat" looks rather like "Carpath-ians", and in particular like
a possible Germanicized form *{harfath-}, c.f. the recorded Old Norse
form "Harvadh-fjollum" (dative plural).

, ... original Serbian (Srpsk vs Sorabians; I also read about the

> 'Sabiri' ... the western form of Hsien-pi ...

Not me. The two names are too unlike. So many peoples live in the
vastness of Central Asia that a people would have to be very
powerful and far-travelling to affect both China and the West enough
for both to record their name. Remember the distances involved. E.g.
it took Marco Polo over 3 years to get from Venice to China.