From: Piotr Gasiorowski
Message: 7480
Date: 2001-06-06
----- Original Message -----From: tgpedersen@...Sent: Wednesday, June 06, 2001 1:40 PMSubject: Odp: [tied] Re: Croatians and the Carpathians> No one discovers it when we're being sarcastic. Sigh.Oh, they do, never fear.
> "One of the confluents to Don river near the region of Azov is called Horvatos (see [Pascenko], p. 87). The Croatian name can be traced on different sites in Ukraine, also around Krakow in Poland, Bohemia, Austria, thus showing migrations of the Croatian tribes to their future homeland."This is a mixture of fact and fiction. The supposed Iranian tribal name spelt <Khoro(u)athos> in Greek is attested in a couple of tombstone inscriptions from the town of Tanais (that is the very name etymologised as *hu-urvatha- 'amicus'? by Vasmer), but there is no "river Horvatos" anywhere. If anything, <Khorouathos> counts as epigraphic evidence in favour of an Iranian etymology of "Hrvat". Slavic tribes known as "Croats" were indeed reported by early historians from various locations including the area of Krakow on the upper Vistula (that is, in the low country north of the Carpathians), Subcarpathian Ukraine, etc. These locations don't necessary mark a continuous path of migration, as the same name could be used by several independently migrating groups. Of course, if the name *xrvat- originated somewhere within the Proto-Slavic home area in the east, Iranian inspiration is much more likely than a connection with the Carpathians.
Piotr