Tribal Names in IE Languages

From: lsroute66@...
Message: 10271
Date: 2001-10-16

--- In cybalist@..., tgpedersen@... wrote:
> But your theory does not account for the opposition
> "sheer"/"bastard" implicit in the names.

If "bastarnae" is Greek, then there would be no opposition with
"Skiri" and I don't believe there is anything to indicate there should
be. Could "Skiri" be a Greek word also? Or from some other IE
language? Is it worth looking into, considering that the word comes
to us exclusively through Greek (and, later, Latin)?

This brings up the whole issue of whether names like Bastarnae, Skiri
and even Goth were self-names at all, in the sense that they were
names people called themselves in their own language with a meaning
they recognized. Or were they given names, with some meaning in Greek
or the languages that often separated Greek geographically from
Germanic?

A good parallel are Native American tribal names. We use Navaho,
Apache and Iroquois to refer to tribes who did not call themselves
those names - at least not initially. These were names given by other
Indian tribes. I've mentioned the word "Greeks" which wasn't the
Greek name for Greeks. We use the Roman name for Greeks, not the
Greek name.

Names often don't follow the logic that are always attributed to
ancient Germanic names. Americans were not named for any attribute.
The whole "tribe" is named after a 15th Century Italian sailor.
There's a terrific irony in modern day descendents of Hengist and
Horsa calling themselves "British." "Vlachs", by an almost equal
irony, appear to derive their name from a tribe in Gaul by way of a
designation for Italians and Franks, cognate I believe with "Welsh."

In all the many discussions of the Goth's name, I've seen very little
consideration that the name might have in fact been Greek. Based
roughly on the history of names, there should be something like a
50-50 chance it was not Germanic. Heck, it could have been a Thracian
or Scythian name for some group of people. Borrowed by the Greeks and
then borrowed as a self name by the Goths. How would one know the
difference?

The general form and semantics supposedly behind the Goth name also
appear extensively in Greek and to some degree Latin. This is what
happens with related languages. One IE language may be as good a
candidate as another.

> It would seem that *bast- is a loan in both Greek and Latin.

On what basi