--- In cybalist@..., "Piotr Gasiorowski" <gpiotr@...> wrote:
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: tgpedersen
> To: cybalist@...
> Sent: Tuesday, April 23, 2002 1:37 PM
> Subject: [tied] Re: IRMIN
>
>
> > And why should the Finns call their king <kuningas> and the Slavs
their god <Bog>?
>
> Here we have to do with historically verifiable contacts and
numerous loans with a clear pattern of correspondences. There's no
link like that between the Cherusci (or any other Germanic people)
and the Armenians or some otherwise enigmatic non-Alanic Iranians
introduced quite ad hoc to justify a single wild etymology.
>
> > Aha! So I with my penchant for "irregular" explanations should
come up with another (but "irregular"?) explanation for "Arminius",
since ordinary linguists can't or won't? But I'm afraid what I came
up with is the best I can do.
>
> > Sometimes I get an idea which I post, and after that I might get
an idea that I think is better, which I also post. Point taken. I
shall try in the future to stick to my first idea, whatever happens.
>
> No need, if you could just make up your mind about what you're
arguing at the moment. It's difficult to discuss with several vaguely
sketched and mutually exclusive ideas posted at the same time. So how
do you etymologise Arminius right now?
>
> Piotr
My _personal_ (as opposed to on-cybalist) opinion is that if Snorri
was right, that there happened a mix of Asir and Vanir in the upper
layers of the Asir tribe, then that name could derive either from
Iranic speakers (ie <aryaman>) or from some language spoken by the
Vanir, which _might_ be Armenian for the reasons I mentioned earlier.
Either way, _that_ putative tribe was it I was looking for in the
immigration to Thuringia.
But actually the question should be easy to settle, for the following
reason:
As I mentioned several times before, Thuringia has a number of town
names composed of a personal name + <-leben>; Denmark and Sweden has
a similar number of town names of personal names + <-lev> and
<-löv>. That last morpheme stands for something (a piece of land)
you 'leave' to someone for them to 'live' off. The personal names in
the town names in Thuringia have little overlap with the northern
ones.
Now, if these <-leben> places in Thuringia were given as possession
to the first generation of Hermunduri invaders or colonists in
Thuringia, those names should (might) reflect what language the
Hermunduri spoke at the time of the invasion. So, Germanic or
Iranian? Problem is, most of them seem to be rather short, so
therefore probably hypochoristic (nick names).
Torsten