--- In cybalist@..., Piotr Gasiorowski <piotr.gasiorowski@...>
wrote:
> Hi, John,
>
> It's Grimm, not Verner, that would get violated. The Gothic suffix
was <-þwa> (*-þwo:). It was feminine and I've never seen it used in
masculine PNs, even with any sort of "gender correction". I think
it's a safe bet that Suartuas is *swart- 'black' plus something
(there are ON names like Svertingr or Svartho:fði with this element).
Since *swart-o:n- is a plausible and attested name (Swarto, ON
Svarti), I'm inclined to think that the reflex of *-o: in the nom.sg.
*swarto: may have been a high vowel in the dialect in question, hence
the -u- [y] (plus a Greek extension). Note that the Slavic languages
routinely identified Germanic weak stems with their own *u:-stems
(nominatives in *-y).
>
> Piotr
That would match the development in Swedish (when, unfortunately, I
don't know), where the whole right hand side of the vowel triangle
i y u
e ö o
ä å
a
is moved counter-clockwise one notch.
Torsten