Re: [tied] Re: Question re a Germanic Name (Suartuas)

From: Piotr Gasiorowski
Message: 14787
Date: 2002-08-29

 
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From: x99lynx@...
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Sent: Thursday, August 29, 2002 3:09 PM
Subject: [tied] Re: Question re a Germanic Name (Suartuas)

> So if I was writing in Gothic and I wanted to say that the Fifth Horesman's name was "Hatred", a substantive, what would I write?  (fija<thorn>wa, hatred < fijan, to hate.)  (Of course, <th>wa is a Gothic construction and you would not expect it specifically in other Germanic languages.)
 
I don't think he could have been called that. The Germani were rather meticulous about the grammatical gender of names. Fijaþwa wouldn't do, but any masculine derivative would.
 
> Is going by ON naming practices unnecessarily limiting, especially for the period and time in question?
 
I also gave an OHG example (Swarto, corresponding to ON Svarti); others were ON simply because there are more such examples there. One could easily imagine Goth. *Swarta or OE Swearta; the latter is in fact attested!
 
> If an East Germanic speaker took a conversion name like "Honorarius" or just plain "Honor", how would he translate that to 'Gothic'?  (swe:ran, to honor)  Substantives do appear in northern Germanic tradition, although not necessarily in connection with northern kings.  Saxo calls the legendary Danish king "Frotho" or "Frothius" (Peace).
 
The 'peace' word was <friðr> (masculine in ON, like OHG fridu, OS friþu and OE friþ, and found in macho names like Sigfriðr 'victorious peace'). "Frotho" = ON Fróði, derived from an adjective meaning 'wise, clever' (OE fro:d) -- a name made famous by Tolkien, whose Frodo = OE Fro:da. Any Germanic child could turn an adjective into a personal name by adding weak-noun inflections. This is how we make OHG Swarto out of <swart>.
 
> How would a "Gothic" speaker translate an adopted name that meant substantive 'sworn,
oath, pledge, faith' (from swaran, to swear)?
 
Definitely Swara (*swar-o:n-), like *far-o:n- > Fara/Faro/Fari from <faran> 'travel'.

<<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).>>

> How does that jive with the first -u- in Suartuas?  Shouldn't it consistently be S[w]art[w]as?  Or S[y]art[y]as?  (Based on this high vowel idea, I'm curious as to how Procopius would have transliterated a word like OHG 'triuwida', truth.)
 
<Suartuas> _is_ a consistent spelling, isn't it? (I only indicated the Ancient Greek pronunciation of ypsilon in square brackets.) What I mean is that something like Germanic [swartu], with [swarta] (or similar) in the oblique cases may have suggested a stem like Gk. hypocoristic Ze:na:s, gen. Ze:na:, i.e. Suartua:s, Suartua:. I'm only speculating, of course, since there aren't enough Greek versions of Herulian names to provide parallel examples.

Piotr