From: Piotr Gasiorowski
Message: 17166
Date: 2002-12-13
----- Original Message -----
From: "george knysh" <gknysh@...>
To: <cybalist@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Friday, December 13, 2002 2:53 PM
Subject: [tied] Harii/Hirri into (H)eruli?
> Someone has asked on another list whether it is
> possible that Pliny's Hirri and Tacitus' Harii could
> have developed into the groups later known as Heruli
> or Eruli. I have strong doubts about this on
> historical and archaeological grounds, but the
> discussion has taken a linguistic twist and I
> mentioned that I would consult the excellent linguists
> on Cybalist on the issue. The argument is that
> Harii/Hirri could be derived from the same root as the
> one which gave Erila, the H being a Graeco-Roman
> superfluity. It is further argued that Erila could be
> interpreted as "little Eri", and that Greeks changed
> the "i" to a "u" whence the historically recorded
> name. Does this make any sense?
This theory was once popular but there's no linguistic support for it. To begin with, Latinised "Harii" has Latin <h-> corresponding to PGmc. *x- (it's articulation seems to have been weak in East Germanic already in Roman times). Germanic *xarja- means 'army, host, multitude', and <harii> is interpreted as reflecting the corresponding collective or plural form. *xarja- in turn comes from PIE *korjo-, and the etymology of "Harii" is strengthened by the fact that *korjo- occurs in Celtic ethnonyms like "Tricorii" and "Petrucorii". To sum up, the <h> is not due to hypercorrection in Latin.
I can't locate the passage where Pliny speaks about the "Hirri". Can you help me with that? I'd be surprised if the name were a variant of "Harii" (unless it's hopelessly garbled), but I can't attempt an identification with no historical and geographic background whatsoever. Gibbon, who alludes to the "Heruli = little Harii" theory, speaks of "the Skyrri and Hirri" on the same breath -- a really harum-scarum association.
The Latin <h> in "Heruli" _is_ hypercorrect if Runic <erilaz> and the related Northwest Germanic 'man of worth' words (OE eorl, ON jarl, OS erl, all < *erlaz) have anything to do with this name (which is the received opinion). Quasi-ablaut variation involving *i ~ *u ~ *a ~ zero is common in Germanic suffixes, so if both *er-la- and *er-ila- occur, *er-ula- may easily occur as well (cf. *xak-il-o: ~ *xak-ul-o: 'flax-comb, hackle'), and no help from the Greeks is required. The suffix seems to be primarily adjectival, as in *mikila- 'great' (cf. Gk. megalo-). It is _not_ diminutive. I suppose somebody connected <erilaz> with Gothic attila 'daddy', but the latter is a "weak" (nasal) stem, *att-ilan- (nom.sg. *attilo:(n) > Goth. attila), whereas *er-(i)la-z is a formally different "strong" masculine (very aptly for this word). If it had existed in Gothic, it would be something like *aírils there.
Piotr