Re: Djilas

From: tolgs001
Message: 57934
Date: 2008-04-24

>No, it isn't. Learn something about medieval onomastics.
>
>Brian

And especially given the fact that all documents pertaining to those
people and events in that European region were written in Latin.

Let alone the history facts that the region came under the rule of two
military and political powers that had: the title "gila" or "djila"
(perhaps number two in the hierarchy after the "duke"), and the
second one (the Petcheneks/Betcheneks) had an important tribe
called Gila orYula.

In the second half of the 10th century and the first half of the
next one, Petcheneks were the de facto political and military power
in Transylvania, being able to snub the suzerain, the Hungarian king
(whose court was in another "fehérvár"/"white citadel"/(Belgrade),
namely in Székesfehérvár ("the white citadel where the see is"; szék
in Hungarian means "chair; see").

Even if one is ignorant of all other sources (esp. Persian-Arab ones,
as well as the Kievan Rus ones), one must have heard/red morcels
of info in Romania -- regarding Constantine the 7th called Porphyro-
genitus's "De administrando imperii". In that work, he gave the most
important account on the Hungarian and Petcheneg situation around
the year 950. One Hungarian duke paid a visit to him in Constantinople,
and so did one "Gyula" from Bälgrad (= Gyulafehérvár = Alba Iulia),
who showed his openness to christian faith (so that his realm received
a Greek bishop).

The medieval onomastics custom in Latin texts corroborated with the
historical facts ((a) "gyula" = a high nobility rank + (b) Yula = one of
the most important Petchenek tribe) must have some impact on any
judgment concerning the name "rex Iulus" (this was the spelling in
some chronicles or official papers of the time, and not Iulius or Julius;
medieval Latin spellings, esp. of place names and names of peoples
and people, were highly chaotic; by the way, most of <v>'s were
systematically written <u>). Even if one happens not to be aware by
a simple fact that quite a number of Christian names, although ac-
cepted by the Christian Orthodox Church of Constantinople, were not
and still are not popular within the Orthodox Christian community
world-wide. And this is confirmed by the onomastics of the oldest
Romanian (Walach) leaders ever mentioned in chronicles and other
documents betw. the 9th and 13th centuries: they didn't have the
custom of including Christian onomastics that was typical of the
Romanic and Germanic Christian world.

People who tend to neglect or ignore such details, also neglect or
ignore one aspect of tremendous importance: as it happened in
Western Europe, where the upper classes were chiefly of Germanic
extraction (Vandals, Goths, Langobards and especially the Franks
and Burgundians), who founded Germanic kingdoms and duchees
on the ruins of the western half of the Roman Empire, so were the
state-political-military configurations that came in waves in the East:
chiefly of the Alanic-Turkic plus Slavic kind. Between the 6th and
the 12th/13th centuries, the remaining Romanized population of
South-East Europe *decayed* to the worst social status, and was
pushed to the worst and most marginal, chiefly mountainous,
territories. This was a... catastrophe, and it is obvious as such when
one analyses the peculiarities of the Romance languages of the
region: the now dead vegliot language (or Dalmatian) and the four
dialects of the Romanian language (those of us who are native-
speakers on this list belong to the so-called "Daco-Romanian"
dialect; it is called this way only as a convention, to show that
the dialect is spoken only on the territory of the former greater
Dacia, namely to the South only approx. to the isoglosses pro-
posed by Skok and Jir^ec^ek. Beyond those lines, other Romanian
dialects are spoken.). Because of the tremendous "shrinking"
(trades and cultural diversity), a part of the Latin vocabulary was
lost forever, and some innovations did not enter the neo-Romance
language. One of the most striking example is the lack of the
word ecclesia in Romanian. I mean as an inherited word, not as
the recent (circa two centuries old) one. Ironically, Albanian does
have it, but Romanian has only the... imperial Roman word for it:
basilica that turn in Romanian as biserica (an older form besearica),
containing a classic intervocalic rhotacization of the L. But there
is no *chiesa or *chie$ä whatsoever (unlike in Italian and Albanian).
The reason for that is obviously the fact that for centuries Proto-
Romanians's links to their... old/traditional capital (from all points
of view), Contantinople, were severed. (The other one was anyway
too remote, and after the Odowakar event it shrinked during more than
half of a millennium to the dimensions of an almost obscure
town. It would have been totally as such, hadn't the Papacy had
its see there.)

I mean sound change speculations in a space void of history, i.e.,
cultural, customary features, often result in wrong conclusions and
follies.

George