From: george knysh
Message: 64302
Date: 2009-06-29
--- On Mon, 6/29/09, tgpedersen <tgpedersen@...> wrote:
GK: On the matter of the historical "Croats": I am leaning
> towards the notion that they might have been named after their
> initial organizer. The name does appear separately in the list of
> the migrant clans given by Constantine Porph. in the mid-10th c.
> If the Avar Khan Bayan appointed an Avar warrior called "Horvat"
> (or something similar) to the task of putting together Avaria's
> northern defenses in and along the Carpathians (against the
> threatening Turks of Asia who conquered Kerch in 576 and made
> demands on Constantinople against the Avars), this Horvat might
> have drafted a considerable numbern of subject Slavs (and others)
> into his divisions (or whatever they were called), and the various
> groups would become "Horvat's men" = Croats. There are many
> historical analogies to this onomastic procedure.
No. This is what is known as a 'root etymology': the root element matches, but the suffixes don't.
****GK: The similarity I'm thinking about is that manifested in the name of the Nogai Tatars, the Uldingir (from the Hun ruler Uldin, a generation before Attila), the Aspurgiani of the Bosporos, the "Scythians" of the Greek Pontic genealogical myth, the theory of a Byzantine author (I forget the name for the moment) that the "rus'" were named after a chieftain by that name, the Slavic genealogical myth of "Lekh, Czech and Rus'" etc etc. I don't actually remember the precise word in Constantine porphyrogenitos (it might have been identical to the Tanais inscription but I'd have to check). So you'll have to do a lot better than para- pro- pre-"root etymologize" to dispose of this particular idea. Not that I insist on it. And it doesn't involve your Harudes fantasy.****
In this case because there aren't any. More likely his name was Horvat because that's what he was.
****GK: That's quite possible. Which doesn't refute the main idea of course. That is also independent of whatever etymology you come up with as to the name.****
http://en.wikipedia .org/wiki/ Horvath
If my proposal *xaruG-át- is true, they had a separate religion having to do with stone altars etc.
****GK: Whatever. I have no idea, and neither have you. just the usual vapours.****
Torsten