Re: [tied] Cimbri & Teutoni

----- Original Message -----

From: Christopher Gwinn

To: cybalist@egroups.com

Sent: Thursday, August 31, 2000 5:42 PM

Subject: Re: [tied]

I agree with Chris. I also think (and said it in the past when this question was discussed on Cybalist) that Teutoni is an unlikely Latin rendering of anything derived from *þiuðo: (or *tHiuðo:, or whatever the Germanic pronunciation was at the time). Why not *Theudoni or the like? Roman writers were pretty consistent in using <ch> and <th> as substitutes for Germanic phonemes, also in tribal names such as the Cherusci ("Vare, Vare, redde mi legiones!"). IMO both tribal names look more likely Celtic than Germanic. It's often difficult to identify the linguistic affiliation of an ancient tribe. No-one knows for sure how to classify the Bastarns, for example -- were they linguistically Celtic, Germanic or heterogeneous?

 

As for the Cimbri and the Teutons, the Roman intelligence service did their best to locate their homeland -- Rome wanted to make sure such raids would never occur again. At last the Empire struck back, sending a naval expedition to Chersonesus Cimbrica (Jutland) almost a century after the Cimbric raid. Strabo says that soon afterwards (5 BC) an embassy of Cimbri and Harudi arrived in Rome with sincere apologies for their great-grandfathers' behaviour, carrying a precious sacred vessel as a gift for Augustus, with love.

 

Unless the Romans had made a regrettable mistake and punished the wrong people (who thought it wiser to apologise nevertheless), a Cimbro-Teutonic homeland in the Jutland Peninsula can be regarded as established (see Pliny the Elder). That would rule out their Celticity even if they were initially identified as "Celti" by their Roman contemporaries. But ethnic names may be eagerly borrowed as part of cultural influence; or names originally given by Celts may have stuck to groups of Germani. Whatever the scenario, I can easily imagine a Germanic ethnos with a Celtic ethnonym, just as there were Slavic tribes with Iranian names.

 

Piotr

 

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Steve,
If Cimbri (your *Ximbros - and as a note I believe that the -x- here would
have a Greek value [kh] not as the x in Xavier) were ultimately of Celtic
origin, it may be (as I said) related to Irish cimb "take/possess,"
therefore Cimbri may mean "the possesors/the takers."
The Latin authors of the classical period generally came pretty close to
representing foreign names the way they sounded to their own ears - if a
tribe was calling itself Ximbri (thus "KHimbri"), I think that Latin authors
would have written Chimbri or Himbri instead.

-Chris Gwinn