Re: [tied] The End of the Goths

----- Original Message -----
From: Håkan Lindgren

To: Cybalist

Sent: Monday, September 04, 2000 10:50 PM

Subject: [tied] The End of the Goths

"End" in the sense "frontier, border province", I suppose, like the original meaning of Mercia or Ukraine. AFAIK, it's the most widely accepted etymology today. The later spellings were Gothiskandza or Gothiskandia. The form *andija(z) I gave is PGmc., i.e. Pre-Gothic. Gothic ei was pronounced [i:]; in the inflected forms the cluster [dj] appeared, and Greek dzeta was possibly a rough rendering of a palatalised dental. But I'm not sure what Cassiodorus's and Jordanes's Greek spelling was. If I find the original somewhere, I'll let you know. If you're interested in a readable translation, see here:

http://www.ucalgary.ca/~vandersp/Courses/texts/jordgeti.html

Piotr

Piotr,

thanks for your reply to Goths 'R' Us. If you know anything more that could make the historical and etymological relations between Goths-Geatas-Gotar-Gutar a little clearer I'll be glad to hear from you (or if you are able to show that this question is even more complicated - I like complexity and facts that don't fit together just as much as I like straight answers).

Some questions. If Gothiskandza comes from *gutiska- + *andija- how did *andija- turn into andza? There's no z in andeis (in my Gothic grammar the word for "end" is andeis; inflected forms such as dative andja had a j but no z). I've seen some failed etymologies of Gothiskandza so I'm a little suspicious. And naming a place "Gothic End" seems weird. Why would they call it "end"?

Was this a usual way of naming places? As far as I know (O.K., that's not very far) all old Swedish place names that are based on the name of a people or tribe use the plural genitive of that people's name, none of them uses the -isk adjective. E.g. Gota-land, where gota is an old pl. genitive form.

I remember seeing this word explained as Gothi-skandza, where skandza means "fort", "fortress" (skans in Swedísh, Schanze in German) but I think this explanation has been rejected by later research.

Hakan