--- In cybalist@..., "Piotr Gasiorowski" <gpiotr@...> wrote:
> Sve:naldr < *svein-vald- 'commander of young men'. The problem with
potential Rugian etymologies is that the attested names make
perfectly good sense in terms of a rather late ("Viking Age") stage
of North Germanic; sometimes they even show distinctively Swedish
Torsten:
or thereabouts. wa > a is North Germanic. ei > e is East North
Germanic, ie. Danish or Swedish, but not Gotlandic, where ei is
preserved.
Piotr:
features. The Rugians mentioned by Jordanes lived several hundred
years earlier and it's most unlikely that their language should have
developed a whole complex of Old-Norse-like features independently.
Perhaps a residual Rugian group had migrated to the Novgorod area to
become linguistically absorbed by the Swedish colonisers while
retaining a separate name and identity, but that's becoming rather
speculative without good linguistic evidence that the Rus were
anything else but Scandinavian. Besides, the "oarsmen" etymology of
the Rus is rather convincing, and Finnish Ruotsi 'Sweden' mustn't be
ignored. If there were bitterly competing groups of Scandinavian
businessmen in northern Russia at an early date, they were perhaps
the Svear vs. Gotlanders.
>
> Piotr
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: S.Tarasovas@...
> To: cybalist@...
> Sent: Saturday, February 10, 2001 11:12 PM
> Subject: [tied] Re: Language - Area - Routes
>
>
> One more spelling is Sve^naldU. I just discovered this name is
mentioned by Vasmer - he refers to Tosen's explanation: Old Norse
Sveinaldr. Young men's what?
>
> On the other hand, my point of course was not that these names
can't be etymologized on an Old Norse basis. But what do we know
about the language of Rugi? How can it be classified (North, West,
East Germanic)? What if Rugian etymologies, if we only could develop
them, would have suited even better?