Re: Goths: IE Languages vs Germanic

I wrote:
<<B. Because the word Goth appears only in Greek and Latin and never
in ancient German.>>
Piotr Gasiorowski <gpiotr@...> replied:
<<But in your set of Greek words even phonetic similarity is pretty
low. Greek <gottHos> or Latin <gotha> are not meaninful words in
those languages. The earliest attested forms (<gutones, guthones>,
etc.)Êare more similar to the Germanic prototype.>>

(First, Piotr, thank you for your exceptional patience with all this.)
Actually what it looks like is we have two distinct forms. One is
Tacitus', Ptolemy's and Pliny's <gotones/gothones>, writing in the
1st and 2d century AD. (And perhaps Strabo's "Butones" writing in
Greek in the 1st century B.C.) Except for Ptolemy's, these
"Gothones" are described as being involved with central European
tribes - well to the west in both Strabo and Tacitus. Ptolemy's
"Gythones" are listed with no special significance amid a whole crowd
of tribes near the Vistula - with far less territory than for example
the Bastarnae.

The other form is <gotthoi/gothi> that makes it appearance in Greek
with regard to invaders on the eastern Danube just after 200 AD.
When we get a location for them, they are among the Scythians in the
Ukraine. Forgive me for not identifying these <gotthoi> with
Wielbark or even Cernjachov at this point, because that would be
jumping ahead of the problem. Neither of those material cultures
yield the name "Goth" as direct evidence.

So, based on that raw information, is it at all appropriate to ask
why a slew of contemporary Greek commentators did not recognize these
<Gotthoi> as the well-documented and often enough named <Guthones>?
The n-stem looks thoroughly absent until Cassiodorus's reconstruction
and even then... Not even Ulfila's nephew and biographer who might
know better uses anything but "Gothi."

If, for the moment, we don't assume that <guthones> = <gottHoi>, then
I might suggest a word like <kottoi> might be "more similar" to
<gottHoi> than <*gut-o:n> is. And I would ask, how would a Greek
word like <kottoi> be borrowed into a East Germanic language? Would
it have been conformed to the sound system? With a Gothic "accent"
so to speak? - Regards, Steve Long