--- Sergejus Tarasovas <
S.Tarasovas@...>
wrote:
> [BTW I think
> Old Rus' "Chud'" probably goes back to this
> "Thiudos"
> (and later derivatives: a traditional North German/
> Norse designation for the "people" of this area].
> [Sergejus Tarasovas]
>
> ORuss <c^udI> (f.) 'a nom. pr. of a number of
> northern peoples,
> including Baltic Finns', <c^uz^I> (adj.) 'alien' ,
> OCS <s^tuz^dI> 'id.'
> (> hence a bookish Russian hybrid c^'uz^dyj
> 'extraneous, alien'), as
> well as their cognates in other Slavic languages,
> derive from Slavic
> *tjudjI 'alien('s)', which is a semantically
> inverted borrowing from
> Germanic (or, more specificly, Gothic?) *Tiudiskaz
> 'ours' < *Tiud-
> '(our) people' < PIE *teut- 'people'.
>
> See
> http://groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/2008
> and thereabouts. (citing Piotr G.)
>
> Sergei
*****GK: Here is the passage from Jordanes I had in
mind.====�Hermanaricus nobilissimus Amalorum in regno
successit, qui multas et bellicosissimas arctoi gentes
perdomuit suisque parere legibus fecit. quem merito
nonnulli Alexandro Magno conparavere maiores, habebat
si quidem quos domuerat Golthescytha Thiudos Inaunxis
Vasinabroncas Merens Mordens Imniscaris Rogas Tadzans
Athaul Navego Bubegenas Coldas. sed cum tantorum
servitio clarus haberetur, etc.,� [Jordanes, �De
origine actibusque Getarum�, XXIII.116]===== I have
comments and questions. Now there is no doubt whatever
that the source for the list of "northern peoples"
here (arctoi gentes) was Gothic (cf. the discernible
Gothic language traits). It is arguable that Jordanes
got it from Cassiodorus, who may have got it in turn
from Ablabius or from some Ravenna (?)document. Some
of these peoples have been identified and located"
"Vasina(broncas)" as the "Ves'", "Merens" as the
"Merya", "Mordens" as the "Mordva" [less certainly
"Coldas" as the Moscow river "Galindi"]. In any case
we are dealing with populations of the same area as
that of the later Scandinavian Volga route. Which
indicates that it was already known to northern
merchants ca. 500 AD. Whatever the linguistic
relationship between the Old Slavic words for "alien"
etc. and Gothic/Germanic, I don't think it explains
the appearance and use of the term "Chud'" in the
Primary Chronicle (and other sources). I think that
was a direct borrowing. The Gothic source reported by
Jordanes designates these "arctoi gentes" as
"Golthescytha thiudos" [the absence of a final "s" in
"Golthescytha" seems to suggest that the list is not
of "golthescythas" with "thiudos" as a separate
people, i.e. the Estonians]. I wonder (1) if "arctoi
gentes" is simply a Latinized rendition of the Gothic?
And (2) Could "Golthescytha" be translated as "Cold
Scythian"? I'm not sure about the "golthe" element.
There is an attractive similarity to the later skaldic
"Cold Sweden" as to the same area.== The main point
for me though is that if the Goths called these
populations "Thiudos", this would be good enough to
explain the appearance of "Chud'" as the Slavic
equivalent. The emergence of the "foreign" word in
Slavic would be a separate process.*****
>
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