>*****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]=
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 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.*****
>
Despite what I stated in my previous message, Slavic *tjudjI is not a
source for ORuss c^udI, but rather a word of similar origin (I wrote in
haste etc). What is, in my opinion, rather unusual about these
borrowings, it's the fact that the _root_ rather than a word seems to be
borrowed. Indeed, a merely phonetic adaptation of Germanic *Tiudiskaz
would have yielded **tjudIskU > eg., ORuss c^udIskU, not *tjudjI, which
emulates a pseudo-Slavic jI-derivative from *tjud-. Curiously enough,
this c^udIskU exists in ORuss, meaning 'of C^udI', thus c^udI could be a
back formation from c^udIskU, levelled out by the classical ORuss tribal
names model ( -i-stem f. sg., cf. z^(I)mudI 'Samogitians', vesI 'Vepses'
etc).
If that c^udI is an independent borrowing, one should trace the donor
(Gothic, if I got you right) and the time. The most problematic moment
is that normalized ORuss /c^/ could sount as [c'] or even [t'] (if <
*tj) in some northern dialects of ORuss, so the borrowing can't be
undoubtedly ascribed to the time _before_ the process /*tj/ > /an
affricate/ was finished (and I'm not sure when it happened, ca. 7th c.
?).
So, I must admit I can't say anything about your opinion with certainty.
Sergei