[tied] Re: Baltic *gud3- (message 8073)

--- In cybalist@..., gknysh@... wrote:

> I've looked, and here's my take.

> *****GK: Is there any new archaeological evidence of a Gothic
> presence there? The Welbark culture associated with them is
> concentrated on the Lower Vistula (both banks), all along the Bug
> (both banks) and then on to the Ukrainian rivers south of the
> Prypjat', where it progressively dissolves. This is very much in

line

> with the tales of Gothic expansionism towards the Black Sea. From

the

> IV th c. many sites of the Chernyakhiv culture may also be

associated

> with Goths. To my knowledge though there are neither Welbark nor
> Chernyakhiv sites in the areas of Belarus where one might expect

them

> preparatory to the emergence of the "Gudai".******

Thanks - that's the expert opinion I was looking for (no tongue in
cheek here). I might have asked if there is any possibility the Goths
in question were assimilated rather quickly and thus haven't left any
material traces, but I guess the answer would be "no", because the
Baltic population must have been rather rare, and such traceless
disappearence would be unexplainable.

> *****GK: I believe there is an article on this problem written by
> Prof. Eduard Hermann (1869-1950). The article is entitled: "Sind

der

> Name der Gudden und die Ortsnamen Danzig, Gdingen ubnd Grudenz
> gotischen ursprungs?" It was published in 1941 in the Nachrichten

der

> Akademie der Wissenschaften in Goettingen (Philol.-hist. Klasse)
> (pp.207-291). I had the opportunity to look at it once, but
> unfortunately was busy with many other matters at the time, and did
> not take extensive notes. Perhaps Mr. Tarasovas could remedy this

for

> the forum.

You misunderstood my question, Hryhoryj. I just asked to comment
_Jordanes' passage_ (worth as close attention as that golthescytha-
list discussed ad nauseam) from a historian's point of view, I'm
(sorry) not interested in philological exercises on the Lith. gu`das
- I have some acquaintance with the issue, though I haven't read
Hermann's article you mention - I have only a bit of second-hand
information. See below.

> Pritsak claims the following (op. cit. p. 133): "After the main

mass

> of Ostrogoths abandoned the Ukraine and migrated through Moesia

(ca.

> 475-488) to Italy, the remnants of the Goths who stayed behind

called

> the Ukraine REITHGOTALAND.

Very interesting. I've never heard about that. Does Pritsak give a
reference for that REITHGOTALAND?

>I do have a note though, indicating that the first
> attested use of the term occurs in 1546, and that it refers to "the
> Rus'ian population of the Lithuanian-Polish state". Which would

then

> include not only Belarusans but also Ukrainians and some

Russians.==
...

> They preserved until historical times
> (from ca. 1546 to the present) the term GUDA-S (sing.)/GUDA-I (pl.)
> for the "Rus'ian population of the Lithuanian-Polish state," that

is,

> Ukrainians and Belorussians, in contrast to MASKVOS, Muscovites."
> [with a reference to Hermann]

I guess I must repeat here what I've said in the messages I referred
you to: the evidence from the Lithuanian dialects unequivocally
points to the meaning 'a foreigner' for Lith. gu`das, which was and
still can be applied to the _nearest_ foreign people, thus _Germans
and Latvians_ in Samogitian dialects, Belarusians in southern,
Latvians in northern and Russians in eastern auks^taic^iu, dialects,
so the above discourse you quote is not to the point. Hermann is an
outstanding Baltist, but the systematic description of the Lithuanian
dialects began after the World War II (despite the Soviet occupation
and its negative impact on Lithuanian linguistics).

>=== GK: I must confess that I found
> this Pritsak analysis rather doubtful. The Old Ukrainian chronicles
> certainly know the term "Goths", but they never use it with respect
> to the inhabitants of the contemporary Belarus and Ukraine (They
> usually prefer "Krivichi" for the former and "Rus'" for the

latter).

> In their perspective, "Goths" are either a Scandinavian people of

the

> Baltic or a population of the Crimea. But since the issue is not

what

> Old Ukrainians thought or wrote but what Old Lithuanians did, I'll
> keep an open mind until I've refreshed my memory (or have it
> refreshed for me) about Hermann's views and any other pertinent
> material.*****
>

You can call Old Ukrainian what has been called Old Russian for a
long time in the English tradition, but I somehow doubt this can help
clarify the matter. IMHO, being ethnocentric presupposes some
inevitable aberration, inadmissible or at least undesirable for a
real scholar, whose goal is the truth rather than over-emphasizing
his or her nation (like 'tsur can be found in Ukrainian only' - just
open a Slavic etymological dictionary on the lexeme *skjurU). Such
ethnocentrism has done a bad turn to, eg, Trubachev (Russia) and
Zinkevic^ius (Lithuania) time and again.

Sergei