Although Piotr said all that needs to be said on the linguistics of
<walha>, I'm curious whether there is a historical explanation
why one particular Gallic tribe (or two?) started calling
themselves by the foreigners' word for "foreigner". I presume
Volcae was their self-identification; it seems unlikely that the
Romans got the name directly from the Germans.
And are there etymologies for Tectosages and Arecomici?
Dan Milton
--- In cybalist@..., Piotr Gasiorowski <piotr.gasiorowski@...>
wrote:
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: alexmoeller@...
> To: cybalist@...
> Sent: Sunday, September 01, 2002 9:57 AM
> Subject: Re: [tied] Ovid
>
>
> [Moeller] The name itself. To answer well this question we
need to know when does appears first in history such names as
wallon and welsh. Are they records and if so from which time?
>
> The earliest written attestation of <walha> known to me is on
an Old Runic inscribed bracteate datable to the first half of the
fifth century. The probable meaning is 'foreign, imported'. The
noun <wealh>, pl. <wealas> and the adjective <wylisc, welisc>
(hence Wales, Welsch) occur in Old English from the late
seventh century onwards, i.e. throughout its recorded history.
The word exists in OHG (<walh>, adj. <walhisc>) and ON (pl. <
valir>, adj. <valskr>) as well, to make its Northwest Germanic
attestation complete. <Walloon> is *walh- Latinised with the
suffix -o:n-. Since the prototype *walxaz 'Gaul' > 'Roman, Briton,
foreigner' shows the operation of Grimm's Law (from
hypothetical pre-Gmc. *walk-a-s = Celtic Volc-), we can accept
the word as Proto-Germanic despite the fact that it isn't
documented in Wulfila's Gothic.
>
> Whether the Slavs borrowed it early from East Germanic or
later from West Germanic, the predicted common Slavic
adaptation of strong masculine <walh-> is *wolxU, giving with
perfect Neogrammarian regularity the forms that are actually
attested in all the subbranches of Slavic (including South Slavic
vlax-). As opposed to fantastic derivations from Colchis or
Vologaesus (why not ancient Indic Meluhha? If you turn the M
upside down, you'll get Weluhha), which (1) ignore historical and
semantic difficulties, (2) require special explanations involving
undocumented forms in poorly known languages plus a battery
of ad hoc sound changes, and (3) still leave some questions
unanswered, the standard etymology presents no formal
difficulties whatsoever, is semantically plausible and explains
the known linguistic facts. This is my last word on it. You may
save this message for future reference, for I'm not going to
repeat myself.
>
> [Moeller] Do not forget, the name "colchi" was a generic name
for the population from north and east of the Black Sea. And this
does not exclude several hypothesis. One of them should be
that the celts who were until Galatia and east shore of the Black
Sea could be identified by germanic tribes as the "old volcae"
under the name of colchi. I have no basis on what I say now. I
repeat myself, i never read carefully there where someone
wrotte about colchis. As a matter of fact I was looking on the net
for Laz language and I found several similarities:
>
> Hang me if I understand any of this. If you have no basis for a
claim, why make it?
>
> [Moeller] > da= sister, romanian has a "dada"= sister
>
> A typical nursery term -- no probative value.
>
> [Moeller] > ciogar=dog, romanian has "ogar"= dog
>
> This 'hound' word is also found in Slavic and Hungarian. If it is
an eastern Wanderwort, it was brought to Europe by the Avars or
the Magyars.
>
> [Moeller] > seri=evening, romanina has too "seri"=evenings.
>
> ... an french has <soir> :). From Latin se:rus 'late'.
>
> Piotr