From: Piotr Gasiorowski
Message: 20608
Date: 2003-04-01
--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, george knysh <gknysh@...> wrote:
> *****GK: ARDAGAST is the recorded name of a 6th c. "Sklav" leader.
It is not certain that this is a Slavic name (B. Struminski, "Were
the Antes Eastern Slavs?" , HARVARD UKRAINIAN STUDIES, III-IV (1979-
1980), pt.2, pp. 786ff. argued that it wasn't, and suggested a Gothic
provenance.)
But as far as I'm aware, <arda-> is meaningless in Gothic terms,
while for Slavic we reconstruct *órdU [árdU] as the protoform or
<radU>, a well-known adjective and onomastic element. The name
<radogastU> is excellently attested, as are other Slavic names with
<rado-> or <-radU>. The Slavic etymology is therefore entirely
unproblematic, while the Germanic ones leaves us with an unsolved
problem (plus the question why the "Sklavs" should have been Gothic).
> Also: if the original ARDAGAST is a garbled RADAGAST,
The advantage of the Slavic explanation is that it needn't be garbled
at all. *[árdagastU] is precisely how we reconstruct the old
pronunciation of <radogostU>, a name that does not have to be
invented.
> it is comparable to RADAGAISUS (+405). And the -GAST ending seems
quite Germanic ( cf. ARBOGAST).
Slavic onomastic *-gostU is just as good as Germanic *-gastiz. Both
are independently inherited reflexes of the same IE word. As I have
said before, *[a] in *[-gastU] is just a way of transcribing the
early Slavic pronunciation of *o.
Piotr