>If the a people calls themselves "the people of Tur" (Hermun-duri
>/Turingi)
Is that really so? Thor > Thüringen?
>there must have been something or somebody called Tur.
>I was wondering if it was a divine name and if that was behind
>Snorri's mention of Thor's stay in Thrace. If that hypothesis is
>true, then those peoples might have had a god named "Tur". To
>which you counter that it isn't so because it isn't so.
Snorri's mentioning the fictitious character called Thor
isn't a bit too vague? OTOH, isn't the geographical and
ethnological difference too big between Thrace and Northern
Italy?
As for coincidences: throughout the territory of the former
Hungarian kingdom there are lots of place names, even of
hydronyms, containing <túr> (or even as simple as Túr). I
don't know its toponymic meaning (I guess it has nothing
to do with the verb that means "to dig, to root"). On top of
that, there is an important town in Transylvania, Turda,
in Hungarian Torda (perhaps a relic of the name of a Turkic
clan or tribe Torta, I dunno). I don't expect these to be
some signs of passing through those territories of various
Germanic tribes (inter alia Bastarnae, Ostrogoths and
Visigoths, Vandals, Gepids, Langobards).
Other coincidences: <dur> is a Hungarian interjection,
onomatopoea, approx. meaning "thud" and "boom". Then
there are lots of German Tür & Dür & Dürr/Dörr
(Dörrobst)
circumstances (incl. Albrecht Dürer whose father was a
Hungarian, AjtóS < <ajtó> "door; Tür"). Last but not
least: <Tor>, up to 1904 also spelled as <Thor>; incl.
<Torschlusspanik> & <Torwart> (goalkeeper). :-)
>The inhabitants of Kreuzberg, a part of Berlin, aren't.
The comparison here would fit only in the event that, due
the present day majority of the inhabitants of that Berlin
borough, Kreuzberg would be replaced by some other name
alluding to this population (e.g. Turantepe).
>Torsten
George