At 12:41:42 PM on Friday, October 22, 2004, alex wrote:
> it seems there have been a lot of "king"-s then.
No. What we have is a very common deuterotheme *-ri:kaz
(Goth. <-reiks>) that happens to share an etymology with the
'king' word. These are names, not descriptions.
[...]
> Interesting, all the Goths which apparently "went west"
> begin to have an "o" at the end of the name instead of the
> old "us" even if wrote in Latin, and (coincidentaly?)
> after Alaric conquested Rome.
> -Thiudigotho, Sigismundo, Eutharico, Herminefredo
One would have to see the original context: <Sigismundo>,
for instance, may simply be the dative or ablative of an
implied <Sigismunus>. <Thiudigoto>, however, is a different
story: the name is feminine, a normal feminine n-stem in
<-o:>.
> Should it indeed be "king"?
Yes.
> Between "Hermanaricus and Vetericus are 4 rulers which do
> not have in tehir name the component "ricus" :
> Hermanaricus, Gesimundus, Hunimundus rex, Thorismud,
> Berimud, Vetericus
So? Again, these are names, not descriptions. One of the
basic principles of Germanic name-giving, already evident at
this early date, is inheritance of name themes. Thus, the
children of an Ermanareiks are likely to have names in
<Ermana-> or (if male) <-reiks>. The literal meaning of the
names was already secondary. A few centuries later the
original meanings of some of the themes had even been
forgotten -- we know, because we have the incorrect
etymologies suggested by contemporaries -- and dithematic
names were constructed on an almost purely combinatorial
basis, leading to such oddities as <Hathuwigis>
'battle-battle'.
Talan