--- tgpedersen <
tgpedersen@...> wrote:
The earliest
> possibly
> Germanic language we know of in that direction is
> Bastarnian (which
> contemporary historians call mixed) and the only
> words we know of
> that language are three names mentioned by Gibbons
> in "The Decline
> and Fall of the Roman Empire" (and his sources seem
> unrecoverable),
> and they don't look anything Germanic.
****GK: In chapter 10 of his mag. op. Gibbon mentions
"Peucini, Borani, Carpi, etc." in connection with the
Bastarnae. Are these the three names you mean, or is
there another context?=== In case you do mean these
three. "Peucini" is an appellative derived from a
Danubian delta island (cf. Strabo). "Carpi" probably
relates to the Carpathians (clearly not Germanic,
since it is pre-Grimm). I am interested in "Borani"
for another reason. This group is closely associated
to the Goths and their expeditions of the mid-3rd c.
(in some Greek sources we also get "Boradi"). I wonder
if it could be a mispronuntiation of "Polani", the
latter term being taken as a generic appellative of
Scytho-Sarmatian "royal" clans in the area (like
Herodotus' Basilei). In any case, it certainly seems
that none of these terms is properly Germanic. But
this means nothing at all in connection with the
identity of the Bastarnae. "Peuca dwellers", "Polani"
(?), "Carpathian denizens" seem to be non-ethnic
designations.******
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