Re: Alanic horseman

On 2008-02-07 05:00, ualarauans wrote:

> Of course they did. Most influential of them were East Germanic or
> at least could speak East Germanic. As to commoners of different
> origins, they did probably adapt it to their particular idiom. I
> wonder what was the proto-Slavic form? Something like *otIlI? Which
> would eventually yield Polish *ociel and Russian *otel', if I don't
> mistake...

It was a nasal stem, so from the strictly formal point of view it should
have been something like **atilo:N/**atilen- > **otIly/**otIlen-,
perhaps eventually levelled out to **otIlenI. But if the Slavs
understood the meaning of the name, they might have used their native
*atiko- > *otIcI, just replacing the Gothic diminutive suffix with a
Slavic one.

Piotr