Attila, Etzel (was: Alanic horseman)

>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

If -ila (or -illa, as modern Turks spell it) was a diminutival suffix.
But what if Attila did not have the meaning ata "father" + -ila? What
if it had to do (e.g. as a hypothesis) with Atil, Itil, Etil "Volga"?
(Or a similar river.) Or a third (unknown) meaning.

NB: various pronuciations/spellings in early texts: Ethele, Etzel
(including the oldest Hungarian medieval chronicles as well as the
German 'Niebelungenlied').

George