From: tgpedersen
Message: 64301
Date: 2009-06-29
>No. This is what is known as a 'root etymology': the root element matches, but the suffixes don't. In this case because there aren't any. More likely his name was Horvat because that's what he was.
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> --- On Mon, 6/29/09, tgpedersen <tgpedersen@...> wrote:
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> ****GK: On the matter of the historical "Croats": I am leaning
> towards the notion that they might have been named after their
> initial organizer. The name does appear separately in the list of
> the migrant clans given by Constantine Porph. in the mid-10th c.
> If the Avar Khan Bayan appointed an Avar warrior called "Horvat"
> (or something similar) to the task of putting together Avaria's
> northern defenses in and along the Carpathians (against the
> threatening Turks of Asia who conquered Kerch in 576 and made
> demands on Constantinople against the Avars), this Horvat might
> have drafted a considerable numbern of subject Slavs (and others)
> into his divisions (or whatever they were called), and the various
> groups would become "Horvat's men" = Croats. There are many
> historical analogies to this onomastic procedure.****