Lekhites dressed up in the
> battle-gear of slain Macedonians infiltrated the camp of their foes
> and launched a surprise attack, resulting in the abject defeat and
> inglorious flight of Alexander. The resourceful artisan, who
> assumed the name Lestek (meaning "a cunning one"), was then elected
> chieftain by his grateful countrymen and eventually came to the
> throne of Poland as Lestek I.
>
> JULIUS CAESAR
>
> Years later, Julius Caesar planned to invade Poland, but was
> repelled in three battles by Lestek III, a mighty monarch whose power
> extended as far as the lands of the Greeks and the Parthians. It was
> he, by the way, who had defeated Crassus in Parthia.
Gol/a,b
The Origins of the Slavs, pp. 373-4
places it in a list of Slavic roots supposedly loans from Gmc., in casu supposedly Gothic
'13) lIstI 'shrewdness' -> 'trickery, deceit,'
attested in all Slav. languages, e.g.,
OCS lIstI f. 'fraus, dolus,'
ORuss. lIstI f. 'Betrug, List; Schmeichelei, etc.',
Russ. lest' (gen. lésti) 'Schmeichelei, Verfänglichkeit, Verführung,'
OPol. leść f. 'Verrat; Heuchelei,'
Cz. lest f. 'List,'
S-C lâst f. 'Betrug,' etc.
It is an obvious borrowing from
Goth. lists f. 'List,'
which has exact correspondences in other Germc. languages with the meaning 'Klugheit, Kunst, List.' The noun has a transparent etymology in Germanic, where it is derived from the verbal root *leis-, attested in Goth. praeter.-praes. lais 'ich weiß' and in the causative laisjan 'wissen machen,' 'lehren,' etc. It is a penetration in Proto-Slavic which clashed with the original Slav. xytrostI; where the latter was preserved, the meaning of lIstI depreciated from 'shrewdness' to 'trickery, deceit' (Kiparsky, 1934:207-08, and Martynov, 1963:48-50).'
A terminus ante quem non of the Lestek name, if he is real, is the time period Gmc and Slavic cohabited.
Torsten