From: Andrew Jarrette
Message: 64850
Date: 2009-08-19
>OK, you're going back to its presumed early prehistoric Gmc, and Celtic, meaning. I seriously question whether the recorded meanings of *tu:nam in the Gmc languages can go back to a primitive meaning 'fortified camp', even if it was more in the sense 'defended area' as you mentioned further on in your message.
>
> > > > If it was the Germani waiting for 'employment' in someone's
> > > > private army, what would that have to do with the increased
> > > > frequency of place names in -tu:n in this region?
> > >
> > > A lot of young males waiting for employment in a violent
> > > enterprise. Securing your accommodation would be a good idea.
> >
> >
> > Are you saying that these Germani found accomodation in tu:ns,
> > which I would assume here had its Old Icelandic meaning of
> > 'homestead, farmstead, or enclosure with a house in it'?
>
> Not that 'civilian' meaning. I think they built themselves 'tu:n's, fortified camps, in order to be safe in the night for those other hopeful invaders.
>I would say (and I guess you're already aware of it) that the names in P- in England are probably mostly of post-conquest Norman French origin, perhaps some are Celtic. If Britain didn't have these Celts and if England hadn't been invaded by the Normans, I suspect the distribution of names in P- in England would have been very similar to that in the French-Belgian area.
> > Then they named the settlements where they lived after these tu:ns
> > where they found accomodation? Or am I completely misreading you?
>
> I noticed something interesting in Udolph's long list of -tun names. In England there are tons of -tun's with a first element in P-, ie. a non-Germanic element. In the French-Belgian area there are only a few, all but one with the first *panning- (Udolph says *pin-, which makes no sense), as in > "penny" etc (but why?). Everywhere else (Scandinavia, Germany) not a single P- in sight. Now if those would-be invader apprentices had found accommodation in pre-existing tu:n's in the then non-Germanic-speaking French-Belgian area, the names would have contained many first elements in p-. They don't.
>But I hardly think that the Swedish meaning of the one word *tu:n was so important that it so fundamentally and thoroughly shifted the meaning of the same word a thousand or so kilometers away in a completely different society (and there's no trace of any 'military' meaning of the word in OE or any other Gmc language, as far as I can find). Plus the shifted meaning hardly caught on in Sweden, so it must have been a fairly weak change, not very pervasive. You'd have to come up with other examples of the same phenomenon to make me a believer.
>
>
> > Supposing (like I do) that the invasion of Svear to Svealand was
> > the last territorial expansion before the conquest of England, the
> > equation Sig-tuna = Sego-dunum in people's minds might have changed
> > the meaning of tu:n at the next conquest.
> >
> > That makes sense, as the origin of the change in meaning of tu:n,
> > but by 'next conquest' do you mean the conquest of England?
>
> Yes.
>
> > Of course this conquest didn't originate in Sweden but it sounds
> > like you're saying that the change of meaning that tu:n underwent
> > in England can be traced back to Sweden, specifically Sigtuna.
>
> As you can see from sagas etc, they were pretty well aware of what happened around them.
>Andrew
>