Re: Charudes - Croatians

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Torsten" <tgpedersen@...> wrote:
--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "tgpedersen" <tgpedersen@> wrote:
>
>
> This is what Gol/a,b has to say in The origins of the Slavs about
> the origin of the etnonym of the Croatians:
>
> 'Since the Iranian etymology of this ethnonym is only a hypothesis,
> on equal footing with other hypotheses about its Slavic and Germanic
> origin, I feel obliged to devote a separate excursus to this
> problem.
> Excursus 1: The Puzzle of the Ethnicon Hrváti
>
> 1.) First, we should reconstruct the primary, i.e., PS1. form of the
> ethnicon. On the basis of the following facts:
>
> a.) S-C H`rva:t, gen. Hrváta, plur. Hrváti (old Hrvate);
> b.) ORuss. Xorvate, Xrovate, Xrvate, XrUvate;
> c.) OCz. (from OPol.) Charvaty (as a toponym);
> d.) Greek (Constantine Porphyrogenitus) Xro:bátoi;
> e.) Latin Chrouati (10th-11th cent.), also Chruvati vicus (in
> Thietmar referring to a Lusatian territory, known now as Klein-
> Corbetha) from North West Slavic *Xrovat- < PSl. *Xorvat- (?);
> f.) Greek toponyms: Xarbáti and so forth (in Vasmer's Slaven in
> Griechenland, where 'ar' seems to stand for an unmetathesized Slav.
> tart, cf. Gardíki for *gardIkI, etc.); we can establish two PS1.
> variants as basic: *XUrvaté and *Xorvaté, with the primary
> consonantal-stem plural in a stressed -e.
>
> In all early medieval sources various forms of this ethnicon refer
> first to the South Slavic Croatians (Greek Xro:bátoi, Lat.
> Chrouati), then to the sub-Carpathian Croats in the Upper Dniestr
> basin (an East Slavic tribe in the Povest' vremennyx let: Xorvate,
> etc.) or to the Croats in the Polish-Bohemian borderland in the
> region of the Sudeten (OCz. Charvaty, etc.), and once to a tribe on
> the Upper Sorbian territory (Thietmar's Chruvati). These facts,
> supported by a clear statement in Porphyrogenitus, seem to indicate
> that the South Slavic Croatians represent the main branch of a
> prehistorical Proto-Slavic tribe whose primary habitat, before
> their migration to the Balkans, was located north of the western
> Carpathians.
>
>
> 2.) For any linguist acquainted with comparative historical Slavic
> grammar the very form of the ethnicon *XUrvaté provokes the
> suspicion that it is of non-Slavic origin. First, the original
> Slavic character of the initial x- would be justified only in the
> case of PIE *ks-, which is quite a rare case. Second, the
> derivational form with a consonant-stem suffix is also rather
> exceptional in the Slavic material (among Slavic ethnica I would
> quote here as possible parallels *Venete/i and Veleti). Therefore
> it is no wonder that most Slavists have proposed a non-Slavic
> etymology for *XUrvaté.
>
>
> 3.) Here I will briefly discuss the existing etymologies, reject
> them, and propose a new one which seems to meet the requirements of
> exact historical-comparative methods.
>
> a.) Iranian etymology, recently supported by Trubac^ev (Ètimologija
> 1965:32).
> Variant i) Sarmatian personal name Xoróaþos Xorouaþos (in Tanais),
> 2nd-3rd cent. A.D., i.e., *Hurvaþa 'bonus amicus' — but then we
> should expect *XUrvot- or rather a patronymic form *XUrvot-itji,
> i.e., S-C *Xrvotic´i.
> Variant ii) Av. haurvata:t- // haurva:t-, i.e., *harvata:t //
> *harva:t- 'totality,' etc. (from *harva- - Lat. salvus) — but then
> the only form in Slavic would be *Xorvat-, although semantically
> there are interesting parallels in Germ. Allemannen and, with a
> reversed semantic order, in Oscan touto 'civitas,' Umbrian tota
> 'civitas' as opposed to Lat. totus, -a, -urn.
>
> b.) Germanic etymology, based upon a phrase Hárvaða or Hærvaþa
> fjöll, i.e., 'Berge der Chorvaten' (according to R. Heinzel's
> interpretation), in the Old Scandinavian Hervararsaga, a passage
> referring to the Carpathians, with which the primary Croats,
> *XUrvate, were closely connected, as we have mentioned. But what is
> the Germanic source of Harvaða // Hærvaþa, i.e. PSl. *Xorvaté,
> cannot be established: its interpretation as a Germanized form with
> Lautverschiebung of the oronym Karpáte:s (in Ptolemy) is
> semantically inexplicable and highly improbable in view of the
> bookish and learned character of this oronym, which is unknown in
> the native linguistic tradition of the Slavs dwelling in the
> Carpathian region.
>
> c.) The third traditional etymology proposes a Slavic origin of the
> ethnicon. According to this hypothesis *XUrvaté // *Xorvaté is
> related to Lith. šarvúotas 'armored' ('geharnischt'), which in its
> turn comes from šárvas 'armor' ('Harnisch, Panzer, Rüstung'); so
> *XUrvaté would mean 'the armored.' But there are serious formal
> objections to this etymology. First, Lith. šárvas does not continue
> any *ks- which would result in Slavic x-, but rather represents
> primary IE *k'orHwos, a substantivized adjective from the IE stem
> *k'erH-u- 'horn,' and it has obvious correspondences in II.
> languages, for which see below (cf. here also Gr. kórus n.
> 'helmet'; Fraenkel, 965, and Pokorny, 574). In this connection the
> primary meaning of Lith. šárvas would be 'horn-armor,' a type of
> armor well-known to the ancient East European peoples. An exact
> Slavic correspondence representing the regular sat&m treatment of
> *k'- should be *sorvU, then *Sorvaté, etc. Second, the Lith.
> adjectives in -úotas have exact correspondences in Slavic denominal
> adjectives in -atU (with the old acute), e.g., *bordatU, Russ.
> borodátyj, etc. In addition, the primary word-final stress and the
> consonant-stem declension of the ethnicon *Xorvaté // *XUrvaté does
> not permit us to equate it with Lith. šarvúotas. Thus the
> correspondence Lith. šarvúotas ~ PS1. *Xorvaté, etc., is illusory
> and should be rejected.
>
>
> 4.) Now, after this criticism of existing etymologies I shall
> propose a new one which seems to be better substantiated both
> formally and semantically.
> My contention is that PSl. *XUrvat- // *Xorvat- (a consonantal
> stem!) was derived from a common noun *xUrvU // *xorvU 'armor'
> (primarily 'horn-armor'), which should be treated as a
> prehistorical loanword from Germc. *hurwa- // *harwa-, the latter
> representing the PIE adj. *k'r.Hwo- // *k'orHwo- (cf. Gr. keraós
> 'horned' and Lith. šárvas, quoted above). The fact that the
> historical Germc. languages have not preserved the hypothetical
> *hurwa- // *harwa- may be merely an accident of history. We know of
> such cases in the history of languages. For example, there are some
> Slavic loanwords in Rumanian that have no correspondences in
> historical Slavic languages (e.g., zâpádâ f. 'snow,' from Slav.
> *zapada, etc.). Of course, other derivatives of the root *k'erH-
> are known in Germanic, first of all the noun *hurna = horn. The PIE
> adjective *k'erHwo- (full vocalism) // *k'r.Hwo- (zero vocalism) is
> well attested in many IE languages; as is well-known, Balto-Slav.
> *ka:rwa:- 'cow' with an exceptional kentum treatment of *k'-
> belongs here too (see Pokorny, 576). Some interesting traces of the
> borrowed PS1. *xUrvU can be found in West Slavic, specifically in
> Polish. The most important is OPol. (1494 in the Poznan´ city-book)
> charwat 'miles in servitio civitatis,' which seems to represent an
> adjective with the suffix -atU from the hypothetical *xUrvU, but is
> not the exact counterpart of the ethnicon because from a primary
> stem in -t we would rather expect *charwac´, cf. paznokiec´,
> l/okiec´, dziesie,c´. Another one is Slovak (with the Polish
> treatment of *tUrt) charvat' sa // charvit' sa 'defend oneself,'
> charva // charvanie 'defense.' There are also two Kashubian words:
> charwatynia 'abandoned cottage,' primarily 'sentry shelter' (?),
> also a place name, and charwan´c (*xUrvanIcI) 'sheaf of grain full
> of weeds,' probably a derivative from *charwac´ 'protect' and
> primarily meaning 'a sheaf used to cover the top of a shock.'
> All these lexical facts seem to indicate the existence in the
> Northwest PSl. dialects of the noun *xUrvU 'armor' and its
> derivatives *xUrvati se, // *xUrviti se, 'get armored' -> 'defend
> oneself.' In this connection we should also mention some toponyms
> in Poland that seem to continue the ethnicon *XUrvat- in its third
> variant *XUrvat- (e.g., OPol. Chrwaty, etc.), which is well
> substantiated by the phenomena of the historical phonetics of
> Germanic. Other toponyms continuing the most frequent variant
> *XUrvat- are known in Northern Bohemia and Northern Moravia. All of
> them, incidentally, represent the Polish treatment of the primary
> *tUrt as tart: Charváty. The geographical distribution of these
> linguistic facts would clearly point towards the primary location
> of the prehistorical Croats (*XUrvaté-) north of the Carpathians on
> the historical South Polish territory (Mal/opolska) and towards a
> subsequent emigration of their main bulk south through the Moravian
> Gate. We can even hypothesize that the burrowing of the Germc.
> *hurwa- 'horn-armor' took place somewhere in the sub-Carpathian
> region, and that its source was the PGermc. dialect of the
> Bastarnians, who dwelt along the eastern Carpathians in the first
> to third centuries A.D.
> What still remains to be explained is the derivational type of the
> ethnicon *XUrvat-e, etc., i.e., its consonant-stem suffix -at-. The
> consonantal stems with the PIE suffix -et- (admitting the vowel
> gradation -e(:)t- // -o(:)t-) are rare in Slavic: the only sure
> example is pec^atI m., gen. pec^ate 'seal' Among the Slavic ethnica
> we can quote *Venete/i and Veleti, both derived from verbal roots
> *wen(H)- 'desire; win' and *wel- (Slav. vele^ti) 'command.' But
> comparative IE evidence indicates that there were also denominal
> derivatives with this suffix (-et-: Lat. equus -> eques (gen.
> equitis) 'horseman, horse-soldier' (*eque:t-s), pes (ped-) -> pedes
> (gen. peditis) 'pedestrian, foot-soldier' (*pede:t-s), miles (gen.
> militis) with no clear etymology; Gr. gumnós -> gumne:s (gen.
> gumno^tos) 'a lightarmored foot soldier' can also be quoted here.
> So the derivation of *XUrvat- // *Xorvat- from *xUrvU // *xorvU
> with the PIE suffix -o:t- (PS1. -at-) seems to have sufficient
> substantiation. Of course, it must have been an old and not very
> productive process. As far as the primary semantics of *XUrvate is
> concerned, there seems to be no doubt that it originally meant
> 'warriors clad with horn-armor' und may not have been a name used
> by a certain tribe for self-identification, but rather a
> description applied by the neighbors of a tribe whose
> characteristic feature was the use of horn-armor. It is also
> possible that *XUrvat-, etc., also denoted a warrior-class as
> opposed to plain folk, the latter participating in war without
> armor. These suppositions would explain why just on the territory
> where we should locate the prehistorical *XUrvaté // *Xorvaté,
> i.e.. in Southern Poland, there are no traces whatsoever of the
> ethnicon in the local early medieval chronicles and other sources.
> In any case, a primary descriptive and exogenous (i.e., used by the
> neighbors) name of the tribe known later in history as C(h)rovati,
> Xro:bátoi, Hrváti, in the course of time became an ethnicon,
> adopted ultimately by this tribe itself, which is expressed clearly
> in the official title of the first Croatian ruler: Trpimirus dux
> Chroatorum (852 A.D.).'
>

Note that this horn-armor is attributed to the Sarmatians by Ammianus Marcellinus.

> Now this unknown Germanic language would have been the para-Germanic
> Bastarnian. If true, those Croatians were in contact with
> Germanic-speakers early. So why shouldn't they be Ariovistus'
> Charudes?
>
> One thing puzzled me about the story of Ariovistus giving away free
> land to some tribe who had done nothing to win it. Perhaps they were
> just too lazy to work the land and let Charudes/Croatians colonize
> the land for them, in return for their products?

Another attempt at the name:
Wortschatz der germanischen Spracheinheit
'krabban m. Krebs, Krabbe.
an. krabbi m. Krabbe;
ags. crabba m. (engl. crab),
nnd. krabbe.
Dazu
ahd. chrepaz(o), crebiz,
mhd. krebez, krebz,
nhd. Krebs, mnd. krevet, kreft.
Aus krabita(n).
Vgl. von der Nebenwurzel (s)kar(a)b
gr. kárabos Krebs, Käfer und
*skarabaios (lat. scarabaeus) Käfer.'

If this is NWBlock, *xraBi-þ- would have been the corresponding Germanic word. Calling scale armor clad people lobsters makes sense.

Since we have
Pokorny
'cra:bro: "Hornisse" (*cra:sro:, k^&r&sron-) stellt sich (idg. k^r.:s-en-):
ahd. hurnu(:)z, hornaz, m., ags. hyrnet(u) "Hornisse" (*hurznuta); ndl. horzel (*hurzla-), nhd. Horlitze;
lit. šìrše. f., širšly~s m., šìršuolis, alt širšuo "Wespe", šìršuonas, šìršu:nas "Hornisse", lett. sirsis, apr. sirsilis "Hornisse";
russ.-ksl. (usw.) sUrUšenI "Hornisse, Bremse", serb. s``r.šlj`en "Hornisse";'

it seems the *kr- part is the original, and 'proper Germanic' should have *xr-, which make the krab-Vt- words in Germanic coastwords, NWB. Note Engl. crayfish < MFr crevice, now écrevisse (*skrev-Vs-?). The MFr. word can't be a loan from OHG, because of the -v-, so -s-/-t- variation must be original.


Torsten