From: Rick McCallister
Message: 67015
Date: 2010-12-31
> Tacitus, Germania, 42
> http://www.unrv.com/tacitus/tacitus-germania-11.phpAnd now for something completely stupid (it's New Year).
> 'To the times within our memory the Marcomanians and Quadians were
> governed by kings, who were natives of their own, descended from the
> noble line of Maroboduus and Tudrus.'
>
> *tudr-ing-? *ermin-tudr-?
***R or Ja:h-n@...:n "Jonathan"
See also OGY (He) *tə´adrīx (corrected from tə´azrīx - with vocalization in the text: Würzburg 1298);209 in German Latin texts the Jewish name appears as Thiderich (Köln, mid-12th c), Tidericus (1230).210 I have not found the term east of the Hungarian and Czech speech territories. In the East Slavic lands, a Slavic translation equivalent is found as a Jewish male name, beginning with 16th century texts, e.g. JESl (Br) Bohdanovu (Hrodna Jew, Vilnius 1533),211 (Uk) Bohdan (Luc`k 1552).212 See also contemporary EY badane fa, badanes fam (attested in Vilnius).213 On the surface, JESl (Br) Bohdanovu and EY badane(s) might appear to be borrowed from the coterritorial Slavic languages, see e.g. Br Bahdan ma, Bahdana fa. Among Slavs, the masculine anthroponym is attested in Polish as early as 1136, and in Ukrainian in the late 14th century, but in Belorussian only in the 16th-17th centuries; the feminine Bohdana was rare in Belorussian in the 16th century.214 Bogdanowicz ~ Bahdanovič fam is also very popular among Belorussian Tatars.215 The popularity of the name among Jews may have been stimulated by the fact that Ukrainian Bohdan was not used as a saint's name.216 However, a direct East Slavic derivation for the Jewish anthroponyms is unattractive, since there are relatively few Slavic personal names in use among Jews in the Slavic sources of this period. Hence, I wonder whether the Judeo-Slavic anthroponyms were not in fact an early independent Jewish translation of the (Judeo-)Greek name todros, composed at a time when the meaning of the Greek name was still understood. Conversely, among the Ashkenazic Jews in Germany, the Judeo-Greek name is never found in a Yiddish translation, which indicates that its meaning may have become opaque to Yiddish speakers, or that it had been introduced originally by Romance-speaking immigrants to Germany and was not native to the indigenous German Jews.217 [TP: or that is was introduced from the east in Ariovistus' campaign, all the way from the Bosporan Kingdom] OWY (He) p(ə)rīgōras may have a similar history (but note translations of JGk Kalonymos in section 3.1621 below).
***R A very good question --whether or not Jewish adoption of goyim names began with translations. I suppose there was enough knowledge in Jewish communities throughout history to
know what goyim names were and later goyim names were just taken willy-nilly while many religious Jews used Jewish names on a personal or need-to know basis.
202 See also modern Greek constructions such as θóðōros: θóðos (dim).
203 Krauss 1898:584; Frey 2:1952, 163, 260-261.
204 Kováts 1938:305.
205 Muneles 1966a:8.
206 Cantera and Millás 1956:197. In Latin documents the name appears as Tor(r)os (op. cit , 200). See also the indices to Baer 1-2:1929-1936. The name is not presently encountered in Balkan Judezmo. In the Iberian Peninsula the term is known both in Catalan and Castilian areas (in the latter due to the westward diffusion from Hellenized Cataluña?).
207 Gross 1897:85; see also 8, 39, 389, 408-409. See also ProvLat Tauros (Narbonne, late 12th c) (Cassuto 1932-1933:230). On the popularity of Lat Theodorus and Theodotus among Jews in the Roman Empire (Asia Minor), see Solin 1980:310.
208 Emmanuel 1:1963:130 and 230 respectively. The name todros is found in the late 17th century Yiddish memoirs of Glückel of Hameln, but it is unclear if the bearer was a Portuguese or Ashkenazic Jew (see Kaufmann 1896).
209 Salfeld 1898:197, fn. 2, 415. According to Förstemann, the variants Theatrich, Thia- are rare among Christians (1:1900:1186, 1188).
210 Aronius 1902, ##259-260, 447. See also the examples cited in Grünwald 1911:102, 115, A non-Jewish variant is Theoderich.
211 Beršadskij 1:1882, #155.
212 Ibid. 2:1882, #27.
213 Rubštejn 1922:91, 108; M. Weinreich 1924a:51.
214 See de Vincenz 1970:253-254 for the Ukrainian, Biryla 1:1966:35, 175 for Belorussian and Taszycki 1965ff for Polish. Rum Bogdan - a baptismal name borrowed from South Slavic - is first attested in the early 13th century (de Vincenz 1970:254, fn. 5).
215 Stankevič 1933a:115; Kryczyński 1938:114.
216 De Vincenz 1970:253 and fn. 3.
217 Agus believes that the name was brought by individual Iberian Jews, and does not entertain the possibility of a Judeo-Greek substratum in Yiddish (1962:3, fn. 2).
****R There seem to have been Jews in the Rhine Valley from the inception of Roman rule there and who knows if there weren't there even earlier
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodore_(name)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_(name)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nathanael
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_(name)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bogdan
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodoric
should not be confused, but it doesn't seem to bother Wexler (Tudru-rīk-, king Tudrus?).
***R but Theodoric < Thiuderich (vel sim) is a confusion in an of itself
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quadi
Make of it what you wish.
Torsten