> ***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.
What I found interesting is that Wexler assumes Judeo-Greek, ie Greek as spoken by Jews was the source of these names. The nearest source of that would have been the Greek city colonies on the northern Black Sea coast. If we should think of a single origin for the Hebrew, the Greek and the Slavic name, it gets really interesting.
The name is very early in Greek.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodorus_of_Samos
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodorus_of_Cyrene
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodorus_the_Atheist
But why would the first king of the Quadi, their founding father, have such a name? The name name Skyldfri "Guiltless" was formerly given to some girls born out of wedlock and raised at the public's expense; was Theodor "gift from God (so don't complain)" a similar name?
> 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
Wexler again:
6.13 GHe nmc. GHe nmc/ + nemec 'German' is attested in a number of Hebrew sources, but is unknown in contemporary Yiddish dialects, except as a family name. The earliest Hebrew attestation, `rc nmc/ + `εrec nemec 'land of the Germans' appears in the letter written by the Khazar King Joseph to H.asdaj ibn Šaprūţ,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hasdai_ibn_Shaprut
the representative of the Caliph of Córdoba in the late 10th century.45 Brann and others gloss the expression as 'land of the Nemetes', from the Celtic (and later Latin) name for 'Speyer', e.g. Lat Nemetensis civitas, Nemeta ~ -e ~ -is ~ -um, Nemidone, etc.46 The translation was amended by Avneri to 'land of the German' in his notes to the second edition of Brann, Elbogen, et al., without mentioning that the basis for the change was the Slavic term for 'German', e.g. So Němc < němy 'mute', i.e. 'one who cannot speak Slavic'.47 Two Hebrew texts composed by authors from Speyer (dated Köln 1382, and possibly the mid-15th century respectively) contain a toponym spelled l` dvr, which Brann, Jakobsohn and Rosenthal read as + lo dāvār 'no word' - and interpreted as a Jewish name for Speyer.48 If this reading is correct, it would show that Rhineland Jews in the 14th-15th centuries understood the connection between So Němc 'German' and němy 'mute'.49
It is, nevertheless, surprising that Jews in Speyer - a town so distant from Polabian and Sorbian speech territory - would have had a knowledge of some Slavic terms (though not necessarily fluency in a Slavic language); though Speyer was an important Jewish center in the Middle Ages and may have attracted Slavic Jews. These facts give us a basis for assuming that knowledge of Slavic extended much further to the west among German Jews than among Germans.50
45 The messenger's name was Ja´aqov ben Eliεzer Nεmεc (see Modelski 1910:16, 109; Šiper 1926a:14; Kokovcov 1932:72, fn. 5).
46 Brann, Jakobsohn, et al. 1:1934:326, 346, fn. 1; Elbogen 1934:XVII; Jakobson 1957:45; Jakobson and Halle 1964:171-172. The oldest attestation of the root is Gk Nemitzoi 'Germans' in the De ceremoniis aulae byzantinae of Constantine Porphyrogenitus (10th century) (2, 398; reprinted in Migne 112:1857).
47 1963:541. The source of GHe nmc could, of course, be any Slavic language.
48 1934:346, fn. 1. Gross proposes alternatively that He l` dvr should be read as + lo dvar, a Biblical toponym (e.g. 2 Samuel 17:27) that was assigned, on phonetic grounds, to Y loter 'Lorraine and neighboring Rhineland' ( ~ G Lothringen 'Lorraine') (1897:296-297). Jewish toponyms from the Slavic lands have yet to be collected and analyzed with the thoroughness that characterizes Gross's treatment of French Jewish toponyms (1897).
49 The word is not cited at all by Kupfer and Lewicki 1956. A second connection between the Jews and Speyer is perhaps Y šapiro ~ -a, spiro fam, unless these names are to be derived from JAram šāppīr 'excellent, handsome' (see Unbegaun 1972:348). On the use of medieval He kna´an 'Canaan' in the meaning 'Germany' in addition to 'Slavdom' - see P. Rieger 1937. On the use of MedHe `aškənaz to denote Germanic and Slavic groups, see Modelski 1940:84ff; P. Rieger 1936; Lewicki 1960 and section 1, fn. 9 above.
50 Additional evidence of a Judeo-Slavic presence in the Rhineland may be found in GHe krzn`/ + krazna fa (Speyer 1384), if this is related to USo krasna, Cz krásná 'beautiful; red'. This etymon is compelling since there is a German Yiddish translation equivalent, e.g. (He) šnljn/ + šenlin fa (Speyer 1407), EY šejndl (dim) (see Kober 1944:207, 209). See also the presence of West Slavic glosses in the Hebrew writings of the German and French Jews, though this could be due to contact on the written level. The Slavic term for 'Germans' also appears as Balkan Jud nemci 'Austrians' (Bunis 1980), but through an indirect chain of transmission, i.e. < Ottoman Tu nemçe 'Austria' < Ar nimsā < MGk Nemitzoi (?) vs. Se Nemci 'German' pl, Bucharest Jud nemci 'ib. ' < Rum Neamţ sg (Sala 1971:61, 111). The root has both meanings in Turkish. On the possibility of a Slavic contribution to the creation of new German "tribes" in Western as well as in
Eastern Germany, see Bosl 1970:69.'
Further:
'6.11 GY bok. The Slavic term for 'God' is attested in a Bavarian Yiddish manuscript from 1580, in reference to Muhammad and Jupiter. 34 The etymon could be LSo bog, OCz bóh (ModCz bůh [bux]). The term is not attested in German dialects; as a mocking term for Christ, Bock appears in an anti-Semitic tractate written by a converted Jew from Worms (1712).35
34 Reutlingen 1580 (cited by Pauker 1959:157; M. Weinreich 3:1973:207, 283). I follow here Pauker's transliteration.
35 See Schudt 1714, part 2, book 6, chapter 33, 249 - citing a work by Christoph Wallich, Die Meyerische Synagoga (n.p. 1712), where Bock is glossed as Gott 'God'. The fact that the term is glossed proves that this is not G Bock, Y bok 'ram'.
6.12 WY nebiç ~ EY nebex. This term serves as an interjection or noun meaning 'poor, unfortunate (person)'.36 There are also derivatives (in Eastern Yiddish only?) such as nebexdik 'wretched', nebexl 'wretch, helpless person'. The base form is well known in Western Yiddish dialects far to the west of the German-Slavic language border, see e.g. Alsatian Y newich,37 GY nebiç 'poor thing'.38 The earliest dated attestation of the Slavicism is from a German Yiddish text of the early 16th century.39 From Western Yiddish, the term has spread to German and Dutch slang, e.g. G slg nebbich (1822),40 Du slg nebbis(ch) 'nothing, naught; lost', aggenebbisj, o- (<?ach 'oh').41 The extreme westward diffusion of the term suggests that we are dealing with an early loan from a West Slavic language, possibly from USo njeboh 'deceased' or OCz nebohý 'deceased'; ModCz 'unfortunate, poor'.42 Yiddish scholars traditionally regard Judeo-Czech as the source of the term in
Yiddish,43 but the presence of the Slavicism in dialects of Western Yiddish spoken in non-Slavicized areas makes a Sorbian (or even Polabian) origin particularly attractive. The case for a specifically Judeo-West Slavic source could be made on the grounds that the form nebohý is not used in Czech as a noun (see rather Cz nebožák, ubožák) or as an interjection.44
36 See the expression dos mejdl nebex 'the poor girl' vs. the customary order of adjective before noun, e.g. synonymous dos umgliklexes mejdl.
37 Pfrimmer 1959:369.
38 Lowenstein 1969:18. See LCAAJ, #228002.
39 Jofe 1965:430. The text was composed by Elia Baxur, a native of Germany who worked in Northern Italy. For early 17th century attestation from Prague Yiddish, see Jofe 1927:133. The term is also used in a manuscript composed by Manaxem Oldendorf (preserved at Cambridge University), who lived in 1504 in Mestre, near Venice (see Jofe 1927:133; M. Weinreich 1927:23-25). Fuks cites the term in a text which may have been written in the late 15th century (1:1965:7, fn. 1).
40 Wolf 1956, #3827.
41 Van Bolhuis n.d.; Beem 1967:83; Endt 1982. The compound is unknown in Dutch Yiddish.
42 If the Western Yiddish evidence had been lacking, we would have been obliged to consider non-West Slavic cognates as well, e.g. Uk neboh [-x], neboha 'poor devil'. The possibility of westward diffusion from Judeo-Czech to Judeo-Sorbian lands should be explored in the broad context of Czech linguistic influence on Sorbian. Unfortunately, I cannot determine the approximate date of the semantic shift in Czech from 'deceased' io 'unfortunate, poor'.
43 M. Weinreich 2:1973:201-202; 3:72. For a summary of the Slavic and non-Slavic etymologies that have been proposed, sec Fuks 1:1965:7, fn. 1.
44 Jewish dialects often differ from the cognate non-Jewish dialects in their derivational processes. An example is JFr + čolent 'food prepared on Friday to be eaten on Saturday' < (J) Lat calentem 'warming'; the substantivization of present active participles is atypical of French (see Wexler 1978).'
If Jews arrived with the Nemetes in the Rhineland
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/66375
they would have had to travel down the Rhine to trade.
> 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
Erh, meaning...?
***I've seen lots of popular texts gloss Thiuderich "People's King" (vel sim) as Theodoric "Gift of God" --esp. the first barbarian king of Italy
Torsten