At 4:54:18 AM on Monday, January 10, 2011, Torsten wrote:
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Brian M. Scott"
> <bm.brian@...> wrote:
>> At 5:25:30 AM on Friday, January 7, 2011, Torsten wrote:
>>> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Brian M. Scott"
>>> <bm.brian@> wrote:
>>>> At 5:17:40 AM on Thursday, January 6, 2011, Torsten
>>>> wrote:
>> [...]
>>>>> So it seems that whatever the origin, the suffix was
>>>>> there from the beginning.
>>>> That was, indeed, the point. But the specific form that
>>>> it takes in German definitely appears to be influenced
>>>> by the 'king' word.
>>> Definitely, except you seem to have forgotten that
>>> *-ri:k was not a 'free word' in Germanic. There is no
>>> Germanic *ri:k- "king".
>> It's directly reflected only in Goth. <reiks>, but it
>> certainly existed.
> Odd, given the size of those other corpuses.
The OSax. and OE corpora aren't really very large. But I
don't think that that's the reason for the lack of
attestation. Rather, it appears to me that the root noun
simply went out of use very early.
In PCelt. we have a masc. athematic noun *rīg- 'ruler' (OIr.
<rí, ríg->; Gaul. <-rīx, -rīg-> in names recorded by Caesar)
and a neuter yo-stem *rīgiom 'kingdom' (OIr. <ríge>
'kingship; kingdom'). (The athematic noun is also found in
the Celtiberian personal name <Teiuoreikis>, apparently
< *dēwo-rīks < *deiwo-rēks.)
These were borrowed into PGmc. as *rīk- 'ruler' (Goth.
<reiks>, a masc. root noun in the process of being
transferred to the a-stem declension) and *rīkiją 'kingdom'
(Goth. <reiki>, ON <ríki>, OE <rīċe>, OFris. <rīke>, OSax.
<rīki>, OHG <rīhhi>). A ja-/jō-stem adjective *rīk-ija/ō-
'mighty, powerful; rich' is also found throughout the
family: Goth. <reikeis>, ON <ríkr>, OE <rīċe>, OFris.
<rīke>; OSax. <rīki>; OHG <rīche>; there is some evidence in
Gaulish personal names for the corresponding PCelt.
adjective, so I shouldn't be surprised if this was also
borrowed, but it could certainly also be denominal from
*rīkz. Judging by their distribution, the other members
of this word family are later derivatives.
We have a variety of weak verbs: OE <rīcsian> 'to rule' and
OHG <rīhhison>, representing *rīk-isō- (in OE with
characteristic addition of *-jan-), Goth. <reikinōn> 'to
rule', representing *rīk-inō-, and ON <ríkja>, representing
*rīkijaną. OHG has a strong verb <(gi)rīhhan>: a preterite
<gereih> and a participle <gerichin> are attested. There is
some evidence that this verb was sometimes inflected as a
weak verb, or that a parallel weak verb representing
*rīkijaną existed alongside it.
OE has a neuter a-stem <rīc> 'kingdom' and a masc. n-stem
<rīca> 'ruler'. The latter is probably derived within OE --
e.g., it could well be a deverbal agent noun (cf. <hunta>
'hunter') -- but it could even be the original root noun
transferred to the a-stem declension.
All of the Gmc. dialects for which I have evidence have name
themes from *rīk, generally as both prototheme and
deuterotheme. Gmc. dithematic names were originally
meaningful compounds; at that stage it is likely that the
theme existed in both nominal and adjectival forms. As a
prototheme it was probably in most cases adjectival
(*rīkja-); the deuterotheme probably represents the noun
(*rīkz) in most but not all compounds. (Both noun and
adjective fit nicely into established semantic categories
for Gmc. name themes.)
At a fairly early date, however, Gmc. dithematic names
became largely combinatorial constructs: with some
restrictions, any prototheme could be combined with any
deuterotheme, irrespective of etymology. (Illustrative
examples include redundant compounds like <Gunnhildr> and
<Hildigýþ> and antonymous compounds like <Friðugýþ>,
<Fridegundis>, <Fridohilt>, <Hiltfrid>, <Gundfrid>, and
<Hadufrid>.) At this point the etymological distinction
ceases to be meaningful, and there is simply a (very common)
name theme RĪK-/-RĪK derived from the basis *rīk (or, if one
wishes to be very fussy, a prototheme and a deuterotheme).
The deuterotheme from *rīkz is not unique in persisting in
the various dialects long after the corresponding
appellative had been lost. For example, no non-onomastic OE
cognates of the feminine deuterotheme <-flæd> (from *fladi-
'beauty') are known, but the deuterotheme itself was common.
The cognate OHG feminine deuterotheme (<Hruodflat>,
<Reginflat>, <Sigiflat>, <Winiflat>, etc.) also has no
recorded OHG appellative counterpart, though there is a MHG
<vlât> 'Sauberkeit, Zierlichkeit, Schönheit'.
Onomastic suffixes (as distinct from themes) are found, but
they are mostly familiar Gmc. diminutive suffixes; the most
obvious exception is <-ing>, especially in OE masculine
names. Some OHG examples: <Bertila> (fem.), <Paldila>
(fem.), <Richiza> (fem.), <Thiotilo>, <Uualtilo>,
<Pirahtilo>, <Paldinc>, <Diotingo> (Lat. dat.).
In short, there is no reason to see -RĪK as a suffix and
every reason to see it as the deuterothematic counterpart of
the prototheme RĪK-.
Brian