Naming the Bastarnians (Was Re: More on Bastarnian archaeology)

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "gknysh" <gknysh@...> wrote:

>
> For some reason this wasn't mailed to me. I retrieved it from the cybalist website...
>
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Torsten" <tgpedersen@> wrote:
> >
> > I think Pekkanen already answered the question of the name type
> > status for 'Bastarnae' by pointing out that it occurs double names
> > like 'Scytae Bastarnae', which would then mean "Bastard
> > Scythians".
> > http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/66972
>
> ****GK: I prefer the meaning "Bastarnian Scythians" where "Scythian"
> has become an omnium gatherum and the real specification is
> "Bastarnian" in a non-insulting sense.****

Bastarna seems to have "son of a slave" in Iranian, and "bastard", ie. "mongrel" in Germanic, and as we know from Tacitus, it did so from the beginning. At its inception, the word was an insult, and today it is an insult. It ranks with the n-word in non-insultingness, ie you can imagine situations in which it can be construed as non-insulting, but in general, no. It is an insult, and in slave societies such as these a very serious one. We disagree here.

> >
> > Note 'γαλάτας..., βαστέρναι καλου~νται' "Galatians, who are called
> > Basternae". Again, they have a name, and then they are called
> > something (nut not to their face).
>
> ****GK: Same thing. One might think of "Galatians who are called
> Scordisci" or "Galatians who are called Taurisci" or the like.****

Yes, you may, but that would be misleading.

> > The translations in the text sometimes translate 'γαλάται' as
> > "Gauls", I've kept that, you should compare with the original.
> >
> > As you see in the beginning of that posting I have proposed a
> > Germanic *ga-lin-d- "ge-bund-en, bound, tied" as an etymology for
> > the Galindai, and since the Northern West Germanic unfree
> > underclass is called laeti (Low German, like North Germanic and
> > Modern English has no equivalent of ga- in such past participles),
> > I propose that the Galatians are from an n-less *ga-lae-t-,
> > another descendant of the Proto-Germanic(?) word from which also
> > Galindai stems.
>
>
> *****GK: The historical Galindi are a Baltic (in the sense of Letto-
> Lithuanian) tribe. There's nothing particularly "unfree" about them.

http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/66933

> And, interestingly, their easternmost group resided in the Moscow
> area, as late as the 12th c. (=Golyad' in Slavic).****


> > Thus, the Sciri and Galatians of the Protogenes decree is actually
> > that eternal duality Sciri and Bastarnae.
>
> ****GK: My view is that the later "Bastarnae" = Sciri+Galatians,
> "bound" in the non-derogatory sense,

'Bound' meant "slave". In what way is that non-derogatory?

> and still clearly distinguished in the Decree. The Galatians were
> not too numerous it seems. Some place names remain, and a few
> material objects. There were less of them than of symbiotic
> Illyrians (or Venedics) whose contribution to toponyms and hydronyms
> is even more noticeable than that of the Yastorfers.****
> >
> > And more generally, this means that whenever we meet the
> > derogatory exonym 'Bastarnae' in the ancient sources,
>
> ****GK: I don't know of any such clearly derogatory use of the term > (other than latter day reinterpretations).******

Such use would have had to be done in Greek and Latin, and the appellative 'bastard' seems to have been loaned into those languages only later.

> > we can never be sure that it is not referring to a people we know
> > from elsewhere, under an endonym, their 'real' name. And, mutatis
> > mutandis, similarly for 'Sciri' and its relatives.

Torsten