Quoting Ray Brown <ray.brown@...>:
> On Thursday, November 13, 2003, at 11:28 AM, Andreas Johansson wrote:
>
> > Quoting Ray Brown <ray.brown@...>:
> [snip]
>
> >> According to Chamber's English Dictionary:
> >> sing. Guta ~ pl. Gutans
> >> also
> >> sing. Guts ~ pl. Guto:s
> >> also
> >> Gutþiuda [4th letter is thorn] = the Gothic people
> >
> > Interesting; the mapping Guts<->Gothus and Guta<->Gotha is almost too
> > good.
>
> But why the short 'o' in Latin?
No idea! Perhaps some variant of Gothic lowered /u/ to [o]?
> > For Ostrogothae he has the name explanation "Shining Goths",
> > i.e. not "East Goths". He refers the term back to words for
> > "brightness", "dawn", and "Easter".
>
> Right - but I thought this was related to the 'eastern' words.
> It's not uncommon to find the same words used for 'dawn' and
> 'east', cf. Latin: auro:ra; ancient Greek: heo:s/ he:o:s/
> ha:wo:s etc.
When you point it out, I can't understand how I failed to notice the
connection dawn~east. Not being a Germanicist, I cannot tell if the words
indeed are related, unfortunately.
> > Any way, I think we seriously ought to consider that "Ostro"
> > does not necessarily refer to a geographic direction, but
> > rather to the quality of "light".
>
> The Goths of the dawn, of the new era.....
Dread the Neogoths!
Andreas