Talk:Name of the Goths

Existence of this article

Discussion on another article about the creation of this one [1]. This article was created using adapted material from Goths.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 15:01, 28 April 2020 (UTC)

There are, perhaps, adjustments to made, but it is obvious that this is article is needed considering the length of what has been written by scholars on this question. Alcaios (talk) 15:45, 28 April 2020 (UTC)

You seem to be saying that the article would be justified if it had different content? But that is ignoring the practical reality of the article which is that is a split off from the Goths article, and has a big well-timed disruptive effect on the editing of that article. The aim seems to be to block efforts to un-mix discussion of different topics, and maintain confusion. It is directly opposed to what was discussed a few hours earlier on the Goths talk page, concerning the benefits of breaking topics up into their real logical sections.

OTOH, I am not sure I agree with you about the enormous amount written. There have been a lot of back and forth short remarks but the basic summary found for example in RGA covers it all pretty much? The mass of writing apart will perhaps be about the relevance of the name(s) to history? But perhaps I am missing something in what you are saying.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 16:40, 28 April 2020 (UTC)

I can volunteer to provide a summary of the /name/ and /origin/ sections for the article Goths if Krakkos, you, and other contributors agree. It will be redacted in a draft before final reviews, as we have done for the /languages/ section of the article Germanic peoples. In this way, the content that has been written by Krakkos will be kept in this article, because it will be regrettable to lose such content in the process of section shortening in the main article. Alcaios (talk) 17:26, 28 April 2020 (UTC)

Alcaios, i strongly agree with you that this article is about a notable topic and should be kept. I greatly appreciate your offer to help improve Goths. Note that i have already made a draft proposal for a summary of the /name/ and /origin/ section of Goths at User:Krakkos/sandbox/Goths. I think it provides a nice basis for future improvements. If you want to do that work all over again from scratch you are of course free to do so. Krakkos (talk) 18:13, 28 April 2020 (UTC)

@Alcaios and Krakkos: I am happy that Krakkos is happy about the idea of going ahead with the idea we already had some consensus for on Goths. We need separate subjects broken apart and not mixed up and confused - in both articles. We also need duplications removed. This is the only way to avoid eternal repeating problems. I honestly don't understand the justification for this article yet, or what either of you think should be in it. (I very much doubt you are talking about the same thing. I raised some issues above.) I will try to keep an open mind, but I think if we do not have Goths in order, then at least in terms of best practice this article should never have been started. I'd love to be proven wrong!

Practical for this article: Please explain the justification for this article, and how we move ahead. --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 18:35, 28 April 2020 (UTC)

IMO, we move ahead by pruning material from Goths. This article is about the word "Goths" and all its variants and possible variants, its etymology, earliest attestations and history of use (as well, perhaps, as other unrelated names that have been applied to the people called Goths). In other words, it is about he name(s) of the Goths in the widest sense. Fundamentally, though, it is a page about words and their usage not the things they refer to or name. It is justified by the length of the Goths article and the concerns that the first few sections are a put-off to readers who just want to know what the Goths did. As for this article as it stands, it can be improved by normal editing (including by you). Srnec (talk) 18:56, 28 April 2020 (UTC)

@Srnec: I agree. I am happy to put priority on Goths. But for more than one person to edit this surprise article there should at least be an understanding about what the basic parameters are. It is about "the name" is a start, but the start is already challenging. It is about several names found in different places and times, which some scholars (not all) believe to be "the same" (in Wolfram's favourite wording) which means, translated for a normal reader, they are based on the same assumed etymology. So it is basically an article for Wolfram's position?? Basic thing: We need to at least let our readers understand what "the same" means, and we need to do that early and clear. If we were really thinking of trying to discuss Wolfram's real position: he thinks this is a prestige name, spread around by a small royal family. But that is challenging to do in neutral way, and it would look very different. There are however a notable amount of scholars who have made comments about it and given their ideas about what is wrong or right about it.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 20:07, 28 April 2020 (UTC)

I am glad that Krakkos created this article; there is plenty of material discussed in scholarly sources to justify it, and I agree with Alcaios' and Srnec's comments as well. As for your concern about Krakkos' "surprise" article, Andrew Lancaster, he didn't need your permission or anyone else's to create it. The last thing I would want to see is one more (out of so, so many suchlike) excruciatingly long, unnecessarily drawn-out discussion about whether or not this article should exist. I hope you don't try to assert control over it too, as it seems to me that sometimes you are an impediment to progress being made on the Goths article. Carlstak (talk) 23:48, 28 April 2020 (UTC)

@Carlstak: whether or not there is a theoretical way this article is justified is one thing, whether it will go in that direction remains to be seen. Above, I have already made some comments about points which should not be ignored, and I'll keep an open mind and watch what happens. Concerning whether Krakkos and I needed permission to split off parts of Goths, personally I was consciously avoiding making split-off articles myself, as it can clearly be construed as a way of trying to get around exactly such pre-agreement-only sanctions on Goths itself. I don't think those sanctions were a good call for the Goths article, and nor are they clear and easy to interpret, but they exist. Concerning progress on Goths, if you can name any progress I've impeded please do name it, and let's go fix that. --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 08:01, 29 April 2020 (UTC)

I understand your concerns, but we don't need to lose time again in endless discussions. I agree with Srnec, both articles can be improved, by you and other contributors, via normal editing. Alcaios (talk) 08:52, 29 April 2020 (UTC)

@Alcaios: No, at least not on Goths. Krakkos and I are under sanction on that article, not to make edits without pre-agreement/consensus. At least that is my interpretation. If you did not know that, maybe it helps explains some things! :) I think it was a strange decision for the article, and has not made any watcher of that article happy. But on Goths your agreement to help is/was very promising.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 09:04, 29 April 2020 (UTC)

Unfortunately, articles on Germanic peoples seem to be surrounded by permanent controversies on WP. I prefer working in a calm environment, so I'm going to focus on Gauls for the moment, and let the idea of a draft in a standstill until the situation improves and contributors reach a consensus. Alcaios (talk) 09:26, 29 April 2020 (UTC)

(stray comment, with no ambitions for further discussion under the given circumstances:)

@Andrew Lancaster, if I may borrow Austronesier's words, it's all the "overblown discussions and endless "stream-of-consciousness" talk posts" themselves that I consider an impediment. You have generated a truly incredible amount of verbiage on the talk pages of the Germanic peoples and Goths articles. I've never seen anything like it elsewhere on WP, and at this point, I think it verges on being pathological. Carlstak (talk) 12:15, 29 April 2020 (UTC)

This article makes a good approach towards the topic. It is about the name of the "Goths", a name which has a good match with the name of the "Gutones" and "Gutes", and an imperfect but plausible match (per ablaut) with the name of the "Geats". The lede explicitly states "the implications of these similarities, and the actual meaning of the Gothic name, is disputed", and this is how it is discussed in "Historical significance". All linguistic material is discussed, but focus remains on the Goths, in agreement with the title. The length of the article and the depth of the discussion justify a standalone. It's a good start, the rest is community editing based on well-thought and balanced WP:BRD, hopefully without overblown discussions and endless "stream-of-consciousness" talk posts.

In order to avoid diverging statements (aka POV-forking) in either article, the corresponding section in "Goths" should be trimmed to a minimum. –Austronesier (talk) 09:31, 29 April 2020 (UTC)

As I said in another discussion, the Gallic Veneti and the Vistula Veneti are linguistically related (<*wenh₁-), although this does not mean that they were the same people or even had the same origin (albeit in PIE times). A more telling example: the Tricasses and Tricassis share the same name and both are Gallic tribes. Do they share a common origin? Perhaps, but probably not as many Gallic tribal names are formed with the suffix -casses, and many of them include a number as a prefix (uo-, tri-, petru-, etc.) As long as the difference between a linguistic cognate and an ethno-cultural similarity is addressed in the article, they will not be any issue. Alcaios (talk) 09:50, 29 April 2020 (UTC)

Exactly, as long name and name-bearers are not conflated, the discussion may be extended to namesakes, based on what RS have to say about it. There are a couple of other examples where ethnonyms are shared by groups that belong to the same wider ethnic-linguistic complex without being each others closest kin, cf. Sorbs vs. Serbs. –Austronesier (talk) 10:16, 29 April 2020 (UTC)

@Austronesier and Alcaios: Just to be clear, I understand this and agree. As long as the difference between a linguistic cognate and an ethno-cultural similarity is addressed in the article, they will not be any issue. I don't think this is coming across in the article yet, and I suspect there will be great resistance to any attempt to put it in the article. But don't shoot me for being worried about this. I would love to be proved wrong.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 10:51, 29 April 2020 (UTC)

Attestations section

I believe this should be re-ordered logically according to the several distinct and obvious categories of attestations; with the same approach as Alcaios recently on Goths. By this I mean something like this:

• Goths itself (from third century in Latin and Greek)
• Gothic forms: texts
• Pietroassa ring
• Gutones and similar (Latin and Greek attestations 1st and 2nd century, Poland region)
• Gauts and Geats etc (Latin and Greek: Ptolemy, Procopius, possibly a mention of Jordanes and his Scandza list)

Concerning the first bullet, I have looked in the past but never actually found the text of Shapur I's inscription. Anyone else seen it?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 09:10, 29 April 2020 (UTC)

I disagree. The history of how a name has been attested is best structured chronologically. This is how experts like Thorsten Andersson and Herwig Wolfram structures the topic. The structure of this article should be based upon how experts do it. Krakkos (talk) 09:23, 29 April 2020 (UTC)

There is no need for us to structure a specific paragraph based on a source, but also I don't think anyone works that way? You are not giving any justification for mixing up the obviously distinct categories of attestations (which are also, always discussed that way). The confusion this causes, and how easy it is to resolve, seems obvious? --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 09:34, 29 April 2020 (UTC)

Sentence tweak needed?

We have The simplex variant of this name, *Gutans (Goth), or possibly *Gutôs, is inferred from a presumed genitive plural form gutani in the Pietroassa inscription.[1][5] The RGA article (already in the bibliography, but not on this sentence) says, in contrast: Eine einheimisch got. Form liegt in der Inschr. auf dem Goldring von Pietroassa aus der zweiten Hälfte des 4. Jh.s n. Chr. vor: gutani, nunmehr allg. als Gen. Pl. gutané augefasst. A tweak could probably bring us into better line with the RGA article.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 09:38, 29 April 2020 (UTC)

Is this sentence needed

I have added some material to the last section, partly to address a dab tag. I am wondering if this sentence should be removed or adapted:

The Romans frequently applied this name to peoples from beyond the Danube, though the Goths had no relation whatsoever to the Scythians.{{sfn|Dickens|2018|pp=1346-1347}}.

For some reason we are citing a weaker source to get this simple/strong wording, but I feel the sentence ignores two ideas which are found in better sources: (1) the term Scythian might not have been understood as implying ethnicity in the sense of common ancestry or traditions (2) the Ukrainian Goths may well have absorbed other peoples and seen themselves as "Scythian" in terms of ethnicity also (especially if we take Jordanes seriously on that point). To me it seems the sentence could be adapted to say something which does not exclude these options, or it could be removed because other parts of the paragraph now also attempt to spell the problem out.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 11:34, 8 May 2020 (UTC)

Pietroassa ring: verification please

I do not have access to all the sources we cite for the following, however from what I can see I wonder if we have this right:

A [[runic]] inscription on the [[Ring of Pietroassa]] can be read as ''Gutaniwiheilag'', which is usually interpreted as 'the sacred heritage of the Goths'.{{sfn|Strid|2010|p=445}} The name ''Gutani'' probably reflects a form of the Gothic endonym *''Gutans''.{{sfn|Brink|2008|p=104}}{{sfn|Brink|2002|p=688}} Alternatively it reflects a form of the ethnonym of the Gutes.{{sfn|Strid|2010|p=445}}

Comparing to our own article on the Ring of Pietroassa, and also to other articles by Strid, it seems there IS agreement that the last part says "hAilag", but there is not much certainty about everything between GUTANI and HAILAG? Can anyone help check this? At the very least we seem to have a typo. As it is important evidence perhaps this paragraph needs expansion and reference to more sources.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 07:24, 14 May 2020 (UTC)

Gutane

Gary Miller here treats *Gutanē as hypothetical, but this article calls it 'biblical'. What exactly does the latter mean here and is this word attested or not? Srnec (talk) 01:03, 6 April 2021 (UTC)

Dervingiai were Lithuanians and Grudingiai were Ukrainians

Derva in Lithuanian language means Tar and Dervingiai are the PEOPLE PRODUCING THE TAR and living in Lithuanian forest (North of Vistula and Bug till Neva river where now is St. Petersburg and Mozhaisk). Grudai in Lithuanian means Grains and Grudingiai are the PEOPLE PRODUCING GRAINS and living in Ukrainian half-steppe. It was written even that Grudingiai called themselves so because they were agricultural people and Dervingiai called themselves so because they lived in the forest.

Etymology

One may get the impression that academics in history and language are allowed to speculate freely. Just throwing in: In modern-day Norwegian, "gutt" means "boy", "gud" means "deity" (or "god"), "god" means "good" and "geit" means "goat". "Gaute" is a common masculine given name. Elias (talk) 11:04, 13 August 2022 (UTC)

Throwing them back out using the comparative method. –Austronesier (talk) 12:22, 13 August 2022 (UTC)