Gothic names

Onomastics of the Gothic language is an important source not only for the history of the Goths themselves, but for Germanic onomastics in general and the linguistic and cultural history of the Germanic Heroic Age of c. the 3rd to 6th centuries.

The names of the Goths themselves have been traced to their 3rd century settlement in Scythia. The names Tervingi and Greuthungi have been interpreted as meaning "forest-dwellers" and "steppe-dwellers", respectively, and the later Ostrogothi and Visigothi as "glorious Goths" and "noble Goths", respectively, although all four etymologies are not without detractors.

Gothic given names are recorded from the 4th century, but often in corrupted Latinized forms, so that in many cases their etymology is open to speculation. Jordanes gives partly mythological genealogies leading up to historical 4th to 5th century rulers:

An important source of early Gothic names is the hagiography surrounding the persecution of Gothic Christians (by the pagan Therving Gothic authorities) in the second half of the 4th century. Many of the Gothic saints mentioned in these sources bear Syrian, Cappadocian and Phrygian names, however, perhaps reflecting a practice of assuming a baptismal name.

Numerous Gothic names are recorded for the 5th to 7th centuries. After the Muslim in invasion of Hispania and the fall of the Visigothic kingdom in the early 8th century, Gothic tradition was largely interrupted, although Gothic or pseudo-Gothic names continued to be given in the Kingdom of Asturias, the remnant of the Visigothic state and nucleus of the Christian reconquest of Andalusia. Thus, Alfonso I of Asturias (recorded as Adefonsus), born one generation after the Muslim invasion, was given the Gothic name *Adafuns or Adalfuns, which as Alfonso would become a frequently used royal name in the medieval Iberian kingdoms. In the Gothic March north of the Pyrenees, the remnant of the Visigothic state conquered by the Franks in the 9th century, Gothic names continued to be common until the 10th centuries, with an example of a record of a mother and her eight children all bearing Gothic names dated to 964.

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