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Post by sarmat on May 13, 2010 11:00:23 GMT 3
Well, that just proves that we hardly can ascrible our modern definitions of "ethnicity" to ancient nomadic tribal formations. It's likely that Huns were just a big horde of different people who might have been fluent in several languages and didn't spend too much of their time hypothesizing "who" belongs to what kind of ethnic subbranch of "who"...
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Post by Ardavarz on Mar 15, 2011 2:23:21 GMT 3
that is most interesting, because Burgundy also appears in the Nibelungen Saga, alognside the Huns under Attila, who is called "Etzel" there. oh yeah, i've forgotten about Vladimir etc. so well, Russia is included as well it seems. even if the -mir ending is eastern germanic, what is it supposed to mean then? I haven't noticed this tread before. Here's some additions from me: Agathias mentions the Hunnic tribe Burugundi (or Vurugundi - it depends how the letter Beta is read) in Caucasus. They might have something to do with later Onogundurs. About the "-mir" ending there is also another theory - G. Vernadsky supposes that Slavic names on "-mir" could be theophoric names containing the name of god Mithra in its Middle Iranian form "mihr". Mithra is a personification of agreement and friendship, which is close to the meaning of Russian word mir - "peace, concord". Also in modern Persian it becomes mehr - "love". For me personally it's difficult to decide whether the Hunnic names on "-mir" were Iranian, Germanic or Slavic. They could be any of these or maybe even interpreted by each people in their own fashion.
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Post by merlkir on Mar 17, 2011 20:39:44 GMT 3
I'd add that there are many Czech names ending with -mir/mír and it often has something to do with "peace". But other seem to be connected to the other slavic meaning "world".
examples: Lubomír - "peace loving" Drahomíra - "peace valuing"
Vladimír - here I've found the other etymology Vlad (vládnout) = "to rule" + mír (mir) = "world" => Ruler of the world. Radimír/Radomír - "world loving"
I find the idea of Huns being a group of varied nations and tribes very plausible - as someone already mentioned in the thread earlier, it's nearly impossible to pin some tribes down, into one culture. What of the Bastarnae? We can't quite tell if they were germanic or celtic. And there's a ton of Dacian, Thracian and Sarmatian influence as well. It seems natural that people living in such diverse areas would have equally diverse culture.
A similar thing happened to Slavs living among the Avars in one big horde.
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