SEE UPDATED VERSION AT Goths are not Pagans
Territories inhabited by East Germanic tribes between 100 BC and AD 300.
EXCERPTS with Coloring and Links added.
“Classical ethnography applied the name Suevi to many Germanic tribes.1 In a similar fashion the appellation “Gothic” constantly gained in importance until the sixth century. As soon as late antique ethnographers noticed common elements of language, way of life, or geographical origin,2 they spoke of “Gothic peoples.3 … The name Goths, which replaced that of Scythians, embraced the most diverse Germanic and even non-Germanic peoples: the Goths in Italy, the Vandals, the Goths in Spain, the Gepids, Rugians, Sciri, and Burgundians, indeed, even the Alans.5 The common faith and law, the lex Gothica,6 and the common language were the most important reasons for lumping these peoples together. On linguistic grounds, for the purposes of classification, modern scholarship invented the artificial term East Germanic peoples, which is today commonly used.7″ rr02iæh (p.19 “The Gothic Name”, Wolfram’s History of the Goths, c1979/1988 University of California Press, Berkeley, USA) From ancient times the Teutons have been known as a group of people who speak the Germanic group of languages. Some prefer the term “Teutonic” over “Germanic” to avoid the confusion between the words “Germanic” and “German.” But in reality the terms “Teutonic” and “German” mean the same thing. The term “Gothic” has even been applied to the whole of the Germanic realm, although this too originally referred to only one branch of the Germanic family. Today any of these three terms, Germanic, Teutonic, or Gothic, may refer to the overall tradition of this original group. …. (p.l in Edred Thorsson’s Northern Magic: Rune Mysteries and Shamanism by Llewellyn Publications c1992/1998, ISBN 978-1-56718-709-0)
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The Mysteries of the Goths BY EDRED ( Edred Thorsson)
ISBN: 1-885972-31-8 Runa-Raven Press P. O. Box 557 Smithville, Texas 78957 USA
The Name “Goth”
The name of the Goths is shrouded in mystery. This mystery is only enhanced and deepened by the long history of the name. … One of the main problems is that there were in antiquity a number of different groups and subgroups of whose names were similar, but not identical, to the name of the Goths. Tradition has it that they are named after their most distant ancestor, Gaut(s). Some might agree that this eponymous name ws projected back to a myth, however, the probable meaning of the name Gauts issomething like “father.” There is an Icelandic heiti, or byname, of O∂inn— Gautr. This element also occurs in the Old Icelandic Rune-Poem in the stanza for áss ([god]= O∂inn): Ass er aldin-gautr, “God is the ancient father.” For more on this poem, see The Rune Poems (Runa-Raven, 2002). This does not necessarily mean that Gauts is identical with Wo∂anaz, because the name only means “father,” in the etymotological sense of of “he who pours out,” i.e. the generations or offspring. From ancient times the name of the Goths appears in a grammatically strong and weak form, Gut- and Guton- respectively. [17] Beyond this there is also the fact that the name appears in Greek and Latin as well as Gothic orthographies. Tradition would hold that this name and that contained in the name of Gotaland (Gotland) in present day Sweden and the island of Gotland stem from the same source and that these are identical to the Geatas (ON Gautar) in Beowulf. This name later became confused with others. The principal confusion came in connection with the name of a Dacian tribe, the Getae, who inhabited present-day northern Romania at the time the Goths settled there for a short while in the 4th century. These names were then confused by Latin and Greek writers. Through the centuries, as the fame of the Gothic name spread, any similar sounding name came to be identified as “Goth,” including the Jutes [yootes] of the North Sea and even the Judaei [yood-ah-ey], “Jews.” … The link between the name of the Goths and that of the Jews will play a part in some medieval mysteries surrounding the Goths. … This can be demonstrated with the description of a single well-known word: PGmc. tiwaz, the name of the sky-god and the name of the 17th rune in the Older Fupark. In EGmc. (Gothic) this is teiws, in NGmc. tiwaR and in SGmc. we find Old High German ziu or Old English tiw. … These technical linguistic details may seem tedious, but they provide some [18] important clues for determining the interactions of various tribes in ancient times and help us to identify certain artifacts of esoteric Importance. In the tribal histories of the Germanic peoples these linguistic designations are also important because they show which tribes shared deep common roots. The East Germanic tribes were, besides the Ostrogoths and Visigoths, the Vandals, the Burgundians, the Gepids and the Rugians. The original homeland of the Burgundians was the island of Bornholm in the Baltic. The Erulians, or Heruli, have also sometimes been classified with the East Germanic “tribes,” but their classification remains problematic. Runic inscriptions in the Older Futhark show that rune-carvers identifying themselves as “Erulians” did not use East Germanic linguistic form, e.g. ek erilaR. It is most likely that the Hrulians were an intertribal band of oath-bound warriors made up of members of various Germanic tribes. …
————– see also WHO IS AANER XOT? (Who is a Goth?) John Trudell – Tribes of Europe
