Where was Germania?

[Cyrus]

In the Greco-Roman sources, there are two different lands with the name of Germania, one of them is in Iran and another one is the north of Europe, the interesting point is that the Iranian one was not mentioned after 5th century BC and the European one was not mentioned before 3rd century BC. Of course it is believed that the names of Kerman, Kermanshah and Kurmanj (Kurdistan) relate to this ancient land in Iran, in fact there was g>k sound change or vice versa, however we see Carmania in the ancient Greek sources too.

There were certainly some migrations during the expansion of the Persian Empire in the 5th century BC, as you probably know an Old Persian cuneiform inscription of Darius the Great was found in 1937 at Gherla in the northwest of modern Romania, do you think the name of Germania in Europe could be related to these events?

 

[Salento]

... The origin of the term "Germania" is uncertain, but was known by Caesar's time, and may be Gaulish in origin.

The Roman portions of GERMANIA formed two provinces of the Empire, Germania Inferior to the north (present-day southern Netherlands, Belgium, and western Germany), and Germania Superior to the south (Switzerland, southwestern Germany, and eastern France)...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germania

 

[Cyrus]

By considering Germanic sound changes, this name in the Germanic languages should be Kerman, in fact /g/ in Celtic/Italic languages is changed to /k/ in Germanic.

 

[Joey37]

The ancient Germans didn't call themselves Germans; that is an exonym from the Romans and Celts. Germanic tribes used a word whose modern German descendant is Deutsch; the old English word was Theod.

 

[ToBeOrNotToBe]

From the Rhine to some unspecified part of the Northern European plain. It corresponds reasonably well to the Netherlands, Germany and Poland today.

 

[Sile]

East side of the Rhine river and north side of the Danube river , plus .........the inside of where the amber trail was from the baltic sea to modern Vienna ........that was where Germania was.
.
.

Original origins of Germans is only north Germany and Denmark lands
.
central and south Germany where celtic lands..........the "royal capital of the celts" of these lands was Glauberg ( near modern Frankfurt )

 

[Cyrus]

From the Rhine to some unspecified part of the Northern European plain. It corresponds reasonably well to the Netherlands, Germany and Poland today.

Where was Rhine? As you read in Unesco website: https://whc.unesco.org/en/tentativelists/5205/ it was an ancient place name in Kerman (Germania in the Greco-Roman source).

 

[Cyrus]

We read in Ancient history, by Gustaf Clemens Hebbe, Page 82:

Where was Hyrcanian forest?! https://whc.unesco.org/en/tentativelists/5214/

 

[hrvclv]

The forested areas north of the Alps were not Hyrcanian, but Hercynian, of clear, well-known Celtic etymology. Hyrcanian, when referring to that area, is quite obviously a mistranscription.

See Wiki :

The Hercynian Forest was an ancient and dense forest that stretched eastward from the Rhine River across southern Germany and formed the northern boundary of that part of Europe known to writers of antiquity. The ancient sources are equivocal about how far east it extended. All agree that the Black Forest, which extended east from the Rhine valley, formed the western side of the Hercynian.

Across the Rhine to the west extended the Silva Carbonaria and the forest of the Ardennes. All these old-growth forests of antiquity represented the original post-glacial temperate broadleaf forest ecosystem of Europe.

Relict tracts of this once-continuous forest exist with many local names: the Schwarzwald ("Black Forest"), Odenwald, Spessart Rhön, Thüringerwald (Thuringian Forest), Harz, Rauhe Alb, Steigerwald, Fichtelgebirge, Erzgebirge, Riesengebirge, the Bohemian Forest, and the forested Carpathians. The Mittelgebirge seem to correspond more or less to a stretch of the Hercynian mountains.

Etymology

Hercynian has a Proto-Celtic derivation, from ɸerkuniā, later erkunia. Julius Pokorny lists Hercynian as being derived from *perkʷu- "oak" (compare quercus). He further identifies the name as Celtic. Proto-Celtic regularly loses initial *p preceding a vowel, hence Hercynia (the H- being prothetic in Latin, the Latin y signifying a borrowing from Greek). The corresponding Germanic forms have an f- by Grimm's Law: Old English firgen = "mountains", Gothic faírguni = "mountain range". The assimilated *kwerkwu- would be regular in Italo-Celtic, and Pokorny associates the Celtiberian ethnonym Querquerni, found in Hispania in Galicia.

It is possible that the name of the Harz Mountains in Germany is derived from Hercynian, as Harz is a Middle High German word meaning "mountain forest." Also, the Old High German name Fergunna apparently refers to the Erzgebirge and Virgundia (cf. modern Virngrund forest) to a range between Ansbach and Ellwangen. The name of Pforzheim (Porta Hercyniae) in southwest Germany and the tiny village of Hercingen are also derived from "Hercynian".


The name is cited dozens of times in several classical authors, but most of the references are non-definitive, e.g., The Hercynian Forest is Pomponius Mela's silvis ac paludibus invia, "trackless forest and swamps" (Mela, De Chorographia, iii.29), as the author is assuming the reader would know where the forest is. The earliest reference is in Aristotle's (Meteorologica). He refers to the Arkýnia (or Orkýnios) mountains of Europe, but tells us only that, remarkably in his experience, rivers flow north from there.

During the time of Julius Caesar, this forest blocked the advance of the Roman legions into Germania. His few statements are the most definitive. In De Bello Gallico he says that the forest stretches along the Danube from the territory of the Helvetii (present-day Switzerland) to Dacia (present-day Romania). Its implied northern dimension is nine days' march. Its eastern dimension is indefinitely more than sixty days' march. The concept fascinated him, even the old tales of unicorns (which may have represented reindeer). Caesar's references to moose and aurochs and of elk without joints which leaned against trees to sleep in the endless forests of Germania, were probably later interpolations in his Commentaries. Caesar's name for the forest is the one most used: Hercynia Silva. [...]

In the Roman sources, the Hercynian Forest was part of ethnographic Germania.

 

[markod]

Has an Elamite etymology been tried for Herodotus Germanioi? I find the resemblance interesting.

 

[Cyrus]

The forested areas north of the Alps were not Hyrcanian, but Hercynian, of clear, well-known Celtic etymology. Hyrcanian, when referring to that area, is quite obviously a mistranscription.

See Wiki :

The Hercynian Forest was an ancient and dense forest that stretched eastward from the Rhine River across southern Germany and formed the northern boundary of that part of Europe known to writers of antiquity. The ancient sources are equivocal about how far east it extended. All agree that the Black Forest, which extended east from the Rhine valley, formed the western side of the Hercynian.

Across the Rhine to the west extended the Silva Carbonaria and the forest of the Ardennes. All these old-growth forests of antiquity represented the original post-glacial temperate broadleaf forest ecosystem of Europe.

Relict tracts of this once-continuous forest exist with many local names: the Schwarzwald ("Black Forest"), Odenwald, Spessart Rhön, Thüringerwald (Thuringian Forest), Harz, Rauhe Alb, Steigerwald, Fichtelgebirge, Erzgebirge, Riesengebirge, the Bohemian Forest, and the forested Carpathians. The Mittelgebirge seem to correspond more or less to a stretch of the Hercynian mountains.

Etymology

Hercynian has a Proto-Celtic derivation, from ɸerkuniā, later erkunia. Julius Pokorny lists Hercynian as being derived from *perkʷu- "oak" (compare quercus). He further identifies the name as Celtic. Proto-Celtic regularly loses initial *p preceding a vowel, hence Hercynia (the H- being prothetic in Latin, the Latin y signifying a borrowing from Greek). The corresponding Germanic forms have an f- by Grimm's Law: Old English firgen = "mountains", Gothic faírguni = "mountain range". The assimilated *kwerkwu- would be regular in Italo-Celtic, and Pokorny associates the Celtiberian ethnonym Querquerni, found in Hispania in Galicia.

A Celtic etymology seems to be very possible, Hyrcanian forest is in Golestan province of Iran, there was also Hyrcanis in ancient Lydia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyrcanis_(Lydia)

Hyrcania has been mentioned as Urqananu/Arqania in ancient Akkadian sources too, of course in the pre-Achaemenid sources, it seems to be a mountain forest in the east of Turkey, probably relate to modern Ergani: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ergani

Pliny talks about Hercynium mountain forest in Dacia (modern Romania), he also talks about Hyrcani in Macedonia.

I think this h-r-k-n name of mountain forests relate to Celtic migrations, look at this thread thread: https://www.eupedia.com/forum/threads/37188-Discovery-of-Statue-Menhirs-Celtic-Migrations

 

[hrvclv]

A Celtic etymology seems to be very possible, Hyrcanian forest is in Golestan province of Iran, there was also Hyrcanis in ancient Lydia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyrcanis_(Lydia)

Hyrcania has been mentioned as Urqananu/Arqania in ancient Akkadian sources too, of course in the pre-Achaemenid sources, it seems to be a mountain forest in the east of Turkey, probably relate to modern Ergani: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ergani

Pliny talks about Hercynium mountain forest in Dacia (modern Romania), he also talks about Hyrcani in Macedonia.

I think this h-r-k-n name of mountain forests relate to Celtic migrations, look at this thread thread: https://www.eupedia.com/forum/threads/37188-Discovery-of-Statue-Menhirs-Celtic-Migrations

Etymologically, there is a severe objection, though. PIE *perkwu apparently turned into *kwerkwu in Proto-Italo-Celtic (cp. Latin quercus). Then *kwerkwu reverted back to *perkwu in continental P Celtic. Then the initial P was lost. It took time. That loss must have happened in the very late Bronze age, more probably in the Iron age. By that time, the Celts had been in western Europe for 15 centuries. If they had been in south west Asia in the Neolithic, the P would still have been there, whether in Celtic or in any borrowing by surrounding languages.

I think you are relying too much on phonological chance coincidences.

 

[Cyrus]

Etymologically, there is a severe objection, though. PIE *perkwu apparently turned into *kwerkwu in Proto-Italo-Celtic (cp. Latin quercus). Then *kwerkwu reverted back to *perkwu in continental P Celtic. Then the initial P was lost. It took time. That loss must have happened in the very late Bronze age, more probably in the Iron age. By that time, the Celts had been in western Europe for 15 centuries. If they had been in south west Asia in the Neolithic, the P would still have been there, whether in Celtic or in any borrowing by surrounding languages.

I think you are relying too much on phonological chance coincidences.

I don't believe in these strange theories (*p>*kʷ>*p>h !!), proto-Italo-Celtic language didn't exist, *p>kʷ is an European sound change but debuccalization of p (*p>h) happened in the southwest Asia, this sound change can be seen in Luwian and Armenian languages too.

 

[hrvclv]

I don't believe in these strange theories (*p>*kʷ>*p>h !!), proto-Italo-Celtic language didn't exist, *p>kʷ is an European sound change but debuccalization of p (*p>h) happened in the southwest Asia, this sound change can be seen in Luwian and Armenian languages too.

They are not "strange theories", they are well-attested regular sound shifts :

-PIE : *penkwe (five) -- latin : quinque, Irish : coic -- Old Welsh : pimp, Breton : pemp
-PIE : *pater (father) -- latin : pater -- Old Irish : athir
-PIE : *pele (flat) -- Latin : planus -- Gaulish : lano (as in Medio-Lanum, today's Milano : the plain in the middle)

I am well aware that you "don't believe in these strange theories". You prefer to believe in those fanciful lexical associations of yours, as long as they corroborate those "strange theories" of yours.

For all I know, the ancient Guti may well have been a PIE group related to a tribe ancestral to the Goths, which later migrated to Europe. But you are still a long way from having demonstrated it. And you won't achieve that by producing obviously false or fake evidence.

 

[Cyrus]

They are not "strange theories", they are well-attested regular sound shifts :

-PIE : *penkwe (five) -- latin : quinque, Irish : coic -- Old Welsh : pimp, Breton : pemp
-PIE : *pater (father) -- latin : pater -- Old Irish : athir
-PIE : *pele (flat) -- Latin : planus -- Gaulish : lano (as in Medio-Lanum, today's Milano : the plain in the middle)

I am well aware that you "don't believe in these strange theories". You prefer to believe in those fanciful lexical associations of yours, as long as they corroborate those "strange theories" of yours.

For all I know, the ancient Guti may well have been a PIE group related to a tribe ancestral to the Goths, which later migrated to Europe. But you are still a long way from having demonstrated it. And you won't achieve that by producing obviously false or fake evidence.

Your examples certainly show regular sound shifts in Italic and Celtic languages but you mentioned this strange sound shift in Celtic: *p>*kʷ>*p>h ?!! Celtic *p is certainly from *kʷ but this sound never changed again to *h in proto-Celtic. We can't change Indo-European sound laws for our purposes.

 

[hrvclv]

Your examples certainly show regular sound shifts in Italic and Celtic languages but you mentioned this strange sound shift in Celtic: *p>*kʷ>*p>h ?!! Celtic *p is certainly from *kʷ but this sound never changed again to *h in proto-Celtic. We can't change Indo-European sound laws for our purposes.

Please read the wiki extract again (the etymology bit). It explains the H is prothetic. It is a gratuitous addition by latin writers, without any phonological justification or significance.

Concerning the change from PIE initial "p" to later "kw" in Italic and Celtic, it occurred only when the next syllable itself began with "kw", through backward assimilition, or "consonantic harmonization", if you wish. The p in *perkwu became kw in Latin and Q Celtic under the influence of the kw sound in the second syllable. The same goes for *penkwe and Latin quinque. P remained P elsewhere, before vanishing in initial and intervocalic position. Those are documented changes that belong to extensive paradigms.

If you intend to use linguistics to track human groups, rather than focus on isolated words and sound-alikes, maybe you could try and compile corpora of cognates that point to regular, systematic sound correspondences, eg of the Grimm's Law type. Then you would have something reliable to work on. Same goes for lexical cognates, morphology and syntax. You would also have to factor in time and chronology, what each language was like at any given point of its own history. It's heavy work. But it's probably the only way. Isolated similarities are bound to be misleading.

 

[Cyrus]

Please read the wiki extract again (the etymology bit). It explains the H is prothetic. It is a gratuitous addition by latin writers, without any phonological justification or significance.
Concerning the change from PIE initial "p" to later "kw" in Italic and Celtic, it occurred only when the next syllable itself began with "kw", through backward assimilition, or "consonantic harmonization", if you wish. The p in *perkwu became kw in Latin and Q Celtic under the influence of the kw sound in the second syllable. The same goes for *penkwe and Latin quinque. P remained P elsewhere, before vanishing in initial and intervocalic position. Those are documented changes that belong to extensive paradigms.
If you intend to use linguistics to track human groups, rather than focus on isolated words and sound-alikes, maybe you could try and compile corpora of cognates that point to regular, systematic sound correspondences, eg of the Grimm's Law type. Then you would have something reliable to work on. Same goes for lexical cognates, morphology and syntax. You would also have to factor in time and chronology, what each language was like at any given point of its own history. It's heavy work. But it's probably the only way. Isolated similarities are bound to be misleading.

I can't understand what you mean, what you say about the Celtic words from proto-IE *perkʷu "oak", by comparing to proto-IE *penkʷe "five", actually shows that there couldn't be common proto-Italo-Celtic origins because your proposed sound law: *p>*kʷ>*p>h doesn't work about the Celtic words for "five", we just see *p>*kʷ>p/c.
The fact is that p didn't exist in proto-Celtic but kʷ existed, this labiovelar sound was gradually changed to p and k in Celtic languages.
About backward assimilition, it didn't relate to just Italic and Celtic languages, we see it in proto-Germanic and some other IE languages too. In Persian panja and chang are synonym and mean "five fingers", in fact proto-IE *penkʷe "five" and kʷenkʷe "five fingers" could be different words.

Edit: It is good to mention that the name of Hyrcania in Old Persian begins with a labiovelar sound (w).

 

[halfalp]

This topic tho...

It's one thing to make antic linguistic correlations.

It's another to try rewriting history placing the Rhine in Iran... because of a random guy typo few decades ago. This is plain Revisionnism guys btw. Now let's found Iranian Bohemia, Scandinavia.

 

[Cyrus]

This topic tho...

It's one thing to make antic linguistic correlations.

It's another to try rewriting history placing the Rhine in Iran... because of a random guy typo few decades ago. This is plain Revisionnism guys btw. Now let's found Iranian Bohemia, Scandinavia.

It doesn't matter how they are written in English, the important point is that both of them are pronounced as Rayn, it seems Rhine has also a Celtic origin, I think the name of Germanii (Kerman) has also a Celtic origin. I myself believe Germanic people lived in the west of Iran, not the east. Of course as I mentioned in my initial post, we have also Kermanshah and Kurmanj (Kurdistan) which are in the west of Iran, because of these names it is widely believed that there was a migration from the east to west in the ancient times.
For some reasons I think proto-Getmanic and then proto-Italic were subbranches of proto-Celtic language.

 

[halfalp]

It doesn't matter how they are written in English, the important point is that both of them are pronounced as Rayn, it seems Rhine has also a Celtic origin, I think the name of Germanii (Kerman) has also a Celtic origin. I myself believe Germanic people lived in the west of Iran, not the east. Of course as I mentioned in my initial post, we have also Kermanshah and Kurmanj (Kurdistan) which are in the west of Iran, because of these names it is widely believed that there was a migration from the east to west in the ancient times.
For some reasons I think proto-Getmanic and then proto-Italic were subbranches of proto-Celtic language.

Do you really think ancient writers were retarded at a point to mix Germany with Iran?

There is nothing widely believed. Linguists have a high tendencies at laughing to people who makes ancestral links with some apparent and flawed linguistic relationship. There was never Germans in west or east Iran, there were no Celts in Iran neither.