Ourselves

What is the origin of the word Slav? The most popular suggestion has been that it is derived from “suowo” meaning “word.” The main argument for this is that the Teutons are decribed by Slavs as “Niemcy” which has been interpreted to mean the “mute ones.”

This is stupid for a number of what should be obvious reasons.

First of all, someone who does not speak your language is not a “mute” or deaf person. Any moron can see that there is a difference between a mute/deaf person and someone who can hear and talk and make sounds but does not speak your particular language.

Second, in Slavic, a mute person is either a “niemowa” (noun) or a “niemy” (adjective). Not a “Niemiec.” The plural of niemowa is niemowy. The plural of niemy is niemi. Neither plural form derived from these singulars is Niemcy.

Third, and for the above reasons, Niemcy cannot and, indeed, does not, therefore, mean “mute ones.”

Since the “mute” German counterpart to the loquacious Slav falls away so does the rest of the  house of cards built on that false pairing; starting, of course, with the suggestion that the word “Slav” is tracked back to the Slavic word for “word”, that is with słowo (pron. suovo).

However, that said, the word Niemcy may, indirectly, help explain the word Slav. To understand how you have to first answer what that word really means in Slavic.  The answer is ridiculously simple.

Niemcy may simply mean “not us” or “not we” – nie my.

Thus, the counterpoint Slav has to mean “we” or “us”.

And, unsurprisingly, there is an appropriate word for that concept in Slavic languages: swoi. This word which is pronounced “svoi” means “one’s own” or “ours.”

The Slavic word swoboda, pronounced svoboda, means “freedom.” If, as I suspect, the Herodotic Budinoi, simply meant the “people”, or “those that are” then swo-bodni would simply mean “our people” or even – notice the common IE word “be” (budet)  at the bottom here – “our buds” or “our bodies,” which can also be translated as “free” (because they are ours ourselvses and not theirs) bodies. Hence swoboda means freedom.

Swoi (pron. svoi) or swobodni (pron. svobodni) was thus the starting point. It is from those concepts that the concept of the “word” then sprung as a derivative – słowo/suovo/slovo, that is the operative linguistic/communication unit of “one’s own people.” In other words, Slavs, “our people” came first and the word for “word” came later.

That this has to be the case can be easily shown by simply pointing out that the first concept (of one’s own people) is naturally the simpler, the likely more “needed/useful” at the very base of human familial or tribal functioning, and hence the older one. The concept of a “word” as a unit of language is necessarily more “sophisticated,” more abstract, and hence a later one.

From the words for “one’s own” thus came Suavs (in the West, where the “u/v” remained preserved) and Slavs (in the East, where the “u/v” gradually became an “l” as Suavs migrated East).

I have little doubt that the Suevi – both those in Germany and those in Sweden (Svenska – there is that “word” again! – compare with Polska!) were the ancestors of western Slavs, that is Suavs (though some of these Suevi became ancestors too of some of today’s Germans, Dutch, Frenchmen, Swedes and even Britons/Irish). Similar influences also appear in some of Romance languages.

As regards, the Teutonic tongues, I think a major clue as to their provenance is found in the far eastern Tocharian which, some found this surprising, was a centum language. That is where we should look for the ancestors of Germanic (and indeed Gallic) languages whose speakers at some point in time moved northwards (notice that Herodotus’ Thyssagetae – thyssae being an indisputably Germanic word – lived NNE of the Budinoi), made their way into Scandinavia, displacing the native pre-Suiones and then kept erupting south into continental Europe in search of the riches of the Roman republic and later of the Roman empire.

Some of those Teutons:

• became Galls (transfering their name for the Westernmost Suavs – the Armorican Veneti – to the Romans),
• others were Goths and related peoples (transferring their name for the Easternmost Slavs – the Tacitean Veneti – to the Romans)
• while other such motley brigands – aptly referred to as the Alemanni – took over the central lands of the Suevi, and indeed the very name eventually, much as the later German invaders appropriated the name of the Baltic Prussians who, to the extent they survived, found themselves – with the same name – but under a new management.

That the Teutons raided deep into Suavic territory is evident not just from antiquity but also from the Middle Ages. It is thus that the Slavic Polanie were conquered by the Rus and, in this case, it was the conquerors that gave the conquered their own name.

Similarly, earlier, the Suavic Winnuli were conquered by the Langobards and “became” the historic Langobards (thus, we have in the records a strange combination of different Langobardic names some of which – such as Zuchillo, Tatto, Cleb/Cleff, Lethuc, Wisigarda, Winsilan (same as Wenezlan?), Pero(n?)*, Drocton (“gente Suavus”) – may well have been Suavic). In a similar vein, the whole Langobard-“Vandal” battle could be explained as, basically, a struggle between the Langobard conquered Winnuli and the independent Winnuli or, maybe, even as a Winnuli rebellion against the Langobard newcomers. As we know, the Langobards subjugated the “Suavi” (Eo tempore inclinavit wacho suavos sub regno langobardorum). This has been interpreted as referring to the Germanic Suevi (albeit here written already as Suavi) but that is because the assumption has been that the Suavs could not possibly be the same as (just Western) Slavs. Such an assumption would explain the Slavs’ presence in Germania but would also ruin the picture of Tacitean Germania as a Scandinavian Theme Park.

* This name (as well as Winsilan) appears in the Gotha Codex (“… ante Peronem… post Peronem…”).

Copyright ©2018 jassa.org All Rights Reserved