Re: Requalivahanus
- From: "Brian M. Scott" <b.scott@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 13 Apr 2009 12:46:48 -0400
On Sun, 12 Apr 2009 21:16:56 GMT, Heidi Graw
<hgraw@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in
<cTsEl.22888$PH1.10548@edtnps82">news:cTsEl.22888$PH1.10548@edtnps82> in sci.lang:
"Rasmus Underbjerg Pinnerup" <pinnerup@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:49e249bb$0$90271$14726298@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
On Sun, 12 Apr 2009 03:42:48 +0000, Heidi Graw wrote:
Requalivahanus. Name of a god on a votive inscription
from Blatzheim a.d. Neffel, Germany from the time
between the 2nd/4th centuries
[...]
area of the Germanic tribe of the Ubii [...] can best be
related to a Germanic word *rehwaz "darkness." This
could indicate a god of the underworld although from
the inscription we know that fruit was dedicated to
him.
Sounds very reasonable.
****
My own unprofessional thoughts:
Requalivahanus...
Requal - Ivan
qualis - Ivan
Ivan is a Hebrew word for "god is gracious." qualis is a
Latin word for "kind of, type."
Requalivahanus may mean:
"the kind of god who is gracious."
You are right when you say it is unprofessional. I don't
mean to cause offense, but there are a number of
problems here. Firstly, words aren't formed in this way.
Hebrew-Latin compounds like that do not occur - and
certainly not in that context. People do not name their
gods using bits and pieces from faraway languages.
No, but might an "outsider", an observer, compound words
for his own compatriotes?
No.
Remember that classical literate monks travelled to
illiterate germanic speaking people. This monk would
have had to translate the germanic name for a god into
something his own kind could understand and relate to.
Creating a mix using several languages might not have
been such an odd thing to do given that monks tended to
know several languages.
We know perfectly well what they actually *did* do: spelled
the Germanic names more or less phonetically in either Latin
or Greek, depending on the writer, and adapted them to Latin
or Greek grammar. They also occasionally identified
Germanic deities with Greco-Latin deities whose functions
they considered similar. In this case the name actually
appears in Latinized form in the dative: the inscription
reads <Deo Requalivahano Q. Aprianus Fructus ex imperio pro
se et suis v. s. l. m.>, translated in the German Wikipedia
article as <Dem Gott Requalivahanus erfüllt Quintus Aprianus
Fructus aus eigenem Antrieb für sich und die Seinen sein
Gelübde>.
Secondly, "Ivan" is certainly not a Hebrew word. It's a
Slavic version of the name "Yochanan", which indeed
originally meant "Yahweh is merciful", but I trust you
can see how dissimilar "Ivan" and "Yochanan" are. The
name has undergone heavy distortion in the transmission,
and noone in 2nd century Germania would know Hebrew, nor
the Slavic name "Ivan" which is in itself of a much
later date.
I know that, Rasmus. Ivan might have been Ivahanus back
in the 2nd century, might it not?
No.
In any case, maybe you can give me the steps that led from
IE. *rehwaz
There is no PIE *rehwaz: that's a Proto-Germanic form. The
PIE form is *regWos- or the like.
to the name Requalivahanus.
Obviously the name contains at least one root in addition to
the 'darkness' root. Moreover, it's been Latinized; the
<-us> ending is a Latin inflexional ending, and there's no
telling how accurately <-livahan-> represents the rest of
the Germanic name.
[...]
.
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