Name of the Goths

Derived from Proto-Germanic *Gutōz ~ *Gutaniz, it is closely related to and probably means the same as the names of both the Geats of southern Sweden and Gutes of Gotland.

[4] The name of the Goths was probably first recorded by Greek and Roman writers as Gutones, an exonym referring to a people dwelling in the Vistula region during the 1st–2nd century AD.

[5] Within medieval Germanic languages, the Goths are attested as Gotan (plural) in Old English and as Goti (singular) in Old Norse.

[7][1][8][9] Another group of related ethnonyms is believed to be attested in Scandinavia, where the oldest forms of the name of the Geats were built from a root Gaut-.

[6][14][12] The adjective gutniskr ~ gotniskr ("Gothic, Gutnish"), which descends from an earlier *gutan-iskaʀ, and the noun gutnar ~ gotnar ("men"), whose ancestral form is *gutaniz, also give evidence of the an-stem.

[6][12] The ethnonym Geats (or Gauts; Old Norse gautar) stems from Proto-Germanic *Gautōz (singular *Gautaz),[15][16][12] which shares the same etymology and possibly the same meaning as *Gutōz ~ *Gutaniz.

[19] The roots gut- and gaut- are generally thought to be related to the Proto-Germanic verb *geutanan, meaning "to pour" (cf.

On this account, Icelandic linguist Ásgeir Blöndal Magnússon suggested that the Gothic name may have referred to those "born and bred" in the north.

[15][8] In Scandinavia, Gaut was considered to be a manifestation of the Germanic god Odin,[29] and the Geats derived their ethnonym from this name.

[21] Elias Wessén writes that it is impossible to separate the words Gutar, Götar, Goths, *Gutans and Gauti from each other; they all mean the same.

[31][32] The name of the Goths is generally believed to have been first attested by Greco-Roman writers in the 1st century AD in the form Gutones.

[38][9][39] Thorsten Andersson, Peter Heather and Wolfram considers Strabo as the first writer to have mentioned the Gothic name.

[41][42][43] In an earlier chapter, Pliny writes that the 4th century BC traveler Pytheas encountered a people called the Guiones in Germania.

[58] Historian Peter Heather has argued that while this similar name on its own could be an "accidental resemblance", there are other tribal names (specifically the Vandals and the Rugii) which similarly seem to appear first near present day Poland in the 1st century AD, only to reappear centuries later on the Roman frontiers far to the south.

[62] The name Goths was sometimes applied also to several non-Gothic peoples, including Burgundians, Vandals, Gepids, Rugii, Sciri and even the non-Germanic Alans.

[3] In the Canary Islands, Chile, Bolivia, Cuba and Ecuador, it is or has been a pejorative for the Peninsulares (coming from the Spanish part of the Iberian Peninsula),[69] who would claim to have pure noble Gothic blood as opposed to the dubious pedigree of locals.

[70] On the basis of name evidence, Piergiuseppe Scardigli writes that is impossible to deny that there was a relationship between the Geats and the Goths.

[71] Based on the similarity between the Gothic name and those of the Gutes and Geats, scholars such as Wolfram have suggested that the Goths may have been an offshoot of either of these peoples.

[73] Anders Kaliff and Ludwig Rübekeil suggest that the Goths, Gutes and Geats were rather all at one point part of the same community of merchant-warriors active on both sides of the Baltic Sea.

The Vanir were particularly revered in Sweden (see Yngvi and Freyr), while the Sagas record that Odin and the Æsir came to Scandinavia from the south.

[75][76] Starting in the 4th century authors such as Claudian, Orosius, Saint Jerome and Augustine of Hippo making a simpler equation between the Goths to the Getae, a tradition followed later by Cassiodorus, Jordanes and Isidore of Seville.

[74] In the late 4th century AD, Ambrose equated the Goths to Gog in the Book of Ezekiel, who was associated with barbarians from the north.

[74][79] Isidore of Seville later suggested that this proposal must have been assumed by previous authors because of the similarity in sound between "Gog" and "Goth".