Message: "Considering Gottlieb was created in the 17th-century..."

This is a reply within a larger thread: view the whole thread

Considering Gottlieb was created in the 17th-century...

by Miranda (Randee15)

5/9/2005, 12:24 PM

Gott probably does refer to the Judeo-Christian-Islamic god in that case. I don't think there were very many "heathens" in 17th-century Germany. (I could be wrong, but...)

Gottfried is just the modern German form of the much-earlier name Godfrey, which itself is the English version of Godafrid, a Germanic name composed of god "god" and frid "peace" (and thus interpreted as "peace of god" or "god's peace"). I'm not very sure, but I think that in this case god refers to the Abrahamic god too.

EDIT: Corrected and expanded Gottfried info

Miranda
"...his fingers trailing over your belly, your thighs quacking..." — From a The Lord of the Rings crapfic

Proud adopter of 15 punctuation marks.

This message was edited 5/9/2005, 2:23 PM

Replies

- thegriffon

5/6/2021, 9:13 AM

Probably yes. There are two homographic protothemes possible in most cases. Single syllable long-vowel God "good" is probably the original. Two syllable short vowel Goda- "god" however is routinely syncopated to one syllable by the systematic loss of unaccented vowels. So short syllable Godfrid "God-peace" (from Godafrid) becomes indistinguishable from long syllable Godfrid "good-peace" in the written record. So why do I say the short syllable is late and refers to the Christian god? Because the standard word for a deity in the classic Germanic onomastic tradition is not "god" but "Ans-/As-/Os-". The elevation of "god" over "Ansuz" is entirely the result of it's application to the Christian god. Indeed the use of Goda- is infrequent prior to the 11th C., and aside from Godefrith, the majority may be explained as cognomen or occupations rather than the usual personal names(Godaman for a monk, Godacild "godchild", Godesceald "gods servant" etc.)

View Message

Replies