Prussian people: Encyclopedia II - Prussian people - Origin of the name

Prussian people - Origin of the name

Etymologically, the names of the Prussian tribes were all formed on a common theme: water. A number of Indo-European roots are used, but they all mean about the same thing: water, stream, lake, flow, wetland, swamp, etc. This convention is understandable, as the terrain of the Baltic countries includes thousands of lakes, streams and swamps, so much so that this circumstance itself caused the very partial isolation that preserved the Baltic language group. Nor is the terrain much better to the south, as it runs into the Pripet Marshes at the headwaters of the Dnepr. They have been an effective barrier over the millennia.

The original pre-Baltic settlers clearly named their settlements after the streams, lakes or seas on which they settled. The clan or tribal polities into which they were organized took the name of the settlement. For example, Barta, the home of the Barti, is related to some other Baltic water names, such as the Bartis River in Lithuania, and to such words as Albanian berrak, Bulgarian bera, "swamp." A *bor- root can be reconstructed, "swamp", which ought to come from the o-grade of Indo-European *bher-. Indo-European has several *bher- roots, however, so the exact meaning and line of descent is unclear.

This very root is perhaps the one used in Prusas (Prussia), for which an earlier Brus- can be postulated. The name of the Dnepr in ancient Greek was the Borysthenes, which, though undoubtedly twisted, contains perhaps the *Bor-. In Tacitus' Germania we find the Lugii Buri living in the east range of the Germans. Lugi can descend from Pokorny's *leug- (2), "black, swamp" (Page 686), while Buri is perhaps the "Prussian" root.

The contexts for these elements remain unknown, or whether these Buri were the ancestors of our Prussians. The 2nd-century AD geographer, Claudius Ptolemy, lists some Borusci living in European Sarmatia (Eighth Map of Europe), which was separated from Germania by the Vistula Flumen. His map is very confused in that region, but these Borusci seem further east than our Prussians, which would have been under the Gythones (Goths) at the mouth of the Vistula. The Aesti (Easterners) as they were recorded by Tacitus were recorded later by Jordanes as part of the Gothic empire.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Origin of the name", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki