Scytho-Cimmerian rulers and their offsprings, "behind the name"

"As a general rule, the Scythians and Cimmerians are not those who are not referred to in the historical record as such."

Keywords: Scythian language, Cimmerian language, Antique Slavic languages, Antique Germanic languages, Neo-Assyrian Empire

Narrated Text (minorly different from the real speech in the video, the textual version being primary; every new timestamp is a new slide on the screen):

(00:00:00) Hello everyone. This episode in my series about the linguistic landscape of Ukraine and neighbouring regions will be started the same way as the previous one, from our favourite section. So, "Previously." In the previous video, which is indirectly labeled "Video No.4", we've made several important scientific discoveries of our days. Besides our knowledge, which we've confirmed on various samples of terms, names, found in the historical record, that the Scythians were Slavic speakers, a new discovery I've shared with you has been the provable fact that the Cimmerians are neither Scythians, nor Indo-Iranians, nor Greeks. Indisputably, the core or the only part of their society was Germanic speakers whose language or languages was or were tightly related to the North Germanic ones and English. This quite agrees, rather than not, with Iordanes's account about the Goths reaching the land of Oium before the 10th century BCE, where "Oium" is just another name for the Crimean Peninsula - because the earliest Cimmerian names mentioned in the Neo-Assyrian sources date back to the beginning of the 7th century BCE. I also talked about the possibility of Celtic speakers being part of their society, but shortly I will explain why this point is wrong. (What kind of surprised me is that nobody had pointed out my mistake before I noticed it. Either no one had noticed it either, or my video was too good to make any additional remarks even negative.) Another important discovery has been that the terms "Sauromatae", "Sarmatae", and "Syrmatae" cannot be used synonymously. Historically, the ethnonym "Sauromatae", when first mentioned by Herodotus, referred to certain residents of the North Caucasus region and whose language, in my view, we've managed to establish. The data on it, although quite limited, have enabled us to suggest it was Hungarian. That's the reason why we cannot call the Sauromatae the Sarmatae. At the same time, the S-y-rmatae(!), according to Ψευδοσκύλαξ, were located in a different and very specific region, in Crimea. The historical record suggests the Syrmatae were either Scythians or Cimmerians, but their exact ethnicity is a matter for debate. The S-a-rmatae(!) is something third. And of course, one more discovery, with some room for doubt, has been my decipherment of a 2nd millennium inscription from the Mamai-Hora burial ground in southern Ukraine that may be written in a Slavic language. The number of my discoveries I presented you in the previous video is actually much bigger, and not all of them are related to the period of Classical antiquity while some of them would be impossible without the existing knowledge of the Egyptian language or perhaps even the history of Ancient Egypt. ...

But there have been some mistakes. Some of those I have in my first three videos (Video No.1, Video No.2, Video No.3) are already covered, some will probably be covered later. Right now I only want to highlight some that I made in the Video No.4. - If some of you don't know what this denotation means - I mean "Video No.X" - "Video No.X" is a name for the videos that are not called "Pieces". "Video No.X" is a kind of longer or lengthy video usually with a more poetic or a vague title that covers a range of topics most of which can fit this title, but, most importantly, it is a video that is not a part of another video, I mean technically. If it's a part of another video and is not a YouTube short (or Facebook / Instagram reel), it's called "Piece", "Piece from Video No.Y" - a sort of "long short" if you will. By default, if I say a phrase like "in the previous N videos", "in my previous N videos", I will usually mean the "previous N videos that are not 'Pieces', that are not 'long shorts'". For separate Pieces, I don't even make separate publications in my blog, so no reason to count them, Pieces do not develop the main storyline, do not add anything new to it. - Now, this video is the "Video No.5", and before we proceed to the topic of this video - in which the explanation of why there were no Celtic speakers in Cimmerian society is also a part of this topic, not just a mistake to correct - yet another mistake to correct is the misrepresentation of some biographical data about one of the two Nosov brothers. When I introduced the Russian Empire mining engineer Олександр Олексійович Носов (Oleksandr Oleksiiovych Nosov), I said that he was born in Kharkiv (Ukraine). The brothers are sometimes referred to as Kharkiv researchers of the Donets Coal Ridge, but not because they were born in that city. Most likely, both of them were born in the former Kharkiv Governorate of the Russian Empire, still in Ukraine. In some sources, they are also mentioned as residents of the city of Izium / Izyum of the former Kharkiv Governorate, but I doubt if that's actually correct. It's easier to find information about his brother, Анемподист Олексійович Носов (Anempodyst Oleksiiovych Nosov). It's known that when he married his wife Анна (Anna), he was a landlord (pomeshchik) in Izyumsky Uyezd (aka Ізюмський повіт). The wedding of their daughter Марія (Mariia) took place in the Sofia Church in the Kamianka (Кам'янка) sloboda or Kamianka village of the same Izyumsky Uyezd, in the same village where Анемподист Носов passed away. This information can be found in the Russian-language article "Слобода Каменка-Стратилатовка" ("Sloboda Kamenka-Stratilatovka") by Ukrainian and Kharkiv local historian Андрій Федорович Парамонов (Andrii Fedorovych Paramonov) and the Russian Empire newspaper "Южный край" ("Yuzhny Kray", "Southern Country" or "Southern region") which was published in Kharkiv.

Now let's recall why I actually said that there may have been Celtic speakers among the Cimmerians. A first thing I called your attention to was Herodotus's explanation of the term "Arimaspoi". The first part from the split he suggests, "ἄριμα", indeed can be associated with the Old Irish "adrími" ("to count"), Proto-Celtic "*rīmā" ("number"), Old English "riman" ("to count"), Proto-Germanic "*rīmą" ("number"), because Herodotus writes that the Scythians (in fact, Cimmerians) called the number one this word. But I could not and by now cannot explain the second part "σποῦ" from the perspective of Celtic languages, only Germanic. As it can be inferred from Herodotus's account, the second part must be related to the English "spy" and Proto-West-Germanic "*spehu" ("spying"). This means that the first part is not expected to be Celtic. (00:07:47) To check if there is any evidence of Celtic presence in Cimmerian society, I referred to the name of a 7th-century BCE Cimmerian ruler, "Teušpa" / "Teušpâ". Its other possible variants are "Teušḫad", "Teušḫat", "Teušḫaṭ". I interpreted this name as the English and Scots "teuchat", and because of the presence of this lexeme in Scots, I said a stupid thing - that this name may be Celtic. (00:08:17) What is my mistake? The Scots language is a Germanic language, and the Scots language that is indeed Celtic is called (00:08:25) Scots Gaelic or Scottish Gaelic. That's why if the name of Teušpa was actually Teuchat, we still have no evidence that any Celtic speakers resided in Crimea and/or Taman', where the Cimmerians dwelt. Since we have no evidence (and I think we will not find any in the near future), this point has to be completely rejected for now. I did try to find any Celtic interpretation of this name, justifiable or provable, but without success by this moment. The point that the real name is "Teuchat" is also not good: the explanation of the resemblance between "teu-" and "te-uš-" is not convincing, many problems arise when I try to show their match. That's why, in this video, I will be presenting the alternatives. But I will start some of my rethoughts not from this name, but from the names "Arimaspoi" and "Βοράδοι".

(00:09:24) The first name to rethink will be "Arimaspoi". What was wrong? My point was that it should be read as "Drimazby". This was justified, but the transformation from "Drimazby" to a Germanic word through the Cimmerian folk etymology which made it possible to split it and reinterpret each of its parts as Herodotus recorded seems to be overcomplicated. What if there is a simpler explanation? Well, not much simpler, but I think I can describe an alternative scenario not involving Slavic languages. This scenario implies that we need to find other Germanic interpretations for each of the two parts that are in total different from those in Herodotus's account, assuming that the way the full name is split is correct, similarly to how I had deciphered the name "Οἰόρπατα". What do we know about the Arimaspoi? They lived near the Riphean Mountains which are associated with a very cold place. (00:10:26) In the Germanic languages there is the word that is derived from the reconstructed Proto-Germanic "*hrīmô" or "hrīmą" that means "frost", "hoarfrost", "rime". The first letter "h" and the phoneme it represented are lost in almost all the modern Germanic languages. If the Riphean Mountains are a sort of "frosty mountains", (00:10:49) what if the part "σποῦ" is just a cognate of the English "spur", as in "rocky spur"? Well, "spur" is not the same as "mountain". But if the name "Arimaspoi" is about people, not mountains, in theory they could have been given a name of a sharp object like "spur". - (00:11:07) This is what we saw about the names "Ἀγάθυρσος" ("Hagaþyrs" / "Hagaþurs" - "Hawthorn") and "Ἰδάνθυρσος" ("Viðanþyrs" / "Viðanþurs" - "Woodenthorn"). - (00:11:19) But what bothers me is whether the Cimmerian cognate of this word had such a meaning in those times. So, let's not completely reject it but think of another option. Is there a better way to explain the name? Why are these mountains called "Riphean"? (00:11:36) "Riphean" doesn't mean "Cold" nor "Frosty". It's related to the Ancient Greek noun "ῥιπή". It means "swing or force with which anything is thrown"; (when said of wind) "sweep", "rush" (this wind in our case is Βορέας); "quivering", "twinkling light" (do these two explain why they were one-eyed?..). (00:11:58) The English word that can be associated with the noun "ῥιπή" is the noun "spew" ("material that has been ejected in a stream, or the act of spewing"), (00:12:09) which we can replace with the noun "spit" ("an instance of spitting; specifically, a light fall of rain or snow"). (00:12:17) Their cognates include the Dutch verbs "spuwen" and "spouwen". The Arimaspoi dwelt near the Riphean Mountains because the Ripheans had thrown them out, spat, spewed them, ejected them in a stream or several streams of the North Wind. The name "Arimaspoi" can be translated as "Frostspits", "Frostspews"; "Frostvomits" etc. In the singular, the name of one Arimaspian may have been pronounced like /ˈ(x)riːməspəʊ/ ("(H)rimaspow" / "-ew" / "(H)rimespow" / "-ew"), with or without the first phoneme. What this interpretation doesn't answer is how being a Frostspit became associated with being one-eyed, or vice versa (in the opposite order).

Not from the linguistic perspective, we may try to answer another question, "Why are they one-eyed?" Who made them such? (00:13:10) One of the important discoveries we've made in the previous video (Video No.4) is the decipherment of the term "griffin". I've said that the Ancient Greek "γρύψ" initially or originally comes from the Egyptian phrase "ḥr wps". It means "incinerating falcon", which has enabled us to think of the griffins as phoenixes. Referring to Herodotus and Aristeas of Proconnesus, Pliny the Elder describes a constant fighting between the Arimaspoi and the griffins for the gold in the mines guarded by the last. The "remarkable covetousness", as Pliny says, with which they took the gold from each other, along with the connection I drew between the griffins and the Colchis dragon and the one we know about between the Arimaspoi and the Ripheans, made me imagine a picture where the griffins are attached to Taman' (the Taman' Peninsula) and the Arimaspoi to the Donets Ridge. But beyond the idea that they were just greedy and stole the gold from each other but which was stored in one of the two locations depending on who stole from whom at the moment, nothing cleverer crossed my mind. But then I realised that not thinking about geographical connections, this fighting depicts the occurrence (or occurrences) we all know - the alternation of day and night (... and perhaps the change of seasons). The phoenix, the flying bird of fire, is the sun. When the griffins steal the gold, there starts the day. When it's the Arimaspoi who steal the gold, there starts the night. The side possessing the gold defines what the time is now. (00:14:58) In Greco-Roman and Celtic cultures, Apollo is known as the god of the sun, healing (especially of the eyes), and/or prophecy. It turned out that not only in those. I previously showed that the same applies to Scythian culture (which is a Slavic culture): the Slavic name of the Scythian god "Γοιτόσυρος", "Гойтозир", literally means "eyesight healer" - no wonder why Herodotus connects him to Apollo. The fact that we cannot stare at the sun long enough and doing this will lead to a loss of sight, at least partial, explains not only the connection between the sun and the eyesight healing but also may(!) explain why the Arimaspoi lost one of their eyes (notwithstanding that they or cyclopes are usually portrayed with one eye in the middle of their faces or foreheads). The Arimaspoi's second eye had been pecked out by the phoenixes. (00:16:01) An image with a similar plot can be found on an ancient Greek Attic jug called "oenochoe" dating back to 430-420 BCE. On this jug - on this oenochoe - in this image, some bird is pecking some man's head or forehead. It doesn't seem possible to say whether the author had the intention to highlight the fact of attacking their forehead rather than their head in general. If one decided to portray a bird's attack against a man putting emphasis on clearly showing that the attack has just happened or is happening right now, one would end up with a picture like this - this is a most expected scenario since birds fly above us, not under. But if we imagine the portrayed fighting lasting over a long period of time, one of the man's eyes injured at some point is a possible aftermath of this struggle. And now, who are the characters in this image? The man depicted is not an Arimaspian, and the bird is not a griffin. The two sides illustrated are a crane and a Pygmy. In Greek mythology, the Pygmies were a tribe of short or diminutive people. What enables us to connect them to the Arimaspoi is the mines of gold. Digging out deep underground is easier for those who can squeeze through narrow tunnels. The dwarfs are small for the same reason. They are associated with gold and live inside mountains or caves because their size helps them in mining. The same is applicable to the Arimaspoi and/or the Pygmies. The Pygmies are small, the Arimaspoi have their mines of gold and live near the Riphean Mountains tightly associated with them. Both these groups fight with some birds - because an opposite of being small or short is being a giant or being able to fly. The time when we usually observe birds flying is the daylight. And where? In the skies against the sun. Because they do fly and we do not. (00:18:16) A reflection of the idea that the Arimaspoi and the griffins represent the opposite parts of the day or opposite seasons can be found in the Iliad of Ὅμηρος, but in a passage mentioning not them but the Pygmies and the cranes. In the translation by Augustus Taber Murray, it reads as follows:

"Now when they were marshalled, the several companies with their captains, the Trojans came on with clamour and with a cry like birds, even as the clamour of cranes ariseth before the face of heaven, when they flee from wintry storms and measureless rain, and with clamour fly toward the streams of Ocean, bearing slaughter and death to Pigmy men, and in the early dawn they offer evil battle."

But why do the Arimaspoi have one eye as Frostspits? - not as Pygmies, dwarfs, or themselves. As Pygmies, they have one eye because they lost the second fighting with the cranes. As dwarfs, only with one eye is it possible to see bits of gold through a small hole behind a wall of rock. As themselves, the Arimaspoi have one eye because we see less in their darkness than in the daylight managed by the blinding phoenixes no one can stare at with two eyes fully open, only with half open or one fully at most. The Frostspits were ejected in streams of the North Wind from the Ripheans as mucus is ejected when we sneeze or blow our nose. In this story and in the legend about the Arimaspoi, a nose and its mucus are represented by the Riphean Mountains and the snow around, snowflakes of which are of the same diminutive size as pieces of mucus, which also appears when we become ill after severe frosts or heavy rains. We blow our nose nostril by nostril. When we are clearing one of them, we quite often close one of the eyes.

Since its emergence as a Germanic term, "Arimaspoi" probably was never reinterpreted into "Drimazby" by any Slavic speakers.

(00:20:34) "Βοράδοι" is also an example of where I overcomplicated things. For those who don't remember, "Βοράδοι" is the name (or one of the two) for the Cimmerians used by Γρηγόριος ὁ Θαυματουργός (Gregory Thaumaturgus) in his "Ἐπιστολὴ κανονική" ("Epistola Canonica"). (00:20:50) Ibn Rustah called them the Burtas ... Well, in fact, in the Arabic text provided by Даниил Авраамович Хвольсон (דניאל אברמוביץ' חבולסון / Daniel Abramovich Chwolson) they are called "B-r-das" ("برداس"). (00:21:01) The spelling "Burtas" ("بُرْطاس") is present in the Arabic text of "Routes of the Realms" by Abu al-Istakhri provided by Michael Jan de Goeje. For this reason, we will be sometimes referring to them as the Burdas. (00:21:15) Initially I thought that the appellation "Βοράδοι" should be interpreted in the religious context as the reconstructed North Germanic "*vörðaðr" ("respected"). This interpretation raised an important question, "What should the name of the Goths mentioned along with them in the same sentence mean?" Though I suggested two options for the name "Goth", the Slavic one - which was also interpreted in the religious context - doesn't seem to be valid, whereas the Germanic one (00:21:46) agrees with a passage in "Χρονογραφία" by Θεοφάνης Ὁμολογητής (Theophanes the Confessor) about their name. Theophanes the Confessor, referring to Τραϊανός Πατρίκιος (Trajan the Patrician), writes that the Scythians were called Goths in the local language. Some people wrongly think that this description is automatically an argument for the Goths being also Slavic speakers: if the Scythians are Slavic speakers (which is true), then the Goths as well. In fact, the passage reads that some(!) people who were believed to be Scythians by some other(!) people were called Goths in the local language belonging to some living in this area. But it's still possible to draw some inferences. If "Scythian" and "Goth" have something in common along some axis of similarity, this axis can be semantics. At the moment, we think that the term "Scythian" is Slavic and relates to cattle. Since it's also possible to draw the same link from cattle to the term "Goth", the last being Germanic is quite likely. But the same link also connects cattle to the Cimmerians. That's why it's not clear from this passage whether it was indeed the Scythians who were called Goths or not. What can(!) be said with more or less high confidence is that the local language mentioned was Germanic, Cimmerian-related. And if "Goth" doesn't mean "priest" (this idea was doubtful to me from the very beginning), then what non-religious alternatives can we consider for the term "Βοράδοι", assuming that it may be unrelated to the term "Βορανοὶ" used by Ζώσιμος (Zosimus)?

(00:23:27) Without identifying separate morphemes in this word, as a candidate, we may consider the Old English noun "werod" /ˈwe.rod/ - "troop", "company", "army". This is only possible if in the Cimmerian language or languages there was such a word and it was pronounced like /wəˈrɒd/. Unfortunately, this is what we can doubt. The version implies that even if the original name did or was slightly changed to "Burtas" (probably after "Burdas") with or without the original meaning kept, the "new" appellation "Burtas" for this people still contained some association of them with the term "army" by the times of Abu al-Istakhri: this association was not necessarily known to many, but it existed or remained discoverable by others with relevant knowledge. Otherwise, it would have been possibly replaced by a totally different one. Another problem is the vowel between the "w" and the "r" because we would probably expect that it should be closer to /o/ or /u/. The last point is debatable though, because the Bulgars that dwelt in the Caucasus mentioned by Ibn Rustah and apparently by Abu al-Istakhri have turned out to be the Balkars (or the Balkars and some other people in the North Caucasus) - the vowel /a/ has also to be considered. On the other hand, if the initial point about the vowels /o/ and /u/ is valid, it's not that obvious if we don't consider other versions, so let's do this.

(00:25:05) To some of you, the name "Βοράδοι" might look like the English word "forehead" with some slight change of the last vowel, which may be acceptable to not immediately reject the idea. But then the problem (which, by the way, the first version also has) is how to interpret "Burdas" / "Burtas" along with "Βοράδοι". And what does "forehead" mean, anyway? Something connected with horns and cattle? This association is too far from obvious for us, and thus would be unlikely to be invented by the Cimmerians or those who knew anything of them, and thus cannot be considered. Obviously, the word "forward" can be rejected too.

(00:25:49) If for a while we accept the idea that the Burdas / Burtas were actually the Bardas / Bartas, we could take into account such words as the English "barth" ("a place of shelter for cattle") (00:26:04) and the Old Norse "barði" ("ship") or Old English "barþ" ("a light vessel used for sailing or rowing"). But the two questions we would have to answer then are, "How can the first vowel be transformed from /a/ into /o/ or vice versa?" and "How can a place of shelter or a ship be associated with a person's name without modifying those words?".

(00:26:30) I think that "Βοράδοι" is the Old Norse "vǫr" ("landing place, berth (for a boat)") extended with the Old Norse suffix "-aðr" (the counterpart of the English suffix "-ed"). The pieces combined together form the name that in English literally means "berthed". The way how the Modern English word "berthed" is written and pronounced might explain why the Βοράδοι were also known as the Burdas or Burtas. And why they are "berthed" is because they dwelt near the coast of the Black Sea and/or the Sea of Azov, or simply - the Khazar Sea.

(00:27:10) The analysis of the name "Βοράδοι" is also interesting in the context of its possible connection to the name of one Scythian king - "Bartatua" ... However, this is rather unlikely ... because in Ancient Greek it's spelt "Προτοθύης", as Herodotus's account suggests. The form "Bartatua" comes from a source written in the Akkadian language, but because of limitations the language itself (and our understanding of it) imposes, the Greek spelling has to be considered first. (00:27:43) Herodotus introduces Προτοθύης as a parent of a Scythian king but not as a Scythian themself. If he was indeed a Scythian and his name is indeed Slavic, the only way to interpret it I currently see is as the Ukrainian masculine adjective "протятий" ("slotted", "slit", "notched", "grooved"). What makes me doubt this is his son "Μαδύης". (00:28:07) One of the best matches for his name is the English adjective "muddy" spelt with a "u". What is good about this version is that such a name (or nickname) may be not just borne by a person but may also link them to a geographical region - the pattern we already saw in such Cimmerian names as "Ἰδάνθυρσος" and "Arimaspoi". The Cimmerian, not Scythian, Muddy was possibly born or lived in Crimea not too far from the Syvash lagoons situated in or next to the Sea of Azov. The Cimmerian was known under this name because his native land was associated with the putrid odour of the Syvash, that's why it's also called the Putrid or Rotten Sea. (00:28:55) Another possible explanation why the son is referred to as Μαδύης in Herodotus's account is because this word is not an appellation at all but a phrase cognate with the English "my dear". (00:29:08) The adjective "dear" is reconstructed from the Proto-West-Germanic "*diurī", but "my" ... from "*mīn" - so this reconstruction may also be wrong; otherwise, all or some of the West Germanic languages might have already diverged by those days. (00:29:24) If among the two proposed versions it's the first one that is right (and even if it's not), the emergence of the father's name or nickname could have also been caused by his close relation to some region. (00:29:38) From this standpoint, the scenarios where its second part is related to a cognate of the Old English "tōþ" and Middle English "toþ" / "tothe" (Modern English "tooth") look quite promising. But when it comes to the first part, which option to choose among several ones, assuming one of them is correct, is where things become a bit more complicated. (00:30:02) These options are cognates of the following Germanic words: Old High German "brōt" (means "bread"), (00:30:09) "brot" and/or "brott" with a double "t" in North Germanic languages (mean or means "breaking", "break", "breach", "fraction", "breaker", and/or "quarry", derive or derives from the Old Norse "brot" - "broken piece", "fragment"), (00:30:27) Middle English "bor" ("wild or uncastrated pig", "boar"). Though it's possible that someone could be nicknamed "Bread Tooth", this option is hard to justify either from the geographical perspective or from the perspective of "Προτοθύης" being somehow connected to "Μαδύης". Moreover, our observations so far suggest that Cimmerian is lexically closer to English and the Scandinavian languages, and perhaps Dutch, but not German. Such nicknames as "Breaking / Broken Tooth" and "Boar Tooth" are also possible, but which one is more likely? One may think that if the second part is English, then the first part must be English too. Unfortunately, it doesn't work if we recall the case of the Cimmerian name for the Amazons or one of their member, "Bowyer-Patte" ("Archer-Breast"). The nickname "Breaking Tooth", "Broken Tooth", "Breaker Tooth", or "Quarry Tooth" suggests that the native land for Προτοθύης was some rocks. An example of such rocks is the Crimean Mountains. But "Boar Tooth" (it's possible that the two letters or two phonemes in "Προτοθύης" were swapped) suggests what specific thing may be common in the names of the father and the son. - Dirt: mud is it, and boars like it - they wallow in mud. The second option seems to provide a stronger connection between "Προτοθύης" and "Μαδύης", not only semantically but also because in this case, the father's native land would be probably the same as the son's, near the Syvash. The presence of the letter "υ" in "Προτοθύης" and the vowel /u/ in "Bartatua" probably means that the father's name, like the son's, is also an adjective ending with a counterpart of the English suffix "-y". He was called either "Brottoþy" or "Bortoþy". If "Προτοθύης" and "Μαδύης" are not semantically connected, then the better match will be the name resembling "Brottoþy" ("Brokentoothy", "Quarrytoothy"). If they are, the right name will probably resemble "Bortoþy" (meaning "Boartoothy", "having prominent tusks of the boar", possibly also describing this person as eating a lot and being fat). Bartatua is indeed mentioned by Esarhaddon as a Scythian king. In that way that it's hard to call him a Cimmerian. But it may also mean that either Bartatua managed to deceive the Assyrian ruler into believing he is a Scythian king or, as a king for the Cimmerians, he was also a king of the Scythians and represented both the nations jointly referred to as Scythians at that time.

I wanted to provide the analysis of the name "Προτοθύης" / "Bartatua" before proceeding to "Teušpa" to demonstrate what valid transformations may separate the Akkadian spelling from the original word or its best representation. In this pair, for instance, "Προ-" is spelt as "Bar-" and "-το-" as "-ta-". This thing is important to notice because non-Akkadian spellings are not always available to us. (00:33:44) "Teušpa" is such a case. I already rejected my previous decipherment for it "teuchat". To approach this problem, a thing I tried to check was whether the name can be compared to a modern English or Scandinavian surname at least in structure. Considering the possibility that "Teušpa" can be in fact "Teušḫad", "Teušḫat", or "Teušḫaṭ", the list of the surnames contained the following ones: Allsopp; Appleby, Colby, Darby, Gadsby, Kirby, Rigby, Selby, Thursby / Thorsby; Endicott, Honeycutt, Prescott; Mottershead, Whitehead; Southgate; Wilbur. How are they interpreted? The surname Allsopp where the second part comes from the Old English "hop" for "valley" means "Ælli's valley". The second part "-by" in the respective surnames is derived from the Old Norse "býr" meaning "farm" or "settlement". The termination "-cott" or "-cutt" is a contraction of "cottage". The termination "-head" is a contraction of "headland". "-gate" in "Southgate" means "gate" in some cases and originates from the Old Norse "gata" for "street" in others. The surnames I started with, though describe a territory, do not or cannot describe personality nor the people bearing them as living creatures. "Wilbur" is an exception, it simply means "wild boar". That's why generally, the Anglo-Scandinavian surnames should not be even considered. (00:35:24) However, if the second part of the name "Teušpa" indeed means "boar", the only option that in this case remains available for the replacement of the first part I, by now, can find is the Old English "þyrs" or the Old Norse "þurs" - not as "thorn" as before, but as "demon", "creature of evil", "monster", "giant". At first glance, "Teušpa" as "Boar Demon" (or "Demonboar"), or "Boar Monster" ("Monsterboar"), doesn't seem to be invalid or unnatural. But is it correct? "þyrs" / "þurs" could have been read "þyrsh" / "þursh" - as in the Norwegian "spørsmål" ("question"), Norwegian "kurs" ("course"), Swedish "mars" ("March"), Swedish "korsning" ("crossing", "junction") - that's not a problem. The question is, which I cannot answer right now, "Does the original name have the two approximants /ɹ/: in the place of the "u" and at the very end in "Teušpa"?" Trying to find a pair where the first word does not have this approximant, (00:36:31) I had to consider the German vocabulary as well. The combination I found worth paying attention to was the German verb "täuschen" ("to deceive") and the German suffix "-bar" ("-able"), assuming the whole name was pronounced like /ˈteʊʃbaɹ/, for the way the first word is spelt. The existence of at least one person bearing a nickname meaning "able to deceive" (that is, "deceiver") in that distant past is not impossible - in modern language we call such people "politicians" ... (You can regard it as a joke and not a joke.) If the German lexicon still cannot be taken into account, (00:37:09) the pair with the first word without the approximant /ɹ/ could be the Scottish adjective "teugh" /tjʌx/, /tjux(ʍ)/, /tjɔx/ (the same as the English "tough"), and the second the English / Scottish noun "spur" ("small spike or spiked wheel attached to a horse-rider's heel"). Of course, this scenario is only possible if the repronunciation of the whole phrase in the form of /ˈtəʊʃpɜː(ɹ)/ is as valid a transformation as in the previous case. The phoneme /ʃ/ may(!) be present in the original name. If it's the first phoneme in the second word and comes before /p/, a justification will be the reference to German phonetics - this is not about the German lexicon but about the features various Germanic languages have in total. "Tough Spur" is also not impossible as a nickname for a person, not completely, but what kind of personality it may depict is what I currently cannot clearly imagine.

These three options we just discussed imply that "Teušpa", within the framework of the Akkadian language, is the best representation of the original name. If, instead, the best one is closer to the form "Teušḫat" than to all other readings, then the only possible valid composition matching it I see is the pair of the Old English / Old Norse "þyrs" / "þyrsh" / "þurs" / "þursh" as "thorn" and the English "hat". This name would describe this person as the one wearing a thorny hat or the one having thorny hair. This option might be the least controversial compared to the previous but is not the last.

Wiktionary doesn't provide all variants of reading the Akkadian signs. (00:38:57) An extended list of phonetic values per Akkadian sign can be found in the table authored by the Czech Assyriologist Kateřina Šašková. According to this table, the sign "uš" ("𒍑") used in "Teušpa" can also be read as "iš" or "giš". And speaking of the first of them, we know or can find out that English and German have such suffix for adjectives. Considering that the previous sign "te", according to the same table, can be read as "de", "di", "teg", or "ti", in combination they can compose the English-wise word "thickish" or "diggish", transforming "Teušpa" into "Thickish Boar" or "Diggish Boar", with the second option being probably more likely and suggesting that his native land was near the Isthmus of Perekop - which is a potential reason to derive the appellation "Perekop" directly from the Ukrainian or Ukrainian-wise verb "копати" ("to dig") instead of the Crimean Tatar "Or Qapı". The last sign "pa" indeed can be replaced with "ba" - and thus with "bo" ...

The main subject of this video is the names of the Scythian and Cimmerian rulers and their offsprings. (00:40:15) The one not mentioned yet in this but in the previous one (No.4) was "Išpakaia" / "Išpakaya". Briefly, the options I previously suggested was "Милятко" (from Ukrainian "милий" for "beloved", "amiable", "cute"), "Хмілятко" (from "хміль" for "hop", "hops"), "Хмільнятко" (from "хмільний" for "heady", "intoxicating"), implying that the Akkadian signs in "Išpakaia" have to be reread as well. If the name indeed follows such a structure, (00:40:49) the new possible alternatives to add could be "Імлятко" (from Ukrainian "імла" for "brume") or some name ending with "-хатько" (from "хата" for "hut", "small house", "cottage") or "-ходько" (from "ходити" for "to walk"). The cause for the last two comes from the existence of the Ukrainian surnames with the same endings, but as in these two cases the first part of the name is currently impossible to identify, they are rather less likely than the rest. This comparison may make no sense though. It can be explained why all these versions are incorrect. (00:41:28) The name "Išpakaia" in Akkadian is spelt "iš-pa-ka-a-a" ("𒁹𒅖𒉺𒅗𒀀𒀀"). The same termination "a-a" is also present in some Akkadian spellings for the terms related to the noun or adjective "Scythian": "as-gu-za-a-a" ("𒊍𒄖𒍝𒀀𒀀"), "as-ku-za-a-a" ("𒊍𒆪𒍝𒀀𒀀"), "áš-gu-za-a-a" ("𒀾𒄖𒍝𒀀𒀀"), "iš-ku-za-a.a" ("𒅖𒆪𒍝𒀀𒀀"). (00:41:50) The sign "a" ("𒀀"), according to Kateřina Šašková's table, may represent roughly any vowel or represent the phoneme sequence "ia" or "aia" (hence "Išpakaia" / "Išpakaya" and "Iškuzaia" / "Iškuzaya"). But if it's indeed read as /i/ in some cases, it probably may also be pronounced /j/ in others. It might be the case that it's not "a-a" that is read as "aia", it's "a-a-a" that must be interpreted as "aia", especially if this Akkadian sign is a counterpart of the Hebrew "א" ("aleph") and the Arabic "ا" ("alif"). The way how the words "as-gu-za-a-a", "iš-ku-za-a.a", and the rest are written in Akkadian correlates with the way how the name of the Scythians is spelt in Greek - "Σκύθαι" - another possible explanation as to why "Iškuzaia" / "Iškuzaya". (00:42:45) The existence of this correlation prevents us from safely ignoring any sign in the name "Išpakaia" except the last (and except the marker of gender, of course). At the same time, the one before the last suggests that the original name may end with /j/ or /ja/. Since the historical record speaks of "Išpakaia" as a male person and if his name is Slavic (which is what we expect), the termination /ja/ has to be disregarded. If the first sign in the name shall/must be read as "iš" (with "i" that may be epenthetic), considering the last not ignored to stand for /j/, the remaining two (that is, "pa-ka") may compose the sequence "aru-di". "Iš-aru-di-a" corresponds to the Ukrainian "Шарудій" ("Rustler"), the verb "шарудіти" meaning "to rustle". A name meaning "one who rustles", the same way as a name meaning "one who speaks", suggests its bearer is a Slavic speaker. In the previous videos, I've demonstrated that long before the emergence of the ethnonym "Slav" and the appearance of it and similar terms in the historial record, the interpretation of this term, the pattern, the formula, the idea "one who speaks", at least initially, didn't mean "one who speaks the same language". Most likely, this notion meant "one who is a living creature able to speak like a human being", "one who is able to imitate, to mimic surrounding sounds". Among the justifying examples are perhaps the term "Scythian", which may have several meanings, but with one of them probably being "one who chatters"; obviously the name "Targitaos" of a legendary person or god that, according to Herodotus, was believed by the Scythians to exist in some past related to them, which means "one who prattles"; undoubtedly the name of the land, the city of Тьмуторокань (T'mutorokan') possibly meaning "to hiss like a snake"; likely the name of the land of Verzilia mentioned by Theophanes the Confessor the Khazars emerged from according to him, which may derive from the Ukrainian-wise verb "верзти", "to talk nonsense"; likely the term "Bulgarian" related to the Slavic Bulgarians possibly meaning "one who babbles" (spelt with an "a") and "one who bubbles" (spelt with a "u") at the same time; and definitely the Ukrainian toponym "Балаклава" ("Balaklava") meaning "babbling bench" or "babbling port" ("babbling" with an "a"). "Шарудій" would be a new and more obvious example of the "one who speaks" notion expanding this list if strongly proved to be the correct decipherment.

(00:45:42) The two more historical figures I want to discuss in this video are Tugdammî (also known as Dugdammî) (𒁹𒌇𒁮𒈨𒄿) and Sandakšatru (or Sandakuru) (𒁹𒊓𒀭𒁖𒆳𒊒). They are believed to be Cimmerians, but the Neo-Assyrian historical record doesn't provide any such attribution to them. According to the modern translations, the Assyrian ruler Ashurbanipal mentions Tugdammî as a "king of [some] accursed people" or "barbarians" ("NUMUN ḫalgatî" or "zēr ḫalgatî"), "king of [some] barbarian horde", "king of [some] mountain-dwellers" or "mountains", and, most importantly, a "conceited", or "presumptuous", or "arrogant", Gutian; while Sandakšatru as his son. Neither of them is called a Scythian or a Cimmerian, which means that we should not even discuss their names because they are unlikely to be Slavic or Germanic - this is not our subject. The only vague reason to connect them to the Scythians or Cimmerians is the fact that the original Akkadian phrase translated in the text as "king of a barbarian horde" literally means "king of Umman-Manda" or "ERIM-man-da" ("king of the army of Manda"), where "Manda" is understood by some as the "current or future land of Media": Herodotus regarded some part of modern Turkey and past Asia Minor as Media and spoke of the temporary presence and rule of the Scythians and/or Cimmerians in this region. (00:47:17) Some authors do mention some dubious editions of Ashurbanipal's inscriptions where Tugdammî is called not a "king of the mountain-dwellers", but a "king of the Sakai". But if such editions really exist, most likely the initial form was simply corrupted or distorted - the regular Akkadian ethnonym for the Scythians is "Iškuzaia", not "Sakai". But let's assume for a while that, indeed, the names "Tugdammî" and "Sandakšatru" are Scythian and/or Cimmerian. Since scholars have long ago started this game in which they call everyone everywhere on the planet a Scythian or a Cimmerian (because they are everywhere) and every Scythian and every Cimmerian on the planet an Indo-Iranian (fortunately, only on our planet), we also can play this stupid game. Forget that Tugdammî is a Gutian according to Ashurbanipal. Seriously though, let's see what happens once we are considering Slavic and Germanic interpretations for these names because the results are really interesting.

(00:48:22) When I mentioned the option "Імлятко" for "Išpakaia", I have(!) transformed one of the phonetic values of the respective Akkadian sign from "mil-" to "iml-". Such a transformation, generally, can be valid (regardless of whether "Імлятко" is the right answer): when a sonic representation of an Akkadian sign consists of a consonant, a vowel, and a consonant, we are allowed to change the position of the vowel. That's the possible case not only for "Bartatua", but also the possible case for "Tugdammî" (at least if it's indeed Slavic or Germanic, which is what we are trying to figure out). (00:49:01) In the Akkadian spelling, there are not many ways to read this name using the phonetic values from Kateřina Šašková's table. Among the available combinations it enables, so far, I've only managed to find one Slavic reading that looks adequate. I did try to find any Germanic interpretation that would be appropriate, but with no success. My decipherment involves the rearrangement of the phonemes in the sign "dam" ("𒁮") that transforms "Tug-dam-mì-i" into "Tug-adm-mì-i". If "Tug-adm-mì-i" had been a name in Modern Ukrainian, we would pronounce it and write as "Тугодмій", with the "-о-" being an interfix. Whereas in the original name (if it's Slavic), the same interfix was either "-о-" or "-а-". We know at least three Slavic names, two of them being Scythian, where the interfix "-а-" is, seems to be, or might be present, depending on the case: (00:50:01) "Διθαγοια", a name of a Scythian goddess recorded in a Greek inscription from the 2nd century BCE found in Crimea (discussed in the Video No.4), definitely originating from the Ukrainian or Ukrainian-wise phrase "гоїти дітей" ("to heal children"); (00:50:19) "Graucasus", recorded by Pliny the Elder as the Scythian name for the Caucasus Mountains (discussed in the Videos No.1 and No.3), highly likely coming from combining the Ukrainian or Ukrainian-wise words "кравки" ("selvedges") and "сяти" or "сяяти" ("to shine"); and "Черкаси" ("Cherkasy"), the modern name of the respective Ukrainian city, which might be compounded from the Ukrainian or Ukrainian-wise "церкви" ("churches") and "сяти" or "сяяти" ("to shine"). (00:50:50) In the Video No.1, I've tried to justify that this city was probably called "Церкаси" ("Cerkasy"). This form is present not only in Polish translations of "Description of Sarmatian Europe" by Alessandro Guagnini (or Alexander Gwagnin) and later works of other authors, (00:51:09) but also in the work of Stanisław Karnkowski titled "Epistolae illustrium virorum" ("Letters of illustrious men") published in 1578, the same year as the first edition of the "Description of Sarmatian Europe". However, I do not completely reject the point that "Cherkasy" may have a different meaning connected to the demarcation of the city from its neighbouring territories. In this case, it will correlate with the meaning for the term "Ukraine" and possibly "Rus'" - "the land cut off from other lands".

Now, what parts does "Tug-adm-mì-i" consist of (assuming it's Slavic)? (00:51:49) The original name, be it "Тугодмій" or "Тугадмій", embodies the expression "дмити тугу", "to blow sadness/longing", or more accurately - "to blast (out) sadness/longing". When people are in distress, during this difficult period some of them may eat more food than they did. And when people overeat, it may trigger belching and heartburn in them. The name "Тугодмій" or "Тугадмій" depicts its bearer as a dragon belching forth flames. The meaning is not connected with any form of the ability to speak or with generating or imitating sounds, but it's linked with the human throat being an important part of the human speech apparatus. The forms "Тугодмій" and "Тугадмій" are Ukrainian-wise (which is what we expect if it's Slavic), but the original ending still might be /ej/ - because one of the allowable readings of the Akkadian sign transcribed as "mi" is "me". Unfortunately, right now, I cannot establish which ending is impossible from the perspective of the Akkadian language, if establishable at all. If this king was indeed of Scythian or Cimmerian origin, the people living in mountains that in the view of Ashurbanipal were ruled by him are most probably Caucasians (Northwest Caucasians first of all). If so, the native land of Tugdammî might have been located near the Caucasus Mountains on the Taman' Peninsula where, as we remember, dwelt the Colchis dragon.

(00:53:24) Regardless of whether our assumption about the name of Tugdammî being Slavic is correct or not, we don't know whether his son Sandakšatru or Sandakuru (𒁹𒊓𒀭𒁖𒆳𒊒) bore a name in the same language as his father. If Tugdammî was a Scythian, we currently cannot reject the scenario in which he married a Cimmerian wife. This is not the case of the names "Προτοθύης" and "Μαδύης" because it's hardly possible to find an argument justifying the first name (that is, "Προτοθύης") being Slavic. Switching between different readings of the name "Sandakšatru" / "Sandakuru" - assuming it's either Slavic or Germanic - I came to the conclusion that the one that is more likely to be wrong is "Sandakuru" and that "Sandakšatru" is probably the one that is very close to the original. The only action required to eliminate the difference is to transform "Sa-an-dak-šat-ru" into "Sa-an-dak-ašt-ru", just as "Tugdammî" became "Tugadmmî". If this name is Germanic, (00:54:27) I would split it into the following two parts: the first to be related to the Modern English "shand" / "shond" and Middle English "schande" / "schonde" ("shame", "scandal", "disgrace", (00:54:40) "damage", "devastation", etc.), the second to the English "caster". The historical record doesn't speak of Sandakšatru in the way that would enable the reader to immediately regard him as a one "casting shands". (00:54:54) But does of his father Tugdammî - in the passage where Ashurbanipal tells about his "provocative speech" or "provocative mouth" which caused the deities to send fire down from the sky upon him that eventually burned him. (In this account, everything is in place: a fire, a dragon, and the skies that tried to kill him.) On the other hand, a "one who casts shands" is a "one who casts spells" - "spellcaster", "magician", "wizard" - (00:55:25) this reminds of the account by Iordanes about the witches encountered by the Goths among themselves when they entered the land of Scythia. Notwithstanding that in that legend those witches gave rise to the Hunni, not to the Goths, the term "Scandza" (in other words, "Scandinavia") still might be connected to the verbs "shand" and/or "conjure" ("conjuration"), and with both of them being interpretable as "to sing", as the Latin "cantare" and the English "incant" ("incantation").

But if "Sandakšatru" is a Slavic name ... (00:56:01) well, now it's time to discuss two Ukrainian words that I mentioned in the Video No.3: "сандоля" and "сандова". They mean "fishgig in the form of a bident or a trident". One of the reasons why I connected these words to the English "candle" has been that an act of impaling fish through water can be regarded as an act of scorching water surface by fire - both the occurrences of burning and pricking skin are connectable by an associative link. Another reason has been Ukraine's coat of arms the trident on which I compared to a three-headed dragon. The object that can be viewed as such a dragon is a three-light candelabrum with candles in it together representing three tongues of flame - the link between dragon and language. An attempt to impale a fish in water with a trident fishgig is an attempt of a three-headed dragon to catch its prey, like an eagle - though this comparison with the bird actually suggests that the trident form was inspired not by an association of any kind with dragons but by the shape of an eagle's foot. An animal paw, like a human hand, is a sort of signature, stamp, seal. The crests of those Rus' / Ruthenian rulers Ukraine's coat of arms is based on also(!) may have been inspired by birds. But what triggered me to even consider the connection between this type of fishgig and the candle is the name "Sandakšatru" that I previously thought could be an additional justification for it. This happens when you don't know yet that the Cimmerians are Germanics and when you don't know or ignore the fact that Sandakšatru was a son of a Gutian according to Ashurbanipal - that's how my young adulthood can be incompletely described in a few words. But as we age, we must try to be more intelligent - more things start to depend on our decisions. If Tugdammî was indeed a "dragon" and the first part of the name "Sa-an-dak-ašt-ru" is indeed connected to the word "сандоля" or "сандова", (00:58:08) the son's full name or nickname could have been translated into Modern Ukrainian as "гостра сандоля / сандова", "sharp trident fishgig" ("fiery paw" if you like) - "Сандогостр", "Сандогостря", "Сандагостря". However, the idea that "candle" is cognate with "сандоля" and "сандова" in itself also has its downsides. As far as I know, besides Ukrainian, the only Slavic language where a similar word for a fishgig exists is Russian - at the moment, I'm not aware of any data confirming that any word like that exists in Belarusian. Not to mention the fact that the Engish word "candle" comes from Romance languages. Notwithstanding that the Scythian language (and thus Ukrainian) is a coastal language, the chances that "сандоля" and "сандова" are loanwords from other languages are much higher. The Russian scholar in the Republic of Tatarstan Ринат Тагирович Сафаров (Rinat Tagirovich Safarov) thinks that the Russian word "сандоль" for "trident fishgig" originated from a Turkic lexeme that corresponds to the Tatar "салдау", one of the meanings of which, according to him, is "fishgig with two to four prongs", though this is not the one he derives the Russian word from. But the explanation he provides in his work, "On the etymology of the Tatar saldau, the Russian sandol'" (in the original Russian - "К этимологии татарского салдау, русского сандоль"), is overcomplicated - that's why it has not convinced me. (00:59:43) Also, in my view, it's still easier to derive the Ukrainian "сандоля" from the Ancient Greek "σάνδαλον" or the Greek "σανδάλι" than the Russian "сандоль" from the Tatar "салдау" (at least from the phonetic perspective). One of the meanings of the Ancient Greek "σάνδαλον" (and the Greek "σανδάλι") is ... "sandal" (a type of footwear) (another is about a fish). If the trident fishgig is just an imitation of an eagle's paw (or the paw of another bird), then it becomes possible to explain why the Ukrainian word and the Greek ones have a lot in common - the Ukrainian one might be a loanword from Ancient Greek or Greek. At the same time, the existence of the two forms in the Ukrainian language might be connected to the Ukrainian or Ukrainian-wise noun "ловля" ("hunting") as in "рибна ловля" ("fishing") which caused the emergence of the temporary or imaginary intermediate lexeme "*сандовля" that was split into "сандоля" again and "сандова".

(01:00:47) The previous interpretation of the name "Sandakšatru" is most likely erroneous. But if we are still assuming it's Slavic, it may correspond to the Ukrainian phrase "жовтий коструб" - "yellow hawk", "yellow slovenly person", "yellow person with dishevelled hair", or "person with yellow dishevelled hair". And here is why. "Sa-an-dak-ašt-ru" is spelt with a sign "an" ("𒀭") that besides "an" itself, has the phonetic values "am", "a", "al" (according to Kateřina Šašková's table). It means that the original name in this place may have /on/, /ov/, /ou/, a nasal vowel /ɔ̃/, and so on. At the same time, the sign "sa" ("𒊓") can be also read as "ša". All of this justifies the reading of the name as "Жовтокоструб" / "Жовтокоштруб" (meaning "жовтий коструб"). How to explain it phraseologically? The name doesn't simply portray the person as a hawk and a blond. It may either give an association of him with a dragon or a phoenix - and in this case it matches the name of his father - or simply reflect one fact in nature - that the juvenile Eurasian goshawks have yellow eyes - to describe the bearer of the name as a blond poetically.

You see? I also can label every ancient non-Slavic or non-Germanic speaker I choose as a Slavic or Germanic speaker. But there is a difference between my results regarding the names "Tugdammî" and "Sandakšatru" and those quote unquote "popular" results relating to the Scythian and Cimmerian languages by scholars. While the attempts of the last to shoehorn every Scythian, every Cimmerian, everyone who is not clear who they are into the Indo-Iranian construct have resulted in the creation of a Frankenstein monster, my creations are Wonders of the World. Why? Because my argumentation is much, much stronger - in many cases it just exists - and doesn't have the same level of absurdity as viewing every river with the consonants /d/ and /n/ as an instance of the "Indo-Iranian fantasy". If my critics had carefully read the papers by those fantasisers, they wouldn't have criticised me. But the practice shows that these strange people, when they retell something, do not understand what they retell. If you don't understand what you are retelling, why are you retelling this to other people? This is also true of the modern media, by the way. ...

In this video, I wanted to focus mainly on those figures mentioned in the historical record that can be more or less safely regarded as Scythians or Cimmerians and whose names can be quite safely classified as Slavic or Germanic, and that hadn't been discussed before. The principle here is, what is omitted in one video can be discussed in some of the next. The emphasis is put on the Neo-Assyrian sources because the realness of the Scythian and Cimmerian rulers or commanders mentioned there is not disputable. Nevertheless, there is one more name that we should probably pay attention to in this video. It wasn't borne by a Scythian or a Cimmerian from the perspective of the historical record but may be Slavic. (01:04:09) It's the name of the Getan Burebista. By Strabo in his "Geography", this name is spelt in the forms "Βοιρεβίστας" ("Boerebistas") and "Βυρεβίστας" ("Byrebistas"). The reason why Strabo uses the first spelling in some of his passages seems to be clear. (01:04:26) It reflects the fact or belief that Burebista was the one who "caused the complete disappearance of the Boii", as Strabo describes him, and the instances of this spelling appear around this description. "Βοιρεβίστας" is a compound of the appellation "Boii", the Latin-wise verb "rebello" ("I renew war", "I wage war again", "I revolt"), and the Latin-wise agentive suffix "-ista". In the times of Burebista or later, and before Strabo wrote about this, there were some Romance speakers who called this ruler this form of the name, which means that these Romance speakers either fully invented this name (I doubt it's invented by Strabo), or reinterpreted a non-Romance one into their language or languages. (01:05:14) The presence of the two spellings in the same source suggests the last scenario. And thus, the second spelling, "Βυρεβίστας", is more likely to be closest among the two to the original. That's not only inferable from the previous statement but justifiable in several ways. (01:05:31) First, viewing the name as a Slavic one, its decipherment reinforces the connection between the Getae and the river on either or both the sides of which they dwelt - Danube. In Modern Ukrainian, the Getan ruler's name would be pronounced "Буревіст", "Буревістя", "Буревіща", combined from the Ukrainian-wise noun "буря" ("storm") and the Ukrainian-wise verb "віщувати" ("to foretell", "to prophesy") - combined naturally from the Ukrainian perspective, by the way: with an "-е-" as an interfix. What storms or what kinds of storm was this ruler supposed to predict? Probably those that changed the direction of the course of the river Danube and thus posed a danger to navigation. That's why the Scythian or Scythian-wise name of this river is "Ἴστρος" and its Slavic name used by the Khazar Khagan (or Kovhan) Joseph in his response to Hasdai ibn Shaprut is "Дуня" or "Дуна" ("דונא"). These appellations reflect the dependence of the river's flow on winds, the first one highlighting this reflection much stronger. While "Дуня" simply comes from the Ukrainian-wise verb "дути" ("to blow"), "Ἴστρος" is compounded from the Ukrainian-wise verb "вити", "to howl", and the Slavic term "стрий" - which might have been a loanword - that in those times meant "wind". The last lexeme with such a meaning is preserved in the name of the Slavic god "Стрибог" / "Stryboh" ("Stribog"), god of wind. (01:07:01) Strabo's account, though doesn't portray Burebista as a "weather forecaster", speaks of similar abilities possessed by his coadjutor Δεκαίνεος (Decaeneus), "a wizard, a man who not only had wandered through Egypt, but also had thoroughly learned certain prognostics through which he would pretend to tell the divine will". Accepting Strabo's account, as Δεκαίνεος had helped Burebista "secure the complete obedience" of the Getae, since then, Burebista started to be viewed by some Slavic speakers as a ruler with "prophetic skills", which in fact belonged to the person behind the scenes, Δεκαίνεος. (01:07:42) The Slavic interpretation of the name is also corroborated by its spelling used by Iordanes in his "Getica": "Buruista", which is the same as "Burvista". Despite the fact that the "Getica" was written several centuries later, the work, oddly, seems to confirm that the Ancient Greek "β" in the times of Strabo was already used for transcribing the original sound /v/ at least in foreign names.

Because we've mentioned the Getae, now it's a good moment to return back to their ethnonym itself. In the Video No.3, I've suggested that their appellation should be interpreted as "dogs", "wolves", or "teeth". What also confirms this point, in addition to my previous explanation, is the appellation of another tribe or people - "Daci" (known as "Dacians"), but not in the way you might think. (01:08:36) The thing is that the Getae and the Daci are not clearly distinguishable, either by the historical record, or in the view of scholars who interpret it. This blurriness, on the one hand, may be caused by the lack of sufficient information about them. From this perspective, Strabo's account about the sameness of their languages is irrelevant. (01:08:58) On the other, the way Strabo explains the term "Daci" definitely deserves our attention because what their name may mean goes beyond these two groups. Here is what he writes:

"But there is also another division of the country which has endured from early times, for some of the people are called Daci, whereas others are called Getae — Getae, those who incline towards the Pontus and the east, and Daci, those who incline in the opposite direction towards Germany and the sources of the Ister. The Daci, I think, were called [Δάοι] in early times; whence the slave names "Geta" and ["Δάος"] which prevailed among the Attic people; for this is more probable than that ["Δάος"] is from those Scythians who are called ["Δάαι," / "Δᾶαι,"] for they live far away in the neighbourhood of Hyrcania, and it is not reasonable to suppose that slaves were brought into Attica from there; for the Attic people were wont either to call their slaves by the same names as those of the nations from which they were brought (as "Lydus" or "Syrus"), or addressed them by names that were prevalent in their countries (as "Manes" or else "Midas" for the Phrygian, or "Tibius" for the Paphlagonian)."

According to Strabo, the "Δάαι" / "Δᾶαι" (the so-called Aparnian Δάαι / Δᾶαι) were a tribe or people dwelling east of the Caspian Sea. Such a location makes the connection between their name and the term "Daci" highly unlikely. Strabo is also sceptical about this. If "Daci" (or "Δάκοι") and "Δάοι" come from one and the same language, this language could be one of the Slavic. (01:10:48) Both the appellations, "Δάκοι" and "Δάοι", may be related to the Ukrainian verb "дзявкати" - "to bark", "to yaff", "to yap" - and the respective Ukrainian interjection "дзяв" imitating a yapping sound. When it comes to naming a people, this affix "-к-", which is present in the verb "дзявкати", becomes optional. Whether a people is called "Дзявки" (which is "Daci") or "Дзяви" (which is "Daï") doesn't matter. Either name for this people will mean the same, "yappers". (The same logic applies to naming a person.) Though I previously suggested that the term "Getae" means either "dogs", or "wolves", or "teeth" - the right option is somehow connected to dogs rather than wolves; because the Ukrainian term that most likely incorporates a lexeme corresponding to the one the name "Getae" is built on, "гечі-печі", is translated into Latin as "Rosa canina" and into Engish as "dog rose". And this brave new interpretation of the term "Daci" reinforces this assumption. If "Daci" is not a Slavic name but, say, a Germanic one - recalling that the Daci "inclined towards Germany and the sources of the Ister" - it's still may be related to dogs, but more directly. In this case, "Daci" would be a cognate of the English word "dog". To notice this connection, just think about how the last word is pronounced by the native English speakers. Some scholars think that the name "Daci" should be interpreted as "wolves" instead of "dogs" referring to the Phrygian language (previously spoken in Anatolia, now extinct) and Indo-Iranian languages. Although these languages cannot be used to interpret the term "Daci" (as these scholars do), their use also reinforces the idea about "Getae" meaning something about dogs or wolves. Moreover, one of the reasons why I think that "Daci" means "yappers" or "dogs" and not "wolves" is the fact that by the Persians, the Scythians were reportedly called "dogs" as well: with the use of Latin endings, "Sacae" in Old Persian and "Sagae" in Middle Persian. (It doesn't mean that the Scythians are identical to the tribe or people of Sacae.) I'm not implying that either the Getae or the Daci were Slavic speakers, I'm not saying that. But what I probably can say is that the derivation of the Ukrainian Cossacks not only from the Khazars but also from the Getae in Pylyp Orlyk's Ukrainian Constitution doesn't seem to be simply an invention for political purposes (if it's an invention at all). I think that the authors of this whole narrative sincerely believed that. How much data they had to make this claim is yet another matter. The term and title "гетьман" in the Ukrainian language is probably a loanword from a Germanic language but not necessarily German. However, it's also possible that Ukrainian speakers reinterpreted it under the influence of their belief that the term "гет" for "Getan" and the Germanic original of the term "гетьман" for "hetman" are somehow connected, which might be why the last one became pronounced as it is pronounced, especially if the Germanic original is close to the Ukrainian final form. Actually, this title in itself might have become the reason why the Getae are even mentioned in Pylyp Orlyk's Constitution. Another word in the Ukrainian language that is believed to come from German is "дах" ("roof"). But one Slavic inscription left by the Khazars or the Alans we will be analysing in another video suggests that the first borrowing of this term occurred approximately not later than the 8th-9th century CE.

What's next? The next video is probably going to be devoted to my decipherment of the Buyla inscription. In the Video No.3, I've stated that this inscription is written in a Slavic language and have promised to show my analysis on it. I've decided to release a video on this matter before we continue with the Khazar topic. There are several reasons for that. Though the dialect the inscription is written in might be now extinct (along with its language or without), it may shed light on some of the evolutionary processes that occurred in languages as they developed, especially since we already started to talk about some of them in the previous video (Video No.4). It's not the only mediaeval inscription I've managed to decipher, but as it's written in Greek letters, it makes sense to present my results on this one earlier than the decipherments of the rest. Because it's a simpler and faster way to draw the attention of a bigger number of scholars, and of different kinds, to my work. I've not started my channel to have millions of subscribers to then tell drivel to these millions. (I do say stupid things sometimes, but I try to avoid this and correct my mistakes.) I've started my channel to provide people with a new knowledge for this knowledge to be incorporated into modern science and correct its current state. Though I'm criticising scholars in my videos, it doesn't mean they are not welcome here. They are(!) welcome. And I invite them for watching and discussing. If you know scholars, scientists, colleagues of yours, historians, linguists, anyone from relevant fields who are open to new views on the topics I deal with and especially those who are interested in or looking for skilled people, please acquaint them with my activity, don't hesitate to do this. If you are unsure, just tell them, "This guy is going to provide decipherments of the Buyla inscription and other inscriptions in his next videos, and this is what he has already publicly done so far." Without their awareness, involvement, and commentary, my work may mean much less. Regardless of whether you have such people in your circle or not, if you think about how you can help me in spreading my knowledge, experience, and perhaps expertise, you always have an option to share my content on the internet. But if possible, please share not only my videos (which are available not only on YouTube), but please also share the articles in my blog, it may help them be indexed - if they are indexed, people will be able to google them. And if you fit into the category of people who believe that the authors of intellectual works like mine (... or only the authors like me) must be rewarded financially, you may consider supporting me on Buy Me a Coffee, either on a regular basis (if you really want this), or with one-time payments. But please remember that this is only for those who simply want to thank me in the form of money. You will not get an earlier access to my videos if you pay and will not lose any access if you don't. My content is free of charge and public for everyone. All of this is not going to change in the near future.

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Links:

The History of Herodotus. G. C. Macaulay, Trans. (1890) - Books 1, 4

Wiki Articles (as of April 24th 2025):

- Wikipedia: Scots_language, Apollo, Pygmy_(Greek_mythology) (the "Pygmy fighting a crane" image by Marie-Lan Nguyen, User:Jastrow on Wikimedia, available under the CC BY 2.5 license), Coat_of_arms_of_Ukraine, Stribog