The attested forms of the theonym are traditionally derived from Proto-Germanic *Wōđanaz[2] (in Old Norse word-initial *w- was dropped before rounded vowels and so the name became Óðinn). Adam von Bremen etymologizes the god worshipped by the 11th-century Scandinavian pagans as "Wodan id est furor" ("Wodan, which means 'fury'"). An obsolete alternative etymology, which has been adhered to by many early writers including Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa in his Libri tres de occulta philosophia, is to give it the same root as the word god itself, from its Proto-Germanic form *ǥuđ-. This is not tenable today according to most modern academics, except for the Lombardic name Godan, which may go back to *ǥuđanaz (see also goði, gaut, god).
It should be noted at this point that Old Norse had two different words spelled óðr, one an adjective and the other a noun. The adjective means "mad, frantic, furious, violent",[3] and is cognate with Old English wōd.[4] The noun means "mind, wit, soul, sense" and "song, poetry",[5] and is cognate with Old English wōþ. In compounds, óð- means "fiercely energetic" (e.g. óð-málugr "speaking violently, excited").
Both Old Norse words are from Proto-Germanic *wōþuz[6], continuing Pre-Germanic *wātus.[7] Two extra-Germanic cognates are the Proto-Celtic *wātus "mantic poetry" (continued in Irish fáith "poet" and Welsh gwawd "praise-poetry") and the Latin vātes "prophet, seer" (a possible loan from Proto-Celtic *wātis, Gaulish ουατεις). A possible, but uncertain, cognate is Sanskrit api-vat- "to excite, awaken" (RV 1.128.2). The Proto-Indo-European meaning of the root is therefore reconstructed as relating to spiritual excitation. The Old Norse semantic split is reflected in Adam von Bremen's testimony of the synchronic understanding of the name as "fury", rather than "poetry" or similar.
Meid[8] suggested Proto-Germanic *-na- as a suffix expressing lordship ("Herrschersuffix"), in view of words such as Odin's name Herjann "lord of armies", drótinn "lord of men", and þjóðann "lord of the nation", which would result in a direct translation of "lord of spiritual energy", "lord of poetry" or similar. It is sufficient, however, and more common, to assume a more general meaning of pertinence or possession for the suffix, inherited from PIE *-no-, to arrive at roughly the same meaning.
Rübekeil (2003:29)[9] draws attention to the suffix variants *-ina- (in Óðinn) vs. *-ana- (in Woden, Wotan). This variation, if considered at all, was dismissed as "suffix ablaut" by earlier scholars. There are, however, indications from outside Old Norse of a suffix *-ina-: English Wednesday (rather than *Wodnesday) via umlaut goes back to *wōđina-. Rübekeil concludes that the original Proto-Germanic form of the name was *Wōđinaz, yielding Old Norse Óðinn and unattested Anglo-Saxon *Wēden, and that the attested West Germanic forms are early medieval "clerical" folk etymologies, formed under the impression of synchronic association with terms for "fury".
The pre-Proto-Germanic form of the name would then be *Wātinos. Rübekeil suggests that this is a loan from Proto-Celtic into pre-Proto-Germanic, referring to the god of the *wātis, the Celtic priests of mantic prophecy, so that the original meaning of the name would be "he [the god/lord] of the Vates" (p. 33), which he tentatively identifies with Lugus (p. 40).
W. S. W. Anson's 1880 Asgard and the Gods[unreliable source?] surmises that "Wuotan" was originally a fully abstract cosmic force, whose name meant not "fury" originally but etymologically, quite literally, meant "what was pervasive" with the second element, "-an", issuing a meaning that renders it to be construed as signifying a single pervasive principle. According to Anson, wuot- meant " …to force one's way through anything, to conquer all opposition…" and Wuotan solidifying such as "…the all-penetrating, all-conquering Spirit of Nature…". The name Wuotan being related to, in their interpretation "(t)he modern German water, and the English wade". Anson consideres those two words to be more "restricted in meaning" than was wuot itself. The less restricted implications so grew as the attribute inherent in the meaning of the name for the god. The suffix "-an" personifying, but not then anthropomorphizing, the prefix element as the absolute definitive instance, and font-head, of anything thus resembling the meaning that such said prefix element 'wuot-' would have had in nature, toward one unique divine origination of that as a general qualification.[1]
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