German GEDmatch results

[rothaer]

And why would the Justinianic plague favour Slavs? Were Slavs immune to it?

I'm not sure, but it quite obviously did.

Proto Slavs make the impression of having a partly immunity. The return of plague at abt. 1350 and the affected areas (green depicts unaffected areas) suggests to me that it's genetical as now the partly Slavic derived Eastern Germans are hardly hit. It may be by chance but to me it seems strinking that now areas that were populated with people that had much of the proto Slavic genetics were spared.

Speculation: Slavs may have been more exposed to this disease that is considered coming from East Asia compared to Germanics that lived more in the west. East Germanics may have been something like new immigrants in eastern Germania magna and been "too east" compared to their origin and thus particularly badly protected.

[rothaer]

I'm not sure if this proves anything about their ethnic origin, though. James is a Hebrew-origin name, but King James wasn't of Hebrew origin. Ditto with King George and being Greek, or Paul von Hindenburg not being of Latin descent just because his given name is of Latin origin.

Okay, I now found the text. It was about someone's suggestion that Vandals were Slavic. There has not yet been found a Slavic tribe from the migration period or shortly thereafter where all known names are Germanic. The Slavs at that time all had loads of etymologically Slavic names.

[nittionia]

...

[Johnson Reed]

Although I searched for abt. one hour I could not find - this is crazy - my original statement and what competing assumption it exactly referred to. Was it an ethnic Celtic origin?

However, the exact name form is indicative - not a proof, ofc. - of the spoken language of the bearer and thus also his ethnicity. So Enrico, Fernando and Rodrigo will almost disprove ethnic Germans, while the forms Heinrich, Friednand and Roderich would suggest such.

In the same manner the name James does close to exclude a Hebrew, Paul does close to exclude a Roman and George does close to exclude a Greek, doesn't it?

But how can we know the exact name form centuries later if we only have what was written about them by outsiders, especially given that historians used to nativize names of people (i.e. Emperor William for Kaiser Wilhelm or Searlas II for Charles II)

[#Oda#]

I'm not sure if this proves anything about their ethnic origin, though. James is a Hebrew-origin name, but King James wasn't of Hebrew origin. Ditto with King George and being Greek, or Paul von Hindenburg not being of Latin descent just because his given name is of Latin origin.

Paul von Hindenburg, ... : That are cretinous examples. The times are COMPLETELY incomparable.

[#Oda#]

I'm not sure, but it quite obviously did.

Proto Slavs make the impression of having a partly immunity. The return of plague at abt. 1350 and the affected areas (green depicts unaffected areas) suggests to me that it's genetical as now the partly Slavic derived Eastern Germans are hardly hit. It may be by chance but to me it seems strinking that now areas that were populated with people that had much of the proto Slavic genetics were spared.

Speculation: Slavs may have been more exposed to this disease that is considered coming from East Asia compared to Germanics that lived more in the west. East Germanics may have been something like new immigrants in eastern Germania magna and been "too east" compared to their origin and thus particularly badly protected.

But if this was right, why is the green restricted to that well-defined, limited space, although Slaves were living as well around it?
Tbh, I dont really believe in that explanation.

[PaulieVanZant]

I'm not sure if this proves anything about their ethnic origin, though. James is a Hebrew-origin name, but King James wasn't of Hebrew origin. Ditto with King George and being Greek, or Paul von Hindenburg not being of Latin descent just because his given name is of Latin origin.

Germanics shouldnt have Latin names anyway. Makes me think why we kicked Roman butt in the first place.

[Beowulf]

A Swiss German from the Canton of Bern

Eurogenes K13:

Kit DV9736868

[rothaer]

But how can we know the exact name form centuries later if we only have what was written about them by outsiders, especially given that historians used to nativize names of people (i.e. Emperor William for Kaiser Wilhelm or Searlas II for Charles II)

I get your point.

The question of the exact name form in order to determine the ethnicity of the bearer arises only if we have the situation that one people at all borrows names from another one. In the Antiquity and the Migration Period Germanic names were not yet borrowed by non-Germanics to any notable degree. This only happened after various Germanic kingdoms were ruling non-Germanics for quite a while and Germanic names then got a respective higher societal status. Prior to that I only know of such things where people mixed and in this context there was a small Celtic-Germanic transfer of names or name members. F. i. Germanics adopted the name member -rich from Celtic -rix. Prior to such exchanges you could essentially determine the ethnicity of individuals based on the linguistic origin of the names.

If the name is corruptedly reported by linguistic foreigners you can only reconstruct it with the knowledge regarding the origin language.

Btw. also coins are sources like this of the Vandal king Gunthamund with the inscription DN REX GVNTHAMVNDI:

https://recherche.smb.museum/images/...1_1200x630.jpg

Although it has to be noticed that in Migration Period Germanic kingdoms coins were mostly minted by non-Germanic professionals and they imitated Roman coins. The inscriptions were not in Germanic but in Latin.

[rothaer]

But if this was right, why is the green restricted to that well-defined, limited space, although Slaves were living as well around it?
Tbh, I dont really believe in that explanation.

It's just a theory of mine. But we have these facts:

- The Slavs were incredibly expanding in the context of the Justininic plague (at abt. 550 AD) while most other people were enormously hit and their lands close to emptied.
- When the plague returned at abt. 1350 AD the not concerned areas (green) are much resembling to where proto Slavs had spread without much mixture.

I find this conspicuous and think that the probability is low that this is a random correspondence.

The map that shows as well other smaller green areas makes clear that it can not be monocausally about (immunological) genetics. There are more factors, ofc., so there can not be expected any perfect correspondenc but rather a tendency.

Unfortunately the map does not show how hard the population was hit outside the green areas. The various colours do just depict when they were hit.

In line with my theory the Germanic Norwegians were particularly strongly hit. You can even say that the indigenous Norwegian nobility was wiped out, never recovered and this event led to that Norway for more than a half millenium came under foreign rule. https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pestepidemien_in_Norwegen