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For Nazi commandant, see Amon Göth.
For modern popular subculture, see Goth subculture.
Götaland, south Sweden, most likely the original homeland of the Goths.
The Goths (Gothic: , Gutans) were East Germanic tribes who, in the 3rd and 4th centuries, harried the Roman Empire and later adopted Arianism. In the 5th and 6th centuries, divided as the Visigoths and the Ostrogoths, they established powerful successor-states of the Roman Empire in the Iberian peninsula and Italy.
Meanwhile pressure by Roman Catholicism forced gradual conversion of the Goths to Catholicism. One of the most notable early instances of such a conversion was that of the Gothic missionary, Wulfila, who then found it necessary to leave Gothic country for Moesia, (later the vicinity of Bulgaria) with his congregation, where he translated the Bible into Gothic. Although for a time masters of Italy and Spain, the Goths were defeated by the forces of Justinian I in a final effort to restore the Roman Empire. Subsequently they were struck by the Vandals and the Lombards.
Reccared, late 6th century king of Gothic Spain, became Catholic with the remainder of the yet unconverted Goths. Assimilation of the Goths accelerated when the last of them were defeated by the Moors in the early 8th century. The language and culture disappeared except for fragments in other cultures. In the 18th century a small remnant of Ostrogoths may have turned up in the Crimea,[1] but this identification is not certain.
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[Edit] Etymology
The Goths have had many names and have acquired population from many ethnic sources. Peoples under similar names were key elements of the Germanic migrations. Nevertheless they believed, and this belief is supported by the mainstream of scholarship,[2] that the names derived from a single prehistoric ethnonym owned by a uniform culture of south Scandinavia in the mid-first millennium BC, the original "Goths." People of a modern form of that name still live there.
Etymologically the oldest (300 BC) ethnonym for the Goths, "Guton-",[3] derives from the same root as that of the Gotlanders ("Gutar"): the Proto-Germanic *Gutaniz. Related, but not the same, is the Scandinavian tribal name Geat, from the Proto-Germanic *Gautoz (plural *Gautaz). Both *Gautoz and *Gutaniz are derived (specifically they are two ablaut grades) from the Proto-Germanic word *geutan, meaning "to pour."[4] The Indo-European root of the pour derivation would be *gheu-d- as it is listed in the American Heritage Dictionary (AHD). *gheu-d- is a centum form. The AHD relies on Julius Pokorny for the same root.[5]
Thus, the Gothic tribes may be designated as "pourers of semen", i.e. "men, people".[6] Another theory connects the people with the name of a river flowing through Västergötland in Sweden, the Göta älv, which drains Lake Vänern into the Kattegat.[7]
Old Norse records do not separate the Goths from the Gutar (Gotlanders) and both are called Gotar in Old West Norse. The Old East Norse term for both Goths and Gotlanders seems to have been Gutar (for instance in the Gutasaga and in the runic inscription of the Rökstone). However the Geats are clearly distinguished from the Goths/Gutar in both Old Norse and Old English literature.
The Mausoleum of Theodoric in Ravenna.
At some time in prehistory, consonant changes according to Grimm's Law created a *g from the *gh and a *t from the *d. This same law more or less rules out *ghedh-, The *dh in that case would become a *d instead of a *t.
According to the rules of Indo-European ablaut, the full grade (containing an *e), *gheud-, might be replaced with the zero-grade (the *e disappears), *ghud-, or the o-grade (the *e changes to an *o), *ghoud-, accounting for the various forms of the name. The zero-grade is preserved in modern times in the Lithuanian ethnonym for Belarusians, Gudai (earlier Baltic Prussian territory before Slavic conquests by about 1200 AD), and in certain Prussian towns in the territory around the Vistula River in Gothiscandza, (today Poland (Gdynia, Gdansk). The use of all three grades suggests that the name derives from an Indo-European stage; otherwise, it would be from a line descending from one grade. However, when and where the ancestors of the Goths assigned this name to themselves and whether they used it in Indo-european or proto-Germanic times remain unsolved questions of historical linguistics and prehistoric archaeology.
A compound name, Gut-þiuda, at root the "Gothic people", appears in the Gothic Calendar (aikklesjons fullaizos ana gutþiudai gabrannidai). Parallel occurrences indicate that it may mean "country of the Goths": Old Icelandic Sui-þjòd, "Sweden"; Old English Angel-þēod, "Anglia"; Old Irish Cruithen-tuath, "country of the Picts.[3]. Evidently this way of forming a country- or people-name is not unique to Germanic.
Gapt, an early Gothic hero, recorded by Jordanes, is generally regarded as a corruption of Gaut.