Cimbri
According to Strabo, the Greeks called Cimmerians as Cimbri, ie the by same name, which is known in history for one of the Germanic tribes. Obviously, this is no coincidence. Based on the analysis of place names of the Western Ukraine we have come to the conclusion that the ancestors of the Kurds populated Podolia (modern Ternopil, Khmelnytsky, and Vynnytsia Regions), where the clusters of names explained by means of the Kurdish language are discovered. Analysis of the spread of archaeological cultures suggest that a single homogeneous and numerous tribe populated Podolia
Just the fact, that carriers of Noa, Gava-Ğoliğrady, Koziy etc. cultures didn’t move to fertile lands of the Midle Dnestr area eastern of the Zbruch and northern of the basin Prut, proves great obstacle which didn’t let them to do this. We can only suppose that enough robust, conservative in its traditions tribe resided on these lands. Using natural conditions – difficult for accessing canyons of the Podolian rivers – didn’t admit strangers to own lands. (KRUSHELNYC’KA L.I., 1998: 193).
Podolia is adjacent to the ranges of the Germans, therefore, between the German and Kurdish tribes were supposed to be some communication, including political ones, which explains the Greek name of the Cimmerians. The language contacts between the Kurds and Germanic peoples can be confirmed by lexical matches between the Kurdish and the Germanic languages. F. Holthausen results some from them in the Old-English Etymological Dictionary (HOLTHAUSEN F. 1974.), for example: Old English wic, LowGer wike, Eng. witch-elm „a mountain maple ” – Kurd. viz, but they are only random finds. Looking purposeful one can find a lot of interesting matches. For example, OE scielf “top of a rock, an edge”, Eng. shelf, OIcl. skjolf "eminence" well correspond to Kurd. şilf "an edge". Ukr. ščovb "rock" is referred to the German words (VASMER M., 1973: 510.) but Germ. Schilf "reed" is disregarded for unknown reason. This word should be too attributed here for leaves of reed are similar to the edge of a blade. F. Holthausen does not find an explanation to the Old English name of the chamomile ferðing-wyrt. The Kurdish words pûrt "hair" and wurd "to clean" can suit for its explanation perfect. The flowers of the chamomile are used for washing head long since. The common Germanic word west good corresponds to Kurd. weşt "south". Insignificant differences in phonetics and semantics say that the Kurdish word is not borrowed from the Germanic languages at the late times. Some more English-Kurdish matches are such: OE bile "a beak" – Kurd. bel "sticking out", Eng. chuck "to throw" – the kurd. çek "throw", OE gamen, Eng. game – Kurd. geme "a game", O. maffa «a film of egg» – Kurd. mef "a tent", OE reo, reowe «a coverlet, a coat» – Kurd. rav "cloud", etc.
At the beginning of the second century BC some hitherto unknown numerous barbarian tribes appeared in Central Europe and literally sowed panic among the inhabitants of the Roman Empire by its brutal militancy:
In 113 BC sinister rumors seized Rome. They were brought by traveling merchants from forests between the Oder and Elbe. Legionaries who kept guard at the northern border of the empire spread them… Up there in the north, beyond the Alpine passes, were some people on the move, so huge in number, as you've never seen. One million people crammed into a covered wagon, which clamped by oxen, with child and dogs, women and cattle, they vagabondized, devouring the land bare like locusts. 300,000 men strong was the crowd of their warriors, fearsome figures, true giant, six foot tall, most of them deep blond, blue-eyed like all… Elderly women dressed in rough linen moved forward barefoot, prophesied from the spurting blood of the gods sacrificed prisoners, of whom they made thousands. For no one who opposes imagine them have a chance so terrible they were in combat. And fearlessly without fear of death… From the North Sea down they came, where the sea mixes with the sky.
After vain attempts in barbaric simplicity to fight their country threatening flooding with the sword, they left the home. The Celts belonged to them or which the Skyten, they described themselves as Cimbri
(FISCHER-FABIAN S. 1993, 15).
In search of free land for the settlement the Cimbri tried to invade from Noricum to Italy through the Alps in the most convenient place to go. Romans would take them for the Scythians or Celts, but most historians believe that they were the Germans who had previously inhabited the Jutland Peninsula. However, we can assume that attempted invasion of Italy was made just by Cimmerians-Kurds, who were not moved from Jutland, but from the Ukraine. Later, they settled among the Germans and were assimilated by them however retained their tribal name. The fact of the migration of Kurd is supported by the archaeological evidence:
Probably yet to the middle of the 5th cent BC agricultural population of Podolia was forced to leave their country for reasons that remain unknown. There is no information and where they were moved (ARTAMONOV M.I., 1974: 112).
Judging by the historical evidences, the way of life and behavior of Cimbri more closely resembled steppe nomads than residents of swampy and woodland Jutland, where sufficient pasture for their numerous herds were as good as absent. In addition, the Greek navigator Pytheas, who visited Jutland in 325 BC, mentioning the Teutons, says nothing about the Cimbri, who were to be their northern neighbors. On the contrary, the inhabitants of Jutland, which supplied amber Teutons, he called Guioni (KRÄMER WALTER, 1979, 252).
The assumption about migration of the Cimmerian-Kurds westwards is supported by words of Iranian origin in the Polish and Czech languages (see "To the Question of Iranian-Slavic Language Connections")and by place names. The main bulk of Kurdish place names is concentrated in Podolia, but they can be found sporadically in more western areas. However, while analyzing the place names of the south-eastern corner of Poland a small collection of names easily decrypted by means of Kurdish was found on a small area in the Lublin Voivodeship, Lubaczów County. These are the names of Polish villages:
t. Narol – Kurd nar “fire”, ol “a group” (the Kurd were fire-worshipers);
v. Paary in one kilometer from Narol (see above) – Kurd pa “a level”, ar “fire” (once again mentioning of fire);
v. Pordysówka near the village of Chamernia (see below) – Kurd fort “a beast”, isûl “a custom”;
v. Rebizanty in two kilometers from Paary – Kurd reb “a god”, zend (other Ir zand) “a hand”;
v. Chemernia in four kilometer from Rebizanty – Kurd xumar “morose” or xawer “sun”.
As you can see, the first four words are in one way or another connected with the customs and religion. If the name of the village Chamernia is associated with the sun, it also can be attributed to this group, because the Kurds worship not only fire but the sun too. All five villages are stretched as a chain from the south-east to north-west trough a distance of twenty miles between two large tracts of forest. Other place names definitely decrypted by means of Kurdish are not found far around. It can not be accidental. Obviously, pagan temples were concentrated in this area, where local population came together to perform religious rites. This is assumed on the warrant of the names of numerous villages having in their name the word Majdan (Kurd meydan “area, space”), both separately and in complex names (Majdan, Maydanek, Majdan-Górny, Majdan-Welki, Majdan-Sopoci, Majdan-Niepryski) located in the immediate neighborhood at a distance till forty miles from above mentioned villages. This concentration of Kurdish place names are located quite far from the Carpathians, and there are on their other side no place-names of possible Kurdish origin, but it is interesting that the name of the Carpathians Beskid can be decrypted by means of the Kurdish language.
The Beskid is a system of ridges in the northern outer strip of the Carpathians. They are located on the border between Poland and Czechoslovakia, and Ukraine, between the river Morava in the west and the headwaters of the river San in the east. The mountain slopes are covered with beech and fir forests, alpine meadows are located higher till the treeless peaks. The Beskyd have convenient passes at an altitude of 500-1000 meters which were used since the past.
The Ukrainian language has very much similar words with different but semantically similar senses. The very mountain range called Beskydy, Bieshchad, Bieshchady but there are also words meaning "a slope", "a rock", "a mountain", "a ridge" – besked, besket, beskeda, beshket, beskeddya etc. Under the influence of Ukrainian, these mountains are called Beskid, Beszczad in Polish, but formerly they were known as Bieszczad, and the Polish beskid means "a mountain range”, “mountains covered with forests". Similar words in different versions having similar senses are present also in the Slovak and Czech languages. These words have no accepted etymological interpretation. Most often they are associated with Alb (Thrak.) bejške "a mountain pasture", "a series of high mountains," but the formant –(k)ed remains unclear. Attempts to find the origins of this word in the Germanic languages were unsuccessful (see MELNYCHUK O.S., 1982-2004; VASMER M. 1964-73).
However, the Iranian languages: beš/biš «forest» and gada/ğada/qät “a tree" suit for explaining the words best of all. True, only word beš “forest” was found in Kurdish but the words gada/ğada/qät are present in the closely related to Kurdish the Ossetian, Yagnobi, Pashto, and Persian languages, so it could exist in Kurdish, but disappeared. Both offered for decoding words are similar in meaning, but at first glance are not suitable for the name of the mountain. However, it is not so. Semantic shifting "mountain" – "forest" – "tree" can be found in Slavic and Baltic (GAMKRELIDZE T.V., IVANOV V.V. 1984., 666) that is the same word in closely related languages can mean either a forest, or a mountain, or this and another (eg Serb gora 1. "forest" 2. "mountain", Bulg. gora "forest"). Thus, Old-Kurdish *bešqät could have sense "a mountain covered with trees", what corresponds by the meaning to some modern Slavic words. If the words cognate to gada/ğada/qät never existed in the Kurdish language, then one can take into account Kurd qad “boundary, limit, border". In this case bešqad meant "forest boundary" what suites to the situation even better, because Kurdish place names are absent on the other side of the Carpathians, that is, the Kurds did not dare to cross this forest frontier. Note that the Carpathians are covered with forests and some part of them is called the Wooded Carpathians. As for the Albanian word bejške, it could be a derivative of borrowed Kurdish beš at those times when the Thracians were neighbors of Proto-Kurds somewhere near Vinnytsia or Zhmerynka.
Possible Kurdish origin have some place names that extend through Poland to Jutland, where the Cimbri began their march on Rome, but they do not have reliable connection to surrounding terrain. Nevertheless, they, together with other facts may indicate that a part of the Cimmerian Kurds did not follow the majority of the tribesmen in their migration eastward and moved west to the territory of Poland, and possibly farther. Later their descendants were assimilated by Slavs and Germans, but left them the names of their settlements. The theme of ethnicity of Cimbri was studied by many experts. Most of them consider them as Germans, some do as Celto-Scythians (see Eremenko V.E., Schukin M.B. Cimbri, Teutons, Celto-Scythians and Some Quetions of Time Limit of Middle and Late La Tène Culture //Problems of Chronology of the epoch of La Tène Culture and Roman Time. SPb. – 1992. – P.80-115. – in Russian – ), but other did as Celts (see. David K. Faux. The Cimbri Nation of Jutland, Denmark and the
Danelaw, England: A Chronological Approach Based
on Diverse Data Sources)
Subject of the presence of Iranians in Central Europe deserves serious consideration. Among tribes, united by the Romans under the common term "Germans" were those whose names can be deciphered more plausible than offered explanation. In the first place, the name of the tribe Aduatuki akin to Cimbri. It can be translated as "gave an oath" (Kurd. ad "oath", vāt-in, wut-in "to say", tûke "angry" ). Title of neighboring tribe Eburonoi considered originated from Celt. *eburo- "yew", but can also be considered Kurd ebûr 1. "livelihood", 2. "shame", ebûrî "life". Kurdish word reb "Lord" can be seen in the name of the tribe Atrebates etc.
