Hypothetical Germanic city names in a Germanic-occupied Eastern Roman Empire

[Talus I of Dixie]

As said before, they wouldn't use -stadt, probably would simply adopt the -polis in a germanic way for cities and use -burg for towns that are more a fortified point than a proper city. It would be something like:
Gothic -> Pauli [pɔ'li]
Vandalic -> Pulē [pu'le:]
Bavarian -> Polī [po'li:]

So, just some examples taken from the first post and using gothic as base:
Alexandria -> Alechsandrian
Ancyra -> Ankire
Antiochia -> Anþokan/Anthokan
Apamea -> Apamē
Chalcedon -> Kālkedon
Constantinople -> Konstandinpauli
Dyrrachium -> Diriahēn
Edessa -> Eþesē/Ethesē
Ephesus -> Efesau
Hadrianopolis -> Hadrenpauli
Halicarnassus -> Helgērnsen
Hierosolyma -> Herzlimei
Iconium -> Ikonein
Laodicea -> Laudigan
Larissa -> Larizē
Marcianopolis -> Marsinpauli
Nicomedia -> Nikomadan
Nicopolis -> Nikopauli
Pelusium -> Pēlzo
Ptolemais -> Þolmein/Tholmein
Scupi -> Schkūp
Seleucea -> Selaukan
Serdica -> Sertingan
Theodosiopolis -> Þēdoseipauli/Thēdoseipauli
Thessalonica -> Tezelaunig
Trapezus -> Trabēzo
Viminacium -> Wimnascho

 

[Umbric Man]

As someone who loves toponymy and place name evolution in general, and Germanic toponymy in particular, I will be watching this thread with vested interest and glee.

 

[JanWellem]

Chalcedon -> Halzedon

Chalcedon -> Halkedon or Kalkedon, since in Greek it's spelled Χαλκηδών and pronounced kʰal.kɛː.dɔ̌ːn

 

[Talus I of Dixie]

Chalcedon -> Halkedon or Kalkedon, since in Greek it's spelled Χαλκηδών and pronounced kʰal.kɛː.dɔ̌ːn

Oh my bad, Didn't see that /k/! As a brazilian i'm bad accustomed with c -> /s/, and while i'm familiar with greek phonology, i'm better off with middle/late medieval phonology (where "Ch/Χ" is /x/), so you're right, the ʰ would most probably turn it into Kālkedon (i.e, with an long vowel).

 

[Gloss]

As said before, they wouldn't use -stadt, probably would simply adopt the -polis in a germanic way for cities and use -burg for towns that are more a fortified point than a proper city. It would be something like:
Gothic -> Pauli [pɔ'li]
Vandalic -> Pulē [pu'le:]
Bavarian -> Polī [po'li:]

So, just some examples taken from the first post and using gothic as base:
Alexandria -> Alechsandrien
Ancyra -> Ankire
Antiochia -> Anþoken/Anthoken
Apamea -> Apamē
Chalcedon -> Kālkedon
Constantinople -> Konstandinpauli
Dyrrachium -> Diriahēn
Edessa -> Eþesē/Ethesē
Ephesus -> Efesau
Hadrianopolis -> Hadrenpauli
Halicarnassus -> Helgērnsen
Hierosolyma -> Herzlimei
Iconium -> Ikonein
Laodicea -> Laudigen
Larissa -> Larizē
Marcianopolis -> Marsinpauli
Nicomedia -> Nikomaden
Nicopolis -> Nikopauli
Pelusium -> Pēlzo
Ptolemais -> Þolmein/Tholmein
Scupi -> Schkūp
Seleucea -> Selauken
Serdica -> Sertingen
Theodosiopolis -> Þēdoseipauli/Thēdoseipauli
Thessalonica -> Tezelaunig
Trapezus -> Trabēzo
Viminacium -> Wimnascho

Why the use of the dipthong -au, I don't believe it was used a lot in Ulfilas's time given how the name "Paul" was phonetically represented.

 

[Talus I of Dixie]

Why the use of the dipthong -au, I don't believe it was used a lot in Ulfilas's time given how the name "Paul" was phonetically represented.

It isn't the dipthong -au, it's a digraph (Gothic doesn't have the -au dipthong AFAIK), au represents the vowel [ɔ] in Gothic orthography.

 

[Gloss]

It isn't the dipthong -au, it's a digraph (Gothic doesn't have the -au dipthong AFAIK), au represents the vowel [ɔ] in Gothic orthography.

Wouldn't it make sense to write it with "o", I mean we are latinizing it anyway.

 

[Arkenfolm]

I believe in toponymy, what became German "-en" was pronounced similarly in Gothic but written "-an" in Ulfilas's orthography.

Wouldn't it make sense to write it with "o", I mean we are latinizing it anyway.

It's not how Gothic is conventionally Romanised.

 

[Gloss]

It's not how Gothic is conventionally Romanised.

I mean we are talking about actual linguistic Germanization or how some scribes write down things? Phonology is center, not ortography.

Also ultimately late Gothic was romanized with -o insteads of -au, Ostrogothi vs Austrogothi.

 

[Talus I of Dixie]

I believe in toponymy, what became German "-en" was pronounced similarly in Gothic but written "-an" in Ulfilas's orthography.

Didn't know about that, thanks!

Wouldn't it make sense to write it with "o", I mean we are latinizing it anyway.

I mean we are talking about actual linguistic Germanization or how some scribes write down things? Phonology is center, not ortography.

Also ultimately late Gothic was romanized with -o insteads of -au, Ostrogothi vs Austrogothi.

We don't write with an "o" because we actually have an "o" in gothic, the thing is that the o is always as a long vowel, so we don't use them with the mark for long vowels because there is only the long vowel. Simplifying, we don't have an [o] but we have an [o:]. So the "Ostrogothi" doesn't mean that it was romanized with an "o" eventually, and yes that it was [o:strogo:θi] and not [ɔstrogo:θi], two different phonemes, two different forms of representation (doesn't really makes sense to use an mark meaning that the vowel is long when there's only a long vowel).

 

[Wendell]

I'd imagine that Miklagard would be used to refer to the Queen of Cities.

 

[Sarufiyyun]

Given that the Eastern Roman Empire was more urbanized compared to the western half, I expect the Germanic tribes to assimilate more rapidly and offer little in terms of toponyms outside of perhaps the areas bordering the Danube and the Crimea.

 

[The Professor]

@Gloss you may find this previous post by myself on the latinisation of Gothic interesting.
For context it was about a Gothic equivalent of Lombardy.

Sorry for the delay on this.

Some Thoughts on the Evolution of Gothic in TTL

A) Writing out ATL Old Gothic

Whilst some argument can be made for some retention of the Gothic Alphabet in TTL since these Goths are now firmly in the Roman World instead of the periphery I can see them adopting the Roman Script.

Transcribing ATL Old Gothic is fairly similar to OTL modern transcription but with these particulars:
/kw/ would be written [qu]
/hw/ would be [hu]
Since the distinction of /j,w/ is much disputed OTL and not really distinguished the in Vulgar Romances we can be cautious and write them [i,u]
/ŋ/ in clusters would be written [n]
/θ/ may be maintained as

but perhaps becoming [th] when lost. Some case can be made for borrowing [þ] from the AS dialects but any Latin will likely use [th] as they did for the AngloSaxons.

The 5 short vowels are fairly consistent with Roman [a, e, i, o, u] (cf [a, aí, i, aú, u] ).
The long vowels are trickier. Mostly I'd expect them to be doubled and subject to how strong Latin/Romance influences are - eg [ee, oo] vs [ei, ou]; /i:/ could variously be [i, ie, y].
Ironically in this TL it will be sorted out whether 6thC Gothic kept the /ai/ and /au/ dipthongs since the expected digraphs are used for /e, o/; they're often written [ái, áu] OTL where they could be used.

B) Phonological Changes

Whilst your notes indicate that a language called Gothic survives to modern ATL times I get the impression of ebb and flow, and bilingualism, across OTL North Italy before standardisation and demarcation sets in. This I think it worthwhile to consider the influence of Latin (incl Church Latin) and the regional Romance dialects [1]. Perhaps a good analogy could be the development of Old Franconian to Dutch; though the effect of Norman on Late Old English woudl also help.
So I see these phonological changes:

i) palatalisation of [c, g] /k, g/ before /i,j/ and most /e/ to /tʃ, dʒ/. Thus /ki, gi/ would be written (like Italian ) [chi, ghi].
ii) loss of /θ/ as a separate phoneme - elised medially and assimilated in clusters
iii) further fricatisation of medial [b, g] /β, ɣ/ to /v, h/
iv) "schwa-isation" and loss of unstressed vowels
v) loss of medial /h/

C) Grammatical Changes

As with other Germanic languages we will see regularisation of word order, levelling of the verb and noun cases, and creation of articles from determiners. How much depends on the influence of native and biligual Latin/Romance speakers. Do you want retention of the unique Class VII verbs? Dual tenses? etc

[1] Some form of Gallo/North-Italian will probably exist - perhaps as Veneto-Istrian or Illyrian?

 

[Gloss]

@Gloss you may find this previous post by myself on the latinisation of Gothic interesting.
For context it was about a Gothic equivalent of Lombardy.

In this scenario does the Gothic language still use "au" for the sound /o/~/ɔ /? I didn't get what you meant exactly.

 

[The Professor]

In this scenario does the Gothic language still use "au" for the sound /o/~/ɔ /? I didn't get what you meant exactly.

The digraph was used for both short and long o. And possibly the labial diphthong.

 

[JanWellem]

Since those Germanic peoples would be invading the ERE, which, while having a Latin speaking rulin class until the late 6th century, was overwhelmingly Greek speaking, they likely would adopt the Greek alphabet instead of the Latin one or alphabets based on Greek like the Gothic alphabet, so they'd end up like the Slavs did IOTL, with the eastern Germanic languages, e.g. Gothic, using Greek based alphabets and western Germanic languages, e.g. Frankish, using the Latin alphabet.

 

[EmperorBuaya]

As a guy who has strong interests in world-building and history, I feel everyone here has a point about the place names in Aldvera. These Aldveran humans aren’t the modern Germans we’re familiar with, after all. Different language, different circumstances will result something different entirely.

 

[Byzantion]

As said before, they wouldn't use -stadt, probably would simply adopt the -polis in a germanic way for cities and use -burg for towns that are more a fortified point than a proper city. It would be something like:
Gothic -> Pauli [pɔ'li]
Vandalic -> Pulē [pu'le:]
Bavarian -> Polī [po'li:]

So, just some examples taken from the first post and using gothic as base:
Alexandria -> Alechsandrian
Ancyra -> Ankire
Antiochia -> Anþokan/Anthokan
Apamea -> Apamē
Chalcedon -> Kālkedon
Constantinople -> Konstandinpauli
Dyrrachium -> Diriahēn
Edessa -> Eþesē/Ethesē
Ephesus -> Efesau
Hadrianopolis -> Hadrenpauli
Halicarnassus -> Helgērnsen
Hierosolyma -> Herzlimei
Iconium -> Ikonein
Laodicea -> Laudigan
Larissa -> Larizē
Marcianopolis -> Marsinpauli
Nicomedia -> Nikomadan
Nicopolis -> Nikopauli
Pelusium -> Pēlzo
Ptolemais -> Þolmein/Tholmein
Scupi -> Schkūp
Seleucea -> Selaukan
Serdica -> Sertingan
Theodosiopolis -> Þēdoseipauli/Thēdoseipauli
Thessalonica -> Tezelaunig
Trapezus -> Trabēzo
Viminacium -> Wimnascho

Ceasarea, Damaskus?