Swedes (Germanic Tribe) - Etymology

Etymology

The form Suiones appears in the Roman author Tacitus's Germania. A closely similar form, Sweon(as), is found in Old English and in the work of Adam of Bremen about the Hamburg-Bremen archbishops who are denoted Sueones.

Most scholars agree that Suiones and the attested Germanic forms of the name derive from the same Proto-Indo-European reflexive pronominal root, *s(w)e, as the Latin suus. The word must have meant "one's own (tribesmen)". In modern Scandinavian, the same root appears in words such as svåger (brother-in-law) and svägerska (sister-in-law). The same root and original meaning is found in the ethnonym of the Germanic tribe Suebi, preserved to this day in the name Schwaben. The details of the phonetic development vary between different proposals.

Noréen (1920) proposed that Suiones is a Latin rendering of Proto-Germanic *Swihoniz, derived from the PIE root *swih- "one's own". The form *Swihoniz would in Wulfila's Gothic become *Swaíhans, which later would result in the form Suehans that Jordanes mentioned as the name of the Swedes in Getica. Consequently, the Proto-Norse form would have been *Swehaniz which following the sound-changes in Old Norse resulted in Old West Norse Svíar and Old East Norse Swear. Currently, however, the root for "one's own" is reconstructed as *s(w)e rather than *swih, and that is the root identified for Suiones e.g. in Pokorny (1959) and in The Nordic languages: an international handbook of the history of the North Germanic languages (2002) edited by Oskar Bandle. *Swe is also the form cited by V. Friesen (1915), who regards the form Sviones as being originally an adjective, Proto-Germanic *Sweoniz, meaning "kindred". Then the Gothic form would have been *Swians and the H in Suehans a pleonasm. The Proto-Norse form would then also have been *Sweoniz which also would have resulted in the historically attested forms.

The name became part of a compound, which in Old West Norse was Svíþjóð, ('The Svear People'), in Old East Norse Sweþiuð and in Old English Sweoðeod. This compound appears on runestones in the locatives i suiþiuþu (Runestone Sö Fv1948;289, Aspa Löt, Sörmland), a suiþiuþu (Runestone DR 344, Simris, Skåne) and o suoþiauþu (Runestone DR 216, Tirsted, Lolland). The 13th century Danish source Scriptores rerum danicarum mentions a place called litlæ swethiuthæ, which is probably the island Sverige (Sweden) near Stockholm. The earliest instance, however, appears to be Suetidi in Jordanes' Getica (6th century).

The only Germanic nation having a similar naming was the Goths, who from the name *Gutans (cf. Suehans) created the form gut-þiuda.

The name Swethiuth and its different forms gave rise to the different Latin names for Sweden, Suethia, Suetia and Suecia as well as the modern English name for the country.

A second compound was Svíariki, or Sweorice in Old English, which meant "the realm of the Suiones". This is still the formal name for Sweden in Swedish, Svea rike and the origin of its current name Sverige with the "k" in the old form "Sverike" changed to a "g".

In contemporary Latvian the word zviedri means "Swedes" and the word Zviedrija (originating from Svea rike) is the name for Sweden, showing the very old relations between the ancestors of Swedes and Latvians since the first scandianavian settlements in Grobiņa and Apuole in 6th century AD.