Carpi (people) - Name Etymology

Name Etymology

The Greco-Romans called this people the Carpi or Carpiani. Probably the earliest mention of them, under the name Καρπιανοί (Carpiani in Latin) is in the Geographia of the 2nd-century Greek geographer Ptolemy, composed c. AD 140.

The name Carpi or Carpiani may derive from the same root as the name of the Carpathian mountain range that they occupied, also first mentioned by Ptolemy under the name Καρπάτης - Karpátes. The root may be the putative Proto-Indo-European word *ker/sker, meaning "peak" or "cliff" (cf. Albanian karpë "rock", Romanian (ş)carpă "precipice", and Latin scarpa). Scholars who support this derivation are divided between those who believe the Carpi gave their name to the mountain range (i.e. the name means "mountains of the Carpi") and those who claim the reverse. In the latter case, Carpiani could mean simply "people of the Carpathians". But the similarity between the two names may be coincidence, and they may derive from different roots. For example, it has been suggested that the name may derive from the Slavic root-word krepu meaning "strong" or "brave". Also, it had been suggested that Carpathian Mountains may derive from the Sanskrit root "kar" 'cut' that would give the meaning of 'rugged mountains'.

Some scholars consider that the following peoples recorded in ancient sources correspond to Ptolemy's Karpiani:

• the Kallipidai mentioned in the Histories of Herodotus (composed around 430 BC) as residing in the region of the river Borysthenes (Dnieper)
• the Karpídai around the mouth of the river Tyras (Dniester) recorded in a fragment of Pseudo-Scymnus (composed c. 90 BC)
• the Harpii, located near the Danube delta, mentioned by Ptolemy himself.

If so, their locations could imply that the Carpi had very gradually migrated westwards in the period 400 BC - AD 140, a view championed by Kahrstedt. These names' common element carp- appears frequently in Dacian and Thracian placenames and personal names. But there is no consensus that these groups are in fact Carpi. Bichir suggests that they were Thraco-Dacian tribes distantly related to the Carpi.