Who Were the Suebi?

The biggest and the most important of Germanic tribe were the Suebi. This is what Tacitus writes:

We must now speak of Suebi, who do not, like the Chatti or the Tencteri, constitute a single nation. They occupy more that half of Germany, and are divided into a number of separate tribes under different names, though all are called by their generic title of ‘Suebi’”

Approximately 100 years later, Ptolemaios in his Geography, talks about Vendeti Mountains, which are North Carpathian mountains and he places there a nation “Suobeni”.

Czech translation is “Suebove”, Latin knows them under Suebi, and in English translations we would find a word Suevi. The difference between “Suebi” and “Suevi” is in the replacement of B and V. This substitute is nothing unique; we would find it in many words such as: Danuvius – Danubius (Danube), Velehrad – Belehrad (Belgrad), Vulgarii (Bavorian geograph) – Bulgari, Vratislavburgium – Bratislava, al-Abar – Avar, Venezia – Benecia (Venice) and so on.

Suebi from Tacitus’ work and Suobeni from the work of Ptolemaios and obviously the same nation, based not only of similar name (different end of words) but they are also placed in the same area. It is possible that Tacitus, and later the authors who used his work in theirs, simplified the word and shorten the original Suobeni to Suebi. It is also possible that both of those names were used. The name Suebi (Suevi) was used by foreigners, because they considered the rest of the name to be suffix. Suobeni (Suoveni) called themselves Suobeni, because they knew it was not a suffix.

The core of power of Suebi (Suevi) – Suobeni (Suoveni) was today’s Western Slovakia, Moravia, north-eastern Austria and North-western Hungaria, with Bratislava as their political centre. Some dialects in Moravia and Slovakia (Záhorie, Novohrad) still have a specific feature, which is a switching of consonant -l and -ų (pronounced as “u”). This switch does not apply to the whole vocabulary but is only visible in certain group of words. This way, in Záhorie, they know words such as: dųaň (dlaň) {palm}, ųavica (lavica) {bench}, škoųa (škola) {school} (words in bracket is the form rest of Slovakia knows them) but also words: chvíľa {moment}, košela {shirt}, strela {bullet}, ladvina (same as in the rest of Slovakia). I could cite more examples, but it would be pointless and would probably just confuse the reader.

We can find this -l -u switch in other Slovak dialects. In 1842, Slovak poet Janko Kalinciak wrote a poem “Zly brat” (A bad brother) in dialect found in norther parts of Slovakia (Liptov). In that poem we can find words such as: mau (mal) {he owned}, dau (dal) {he gave}, dorástou (dorástol) {grew up}, volau (volal) {called}, utreu (utrel) {wiped} and so on.

Similarly, another poet, Jan Botto, wrote a funny little story where he used southern central Slovak dialect. We would find another set of words with the same features: bou (bol) {he was}, prešou (prešiel) {crossed}, preplovau (preplával) {swam accross}, vedeu (vedel) {knew}, etc.

The Slavs called themselves Suobeni or Suoveni, the foreigners shortened it to Suebi or Suevi. The incorrect translation of Suebi into Slovak language is Svebi, while the correct way of interpretation of words Suebi – Suobeni is Slevi – Sloveni.

The word Slav / Slavs (here I mean its Slovakian translation – Slovan / Slovania) is a relatively new term fabricated in 19th century by non Slovak historians. The original name Sloven did not fit into emancipated growth of the youngest of Slovak nations – the Czechs. The name was convoluted into Slovan, and in the spirit of Herder’s philosophy, it started to be widely used for all language related nations of central and eastern Europe, who are now known as Slovania (Slavs). Slovan in just a variation of Sloven. I could cite many examples of words where e-a-ie-ia are interchanging depending on dialect.

We can call Sloveni (incorrectly called Suebi) a dominating nation-like group in Europe with relatively compatible language. Their weakness lied in the decentralized power. They were divided into many tribes who were competing with each other. We can find a mention of this in writing of Spanish merchant and diplomat Ibrahim ibn Yaqub (cca 950 AD) who states:

Slavic people are very brave a good in battle. If they were not so divided into many tribes and families, no nation on Earth could defeat them.”

Thanks to internal problems, targeted politics of Frank Empire and medieval catholic church, the tribes were defeated one by one. Around the beginning of 18th century, the decay was completed by deleting important parts of history and Sloveni became Slavs (Slovania), whose homeland were the marshes of Pripyat.

Labelling of Suebs – Suobeni as Sloveni and at the same time Sloveni as the biggest and strongest of all Germanic tribes (today Slavic tribes) sounds so fantastic that one automatically discards the idea when presented the first time. Here we should keep two points in mind. One: this fantasy is not as outrageous as the story of Pripyat marshes, and second there is not anything that disputes this idea, contrary to that there is a lot of evidence in support this statement, either directly or indirectly.


Source Article from http://www.renegadetribune.com/who-were-the-suebi/

You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Leave a Reply

Powered by WordPress | Designed by: Premium WordPress Themes | Thanks to Themes Gallery, Bromoney and Wordpress Themes