Old Germanic Ethnonyms

The project "Old Germanic ethnonyms" aims to give a critical survey of the relevant scientific literature on Old Germanic ethnonyms (up to 2001). Therewith it will be a continuation of former projects on Old Germanic names. First of all, scientific literature published after 1990, when the preceding projects ended, has to be recorded, thereafter the up to now registered excerpts (including the most recent scientific literature) have to be edited and rendered to small articles, in order to document the actual state of research in a concise and critical way; the results shall be published as a volume of an annotated bibliography on Old Germanic Names. This project is based on Hermann Reichert`s Lexikon der altgermanischen Namen (Thesaurus Palaeogermanicus 1, Vienna 1986-1990). I: Text. II. Register, compiled by Robert Nedoma and Hermann Reichert. In this collection of Germanic onomastic material, there are registered about 3000 names (with about 26.000 evidences). In the main volume, it was impossible to take in etymological and bibliographical notes (except for a few cases and only to small extent). Therefore as supplementation a collection of research literature in an annotated bibliography is necessary, in order to make the state of discussion transparent to users in different scientific disciplines. The Lexikon der altgermanischen Namen serves since its publication internationally as basis for onomastic studies refering to Germanic. The proposed project focuses on the Germanic ethnonyms, a species of names comprising about 300 entries. The step into new scientific frontiers through this project is established in two respects: a. in the field of Germanic onomastics a lot of questions are controversial; many of these problems could already be solved by the authors of the respective articles. b. publications emerging from this project will serve as fundament for international research. There is a lack of manuals, compiling the actual state of research and opening up new vistas, in the field of Germanic onomastics, a scientific discipline that in increasing extent is approved by historians and archaeologists as an important part of Early Germanic Studies. [The English version of this abstract will be submitted to a native speaker for `language cleaning` before publication]