Man and His Migrations

by R. G. Latham

Identification of ancient nations, tribes, and families.—If there were no such thing as migration and displacement, the study of the ancient writers would be an easy matter. As it is, it is a very difficult one. Nine-tenths of the names of Herodotus, Strabo, Cæsar, Pliny, Tacitus, and similar writers on ethnology and geography, are not to be found in the modern maps; or, if found, occur in new localities. Such is the case with the name of our own nation, the Angli, who are now known as the people of Engl-land; whereas, in the eyes of Tacitus they were Germans. Others have not only changed place, but have become absolutely extinct. This is, of course, common enough. Again, the name itself may have changed, though the population to which it applies may have remained the same, or name and place may have each changed.

All this creates difficulties, though not such as should deter us from their investigation. At the same time, the criticism that must be applied is of a special and peculiar sort. One of the more complex questions with which it has to deal is the necessary but neglected preliminary of determining the language in which this or that geographical or ethnological name occurs; which is by no means an off-hand process. When Tacitus talks of Germans, or Herodotus of Scythians, the terms Scythian and German may or may not belong to the language of the people thus designated; in other words, they may or may not be native names—names known to the tribes to which the geographer applies them.

Generally such names are not native—a statement which, at first, seems hazardous; since the primâ facie view is in favour of the name by which a particular nation is known to its neighbours, being the name by which it characterizes itself. Do not our neighbours call themselves Français, whilst we say French, and are not the names identical? In this particular case they are; but the case is an exceptional one. Contrast with it that of the word Welsh. Welsh and Wales are the English names of the Cymry—English, but by no means native; English, but as little Welsh (strictly speaking) as the word Indian, when applied to the Red Men of America, is American.

Welsh is the name by which the Englishman denotes his fellow-citizens of the Principality. The German of Germany calls the Italians by the same designation; the same by which he knows the Wallachians also—since Wallachia and Wales and Welschland are all from the same root. What an error would it be to consider all these three countries as identical, simply because they were so in name! Yet if that name were native, such would be the inference. As it is, however, the chief link which connects them is their common relation to Germany (or Germanic England); a link which would have been wholly misinterpreted had we overlooked the German origin of the term, and erroneously referred it to the languages of the countries whereto it had its application.

An extract from Klaproth’s ‘Asia Polyglotta’ shall further illustrate this important difference between the name by which a nation is known to itself, and the name by which it is known to its geographer. A certain population of Siberia

calls itself Nyenech or Khasovo.

But none of its neighbours so call it. On the contrary, each gives it a different appellation.

The	Obi-Ostiaks	call it	Jergan-Yakh.
„	Tungúsians	„	Dyândal.
„	Syranians	„	Yarang.
„	Woguls	„	Yarran-Kum.
„	Russians	„	Samöeid.

What if some ancient tribe were thus polyonymous? What if five different writers of antiquity had derived their information from the five different nations of its neighbours? In such a case there would have been five terms to one object; none of them belonging to the language for which they were used.