Editing Ostrogoths (section)

==Goths==
{{Main article|Goths|Chernyakhov culture|Oium|Gothic runic inscriptions}}
[[File:Chernyakhov.PNG|thumb|{{legend|#0f0|Traditional [[Götaland]]}}
{{legend|#f08|Island of [[Gotland]]}}
{{legend|#f00|[[Wielbark Culture]], early 3rd century}}
{{legend|#f80|[[Chernyakhov culture]], early 4th century}}
{{legend|#80f|[[Roman Empire]]}}]]

The Ostrogoths were one of several peoples referred to more generally as Goths. The Goths appear in Roman records starting in the third century, in the regions north of the [[Lower Danube]] and [[Black Sea]].{{sfn|Heather|2009|pp=109–110}} They competed for influence and Roman subsidies with peoples who had lived longer in the area, such as the [[Carpi (people)|Carpi]], and various [[Sarmatians]], and they contributed men to the Roman military.{{sfn|Heather|2009|pp=116, 127–128}} Based on their Germanic language and material culture, it is believed that their Gothic culture derived from cultures from the direction of the [[Vistula]] river in the north, now in [[Poland]] and originally from [[Götaland]] (in English Western and Eastern Gothlands) and [[Gotland]] in present-day [[Sweden]].{{sfn|Heather|2009|pp=115–117}} By the third century, the Goths were already composed of sub-groups with their own names, because the [[Tervingi]], who bordered on the [[Roman Empire]] and the [[Carpathian Mountains]], were mentioned separately on at least one occasion.{{sfn|Wolfram|1988|p=24}}
	
The Ostrogoths, not mentioned until later, are associated with the Greuthungi who lived further east. The dividing line between the Tervingi and the Greuthungi, was reported by Ammianus to be the [[Dniester River]], and to the east of the Greuthungi were [[Alans]] living near the River Don.{{sfn|Heather|2009|pp=151–153}}

===Gothic language===
{{Main|Gothic language}}
The Ostrogoths in Italy used a Gothic language which had both spoken and written forms, and which is best attested today in the surviving translation of the Bible by [[Ulfilas]]. Goths were a minority in all the places they lived within the Roman empire, and no Gothic language or distinct Gothic ethnicity has survived. On the other hand, the Gothic language texts which the Ostrogothic kingdom helped preserve are the only eastern Germanic language with "continuous texts" surviving, and the earliest significant remnants of any [[Germanic language]].{{efn|A language related to [[Gothic language|Gothic]] was still spoken sporadically in [[Crimea]] as late as the 16th and 17th centuries ([[Crimean Gothic language]]).{{sfn|Dalby|1999|p=229}} Much of the disappearance of the Gothic language is attributable to the Goths' cultural and linguistic absorption by other European peoples during the Middle Ages.{{sfn|Waldman|Mason|2006|p=572}} }}

===Etymology===
{{further|Name of the Goths|Greuthungi#Etymology}}
[[File:GNM - Gotische Fibeln.jpg|thumb|upright|Ostrogothic bow-fibulae (c. 500) from [[Emilia-Romagna]], [[Italy]]]]

The first part of the word "Ostrogoth" comes from a [[Germanic languages|Germanic]] root ''*auster-'' meaning 'eastern'. According to the proposal of Wolfram, this was originally a boastful tribal name meaning "Goths of the rising sun", or "Goths glorified by the rising sun".{{sfn|Wolfram|1988|pp=25, 387 fn49, 388 fn58}}{{Efn|Wolfram cites Moritz Schönfeld's (1911) work, ''Wörterbuch der altgermanischen personen- und Völkernamen'' as his principal naming source. See: [https://archive.org/details/wrterbuchderaltg00schn/page/39 p. 39]. According to linguist [[Václav Blažek]], this ethnonym shows several written forms in mediaeval records: Austrogoti; Austorgoti; Obstrogoti; Ostrogothi; Ostrogotus; Histrogotus; (H)ostrogothae (or Hostrogothae, Hostrogothi, Hostrogothae, Hostrogothae, Hostrogothi, Ostrogothi, Hostrogothae, Ostrogothi and Ostrogothi - these from the same record, Jordanes's ''Getica''), and Ostrogotthi. See: Blažek, Václav. "[http://hdl.handle.net/11222.digilib/126015 Visigothae versus Ostrogothae]". In: ''Graeco-Latina Brunensia'' vol. 17, iss. 2. 2012. pp. 17–18.}} By the 6th century, however, Jordanes, for example, believed that the Visigoths and Ostrogoths were two contrasting names simply meaning western and eastern Goths.{{sfn|Wolfram|1988|p=24}}{{sfn|Christensen|2002|p=206}}