Editing Visigoths (section)

==Nomenclature: Vesi, Tervingi, Visigoths==
{{Further|Name of the Goths}}
The Visigoths were never called Visigoths, only Goths, until [[Cassiodorus]] used the term, when referring to their loss against [[Clovis I]] in 507. Cassiodorus apparently invented the term based on the model of the "[[Ostrogoths]]", but using the older name of the Vesi, one of the tribal names which the fifth-century poet [[Sidonius Apollinaris]], had already used when referring to the Visigoths.{{sfn|Christensen|2002|p=219}}{{sfn|Wolfram|1988|p=25}} The first part of the Ostrogoth name is related to the word "east", and [[Jordanes]], the medieval writer, later clearly contrasted them in his ''Getica'', stating that "Visigoths were the Goths of the western country."{{sfn|Jordanes|1915|p=74 [XIV.82]}} According to Wolfram, Cassiodorus created this east–west understanding of the Goths, which was a simplification and literary device, while political realities were more complex.{{sfn|Wolfram|1988|p=26}} Cassiodorus used the term "Goths" to refer to only the Ostrogoths, whom he served, and reserved the geographic reference "Visigoths" for the Gallo-Spanish Goths. The term "Visigoths" was later used by the Visigoths themselves in their communications with the [[Byzantine Empire]], and was still in use in the 7th century.{{sfn|Wolfram|1988|p=26}}
[[File:305 CE, Europe.svg|thumb|upright=1.35|Europe in 305 AD]]
Two older tribal names from outside the Roman empire are associated with Visigoths who formed within the empire. The first references to any Gothic tribes by Roman and Greek authors were in the third century, notably including the [[Thervingi]], who were once referred to as Goths by [[Ammianus Marcellinus]].{{sfn|Christensen|2002|pp=207–212}} Much less is known of the "Vesi" or "Visi", from whom the term "Visigoth" was derived. Before Sidonius Apollinaris, the Vesi were first mentioned in the {{lang|la|[[Notitia Dignitatum]]}}, a late-4th- or early-5th-century list of Roman military forces. This list also contains the last mention of the "[[Thervingi]]" in a classical source.{{sfn|Christensen|2002|pp=207–212}}

Although he did not refer to the Vesi, Tervingi or Greuthungi, Jordanes identified the Visigothic kings from [[Alaric I]] to [[Alaric II]] as the successors of the fourth-century Tervingian king [[Athanaric]], and the Ostrogoth kings from [[Theoderic the Great]] to [[Theodahad]] as the heirs of the Greuthungi king [[Ermanaric]].{{sfn|Heather|1998|pp=300–301}} Based on this, many scholars have traditionally treated the terms "Vesi" and "Tervingi" as referring to one distinct tribe, while the terms "Ostrogothi" and "[[Greuthungi]]" were used to refer to another.{{sfn|Heather|1999|pp=43–44}}

Wolfram, who still recently defends the equation of Vesi with the Tervingi, argues that while primary sources occasionally list all four names (as in, for example, ''Gruthungi, Austrogothi, Tervingi, Visi''), whenever they mention two different tribes, they always refer either to "the Vesi and the Ostrogothi" or to "the Tervingi and the Greuthungi", and they never pair them up in any other combination. In addition, Wolfram interprets the {{lang|la|[[Notitia Dignitatum]]}} as equating the Vesi with the Tervingi in a reference to the years 388–391.{{sfn|Wolfram|1988|pp=24–25}} On the other hand, another recent interpretation of the ''Notitia'' is that the two names, Vesi and Tervingi, are found in different places in the list, "a clear indication that we are dealing with two different army units, which must also presumably mean that they are, after all, perceived as two different peoples".{{sfn|Christensen|2002|p=219}} Peter Heather has written that Wolfram's position is "entirely arguable, but so is the opposite".{{sfn|Heather|1999|p=75}}

[[File:Gutthiuda.jpg|upright=1.35|thumb|right|Gutthiuda{{citation needed|date=May 2017}}]]

Wolfram believes that "Vesi" and "Ostrogothi" were terms each tribe used to boastfully describe itself and argues that "Tervingi" and "Greuthungi" were geographical identifiers each tribe used to describe the other.{{sfn|Wolfram|1988|p=25}} This would explain why the latter terms dropped out of use shortly after 400, when the Goths were displaced by the [[Huns#Before Attila|Hunnic invasions]].{{sfn|Wolfram|1988|p=24}} Wolfram believes that the people Zosimus describes were those Tervingi who had remained behind after the Hunnic conquest.{{sfn|Wolfram|1988|p=387, fn57}} For the most part, all of the terms discriminating between different Gothic tribes gradually disappeared after they moved into the Roman Empire.{{sfn|Wolfram|1988|p=25}}

Many recent scholars, such as [[Peter Heather]], have concluded that Visigothic group identity emerged only within the Roman Empire.{{sfn|Heather|1998|pp=52–57, 130–178, 302–309}} [[Roger Collins]] also believes that the Visigothic identity emerged from the [[Gothic War (376–382)|Gothic War of 376–382]] when a collection of Tervingi, Greuthungi and other "barbarian" contingents banded together in multiethnic ''[[foederati]]'' (Wolfram's "federate armies") under Alaric I in the eastern [[Balkans]], since they had become a multi ethnic group and could no longer claim to be exclusively Tervingian.{{sfn|Collins|2004|pp=22–24}}

Other names for other Gothic divisions abounded. In 469, the Visigoths were called the "Alaric Goths".{{sfn|Wolfram|1988|p=26}} The [[Frankish Table of Nations]], probably of Byzantine or Italian origin, referred to one of the two peoples as the ''Walagothi'', meaning "Roman Goths" (from Germanic *''[[walhaz]]'', foreign). This probably refers to the Romanized Visigoths after their entry into Spain.{{sfn|Goffart|1983|pp=125–126}} [[Landolfus Sagax]], writing in the 10th or 11th century, calls the Visigoths the ''Hypogothi''.{{sfn|Friedrich|1910|p=14}}

===Etymology of Tervingi and Vesi/Visigothi===
The name ''Tervingi'' may mean "forest people", with the first part of the name related to Gothic ''triu'', and English "tree".{{sfn|Wolfram|1988|p=25}} This is supported by evidence that geographic descriptors were commonly used to distinguish people living north of the [[Black Sea]] both before and after Gothic settlement there, by evidence of forest-related names among the Tervingi, and by the lack of evidence for an earlier date for the name pair Tervingi–Greuthungi than the late third century.{{sfn|Wolfram|1988|pp=387–388, fn58}} That the name ''Tervingi'' has pre-Pontic, possibly Scandinavian, origins still has support today.{{sfn|Wolfram|1988|p=387, fn58}}

The Visigoths are called ''Wesi'' or ''Wisi'' by [[Trebellius Pollio]], Claudian and Sidonius Apollinaris.{{sfn|Stevenson|1899|p=36, fn15}} The word is [[Gothic language|Gothic]] for "good", implying the "good or worthy people",{{sfn|Wolfram|1988|p=25}} related to Gothic ''iusiza'' "better" and a reflex of [[Proto-Indo-European language|Indo-European]] *''wesu'' "good", akin to [[Welsh language|Welsh]] ''gwiw'' "excellent", [[Ancient Greek language|Greek]] ''eus'' "good", [[Sanskrit]] ''vásu-ş'' "id.". Jordanes relates the tribe's name to a river, though this is probably a [[folk etymology]] or legend like his similar story about the Greuthung name.{{sfn|Wolfram|1988|p=387, fn58}}