Franks, Goths and Other Germanics

[Marja]

I agree on the last point, about Goths as Scythians, but many scholars derive Teruingi from 'Forest-Dwellers.'

D.H. Green, Language and History in the Early Germanic World, p. 169:

A number of different languages suggest that the features of the south Russian [Ukrainian] terrain more than once called forth a twofold naming of those who inhabited its two types of ground: the cattle-raising nomads of the open steppe and the sedentary agriculturalists of the woodland steppe. The Gothic distinction (Greutungi deriving from a Germanic root for 'sand, sandy soil' of the steppe and Tervingi from a root for 'tree') would thus be echoed in Slavonic for this region (Poljane 'field-dwellers' and Drevljane 'wood-dwellers'), but also similarly in Hunnic and Turkish.