Getae and Dacians? Are they the same? Or is this unknowable?

[Alanus]

Possibly an analogy with the Goths....Ostrogoths, Visigoths etc? Were these people not different groupings of a similar people?

They were similar in culture and origin, along with the Gepids (and maybe the Heruli) who broke from them at an early stage. Yet Ostrogoth and Visigoth are Roman terms given to them at a later date, by Cassiodorus I think. The original name used by the Visigoths was Tyrfingi ('people of the sword Tyrfing"), while the Ostrogoths called themselves the Greutungi ("people of the pebbled shores").

As I recall, the names (and to some extent the tribal relationships) changed sometime after 400. Like many steppe cultures, the Goths were not an ethnic group related by blood, but rather by affinity and a willingness to fight for the "gens." Therefore the Goths included various Alans, Taifals, Capadocians, Dacians, Greeks, even Romans and perhaps the Sclaveni. Their language carried many Celticisms, especially military and magisterial, and it was similar to the East German variant spoken by the Vandals. Yet the Goths appeared as a cultural phenomenon, outlasting the Huns, the Vandals, and the Western Empire. :roll: