The Germanic superstrate

When Roman rule over Hispania collapsed in the early 5th century, it was Germanic peoples who filled the political vacuum. In the far north-west — the region from which Portuguese would later be born — the kingdom of the Suebi took root; in time the whole Peninsula fell to the Visigoths. They spoke Germanic languages, but they were a military minority over a majority that already spoke Romance. Their mark on the language is therefore that of a superstrate: it did not reshape the grammar inherited from Latin, but laid over it a layer of words.

The Suebi and Visigoths in Hispania

In 409, Suebi, Vandals and Alans crossed the Pyrenees. Around 411 the Suebi settled in Gallaecia, with their capital at Bracara Augusta (Braga), founding the first autonomous Germanic kingdom on former imperial soil — they even struck their own coinage. The Suebic kingdom lasted until 585, when it was annexed by the Visigothic king Leovigild. The Visigoths, in turn, ruled Hispania from Toledo until the Muslim conquest of 711.

Across these three centuries the Germanic elites converted to Christianity, adopted Latin as the language of administration and Church, and themselves grew linguistically romanised. Gothic and the speech of the Suebi died out without leaving texts — but not without leaving traces.

A superstrate, not a substrate

The distinction matters. The pre-Roman substrate is the language that precedes Latin and influences it from below; the Germanic superstrate is the language of conquerors who settle over an already-formed Romance and dissolve into it. In both cases, what survives is mostly vocabulary.

There is a further difficulty: many of the Germanic words in Portuguese did not arrive by way of the Suebi or Visigoths at all. They entered centuries earlier, into Vulgar Latin itself, through the long contact between Rome and the Germanic peoples along the imperial frontiers — which is why they are shared across almost all of Romance (guerra, roubar, branco). Telling what is specifically Suebo-Visigothic from what is pan-Romance Germanic is one of the most delicate tasks of Iberian etymology.

The vocabulary of war and court

The field in which the Germanic contribution is felt most is that of war and military organisation — understandable in a society of armed lords.

Portuguese	Germanic etymon	Original sense
guerra	Gmc. werra	”discord, strife”
guardar	Gmc. wardōn	”to watch, to guard”
elmo	Goth. hilms	”helmet”
espora	Goth. spaúra	”spur”
dardo	Frank. daroþ	”throwing-spear”
trégua	Goth. triggwa	”pact, faith”
roubar	Gmc. raubôn	”to plunder”
ganhar	Gmc. waidanjan	”to gain; to graze”

Notably, guerra [ˈɡɛʁɐ] wholly supplanted Latin bellum: the word for the most Roman thing of all became Germanic. From court life come further terms such as escanção (the royal cup-bearer, from Goth. skankja) and bandeira “banner” (from Goth. bandwô “sign, standard”).

Marks on phonology and morphology

The adaptation of Germanic to Iberian Romance left one recognisable phonetic trace: initial Germanic /w/ was taken in as /gw/ > /g/, hence werra → guerra and wardōn → guardar. The same shows in Frankish personal names, such as Wilhelm → Guilherme.

More distinctive still is the suffix -engo, from Germanic -ing (“belonging to”), productive in medieval Galician-Portuguese for forming adjectives of possession, especially in law:

Personal names and surnames

It is in onomastics that the Germanic legacy is most visible and most lasting. Gothic elites were fashionable, and for centuries the inhabitants of the north-west — whether or not of Germanic descent — christened their children with Gothic names. These were typically dithematic, built from two warlike elements:

• Rodrigo < Goth. Hrôþareiks (hrôþ “glory” + reiks “powerful”)
• Fernando < Goth. Friþnanþ (friþ “peace” + nanþ “daring”)
• Afonso < Goth. Aþalfuns (aþal “noble” + funs “ready”)
• Álvaro < Goth. Allawars (alla “all” + wars “watchful”)
• Gonçalo < Goth. Gundisalv (gunþi “battle”)

From these names came, centuries later, much of the stock of the most common Portuguese surnames. The medieval patronymic was formed with the Latin genitive -ici, which evolved into -es: Roderici → Rodrigues (“son of Rodrigo”). Hence Fernandes, Gonçalves, Henriques, Mendes, Álvares — a family of surnames whose root is, at bottom, the name of a Gothic warrior.

In place-names

The same holds for the toponymy of the north-west. Many settlements preserve the name of their old Germanic owner, usually a villa designated by the proprietor’s genitive: Guimarães (from Vimaranes, from the name Vímara), Gondomar, Resende, Roriz, Baltar, Sendim. The density of such names in Portugal north of the Douro and in Galicia traces, on the map, the area of Suebic settlement.

What remained

Few Germanic words can be assigned with confidence to the Suebi. The most-cited case is laverca “lark” (from Germanic laiwerkô), a word that survives in Galician-Portuguese and is absent from the other Romance languages — a lone witness to a speech that otherwise fell silent. The core of the Germanic inheritance is thus a lexicon of war, a handful of suffixes, and, above all, the names by which the Portuguese still call themselves today.