Reconstruction talk:Proto-Germanic/Batawiniz

RFD discussion: November 2022–January 2023
Proto-Germanic. Reconstruction based on single descendant. — Mnemosientje (t · c) 12:58, 16 November 2022 (UTC)
 * "good friend" sounds like a reasonable name, and has been reconstructed from multiple languages. i don't think that this is all that unlikely. however i'm not an expert 193.65.89.254 06:35, 17 November 2022 (UTC)
 * Hey, thanks for your reply. You are not wrong, it could absolutely have existed in Proto-Germanic, but for lack of further cognates there is no evidence that the name really did exist in Proto-Germanic as opposed to being an East-Germanic or specifically Gothic formation. In these cases we by convention err on the side of caution and do not create a proto-entry when there is only a single descendant. If there were other indicators that the name is older than its Gothic attestation such as, say, the existence of a cognate in another branch of Germanic (e.g. an Old English or Old Norse name which shows signs of inheritance rather than borrowing), the situation would be different and a Proto-Germanic shared origin would be very likely, but alas there does not seem to be.
 * I will note that the presence of *wins in the second part of the Gothic compound is interesting in that it is not otherwise found in the Gothic corpus outside of (Latinized) given names, which would in some cases indicate that the name is inherited (inherited compounds sometimes contain archaic/vestigial elements which as simplex do not occur or even are no longer understood in a given language, barring the possibility of new formations with that word except perhaps through analogy). But given the limited corpus of Gothic this is not as strong an argument as it would be for better-attested languages. The word may well have existed as simplex in Gothic without being attested in the very limited corpus. So this still does not seem like strong grounds for inclusion to me. — Mnemosientje (t · c) 08:53, 17 November 2022 (UTC)
 * Speedy delete. IP, if you're not an expert don't create reconstructions. --Skiulinamo (talk) 06:39, 17 November 2022 (UTC)
 * Delete, no grounds for a reconstruction. Thadh (talk) 11:27, 12 December 2022 (UTC)
 * RFD deleted. — Mnemosientje (t · c) 15:06, 24 January 2023 (UTC)