Nor is the interest of this kind of comparison less great very often in the case of proper names. The smaller family--or, as we have used the word family to express a large class of languages, let us say the branch to which English and German belong--is called the Teutonic branch. To that branch belonged nearly all those barbarian nations who, towards the fall of the Roman empire, began the invasion of her territories, and ended by carving out of them most of the various states and kingdoms of modern Europe. The best test we have of the nationalities of these peoples, the best proof that they were connected by language with each other and with the modern Teutonic nations, is to be found in their proper names. We have, for instance, among the Vandals such names as Hilderic, Genseric, and the like; we compare them at once with Theodoric and Alaric, which were names of famous Goths. Then as the Gothic language has been preserved we recognize the termination _rîk_ or _rîks_ in Gothic, meaning a ‘king,’ and connected with the German _reich_, and also with the Latin _rex_--Alaric becomes _al-rik_, ‘all-king,’ universal king. In Theodoric we recognize the Gothic _thiudarik_, ‘king of the people.’ Again, this Gothic word _thiuda_ is really the same as the German _deutsch_, or as ‘Dutch,’ and is the word of which ‘Teutonic’ is only a Latinized form. In the same way Hilda-rik in Gothic is ‘king of battles;’ and having got this word from the Vandals we have not much difficulty in recognizing Childeric, the usually written form of the name of a Frankish king, as the same word. This change teaches us to turn ‘CH’ of Frankish names in our history-books into ‘H,’ so that instead of Chlovis (which should be Chlodoveus) we first get Hlovis, which is only a softened form of Hlodovig, or Hludwig, the modern Ludwig, our Louis. _Hlud_ is known to have meant ‘famous’[28] and _wig_ a ‘warrior,’ so that Ludwig means famous warrior. The same word ‘wig’ seems to appear in the word Merovingian, a Latinized form of Meer-wig,[29] which would mean sea-warrior.
These instances show us the _kind_ of results we obtain by a comparison of languages. In the case of these names, for instance, we have got enough to show a very close relationship amongst the Vandals, the Goths, and the Franks; and had we time many more instances might have been chosen to support this conclusion. Here, of course, we have been confining ourselves to one small _branch_ of a large family. The road, the farther we go, is beset with greater difficulties and dangers of mistake, and the student can do little unless he is guided by fixed rules, which we should have to follow, supposing we were able to carry on our inquiries into many and distant languages. We may, to some extent, judge for ourselves what some of these guiding rules must be.