Abstract:
The paper focuses on the name of the barbarian warlord that appears in the
Slavic and (recently discovered) Armenian versions of the Life of St. Stephen of
Sougdaia as Бравлинъ and Պրաւլիս /Praulis/, respectively. These forms seem to
point to Πραῦλις or Μπραῦλις in the lost Greek Vorlage. None of the previous
a empts at constructing an etymology of the name—Slavic бран(ъ)ливъ (Rus sian
copies of the Life), Swedish Bråvalla (G. Vernadsky, N. Belyaev, and O. Pri tsak),
Indo-Aryan *pravlīn(а)- (O. Trubachev), Spanish Braulio (V. Vasilievsky), or Gothic
*Bra(h)vila (N. Ganina)—may be considered satisfactory. Having re visited the histo
rical and linguistic arguments, we suggest that the name given to the bar ba rian
prince humbled by the miracle of St. Stephen in the Greek text of the Life re presented,
in fact, good Greek: Πραΰλιος or Πραῦλις (from πραΰς ‘mild, humble’);
fur ther more, we suggest that the positional voicing of Π- > Μπ- [b] in Late Middle
Greek might account for the initial Б- / Պ- (West Armenian [b]) of the a ested forms.
