It is linguistically possible that "viking" was simply a self-referential ethnonym, with the first part meaning "home" or "village".

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-Eur...

Compare Ancient Greek [w]oikos, and all the various ves, vas, wieś, which can be found all over Eastern Europe.

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bazoom42 25 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

Do we have any historical source of people referring to themselves as vikings?

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theMMaI 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The first part of the word viking, or vik simply means "bay" in nordic languages

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acadapter 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Yes, but similarity alone is not a guarantee that words are related. The words val and [h]val are not related in Swedish, even though they ended up with the same pronunciation and spelling in the modern language. Sometimes, words can end up as "fossil words" because the main usage of the word was lost.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fossil_word

This can also happen to word roots. Because this is about a historical word, it's interesting to look at the broader Indo-European language tree for clues about the original meaning.

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BurningFrog 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

The even firster part "vi" means "we" though.

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DrewADesign 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

And vi was an outgrowth of ex, which was an improved version of ed, which in my experience, roughly translates to ‘ugh’.

	▲	BurningFrog 21 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		In old Norway, the best vi hacker was crowned as vi king every midsummer.
	▲	BobBagwill 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Argghhh! When all ye got is a 300 Baud connection and a ASR-33, then ye be thanking your lucky stars for ed! And pray that the ribbon ain't worn out, and that the paper tape don't jam! A pox o' chads on your house, ya mewlin' landlubber!

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runarberg 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I don’t think -kingur is a suffix in old norse. It is not a suffix in modern Icelandic, and I can’t think of any suffix like that.

In fact I don‘t remember a suffix which attaches to a pronoun. In modern Icelandic at least we like to introduce more pronouns or conjugate them rather then to suffix or prefix them.

If the word was broken as vi-kingur, I think the modern Icelandic would be við-kingur (or við-lingur), which is simply not a word in the language.

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b3nt-fiber 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

webay hmm. they started a trend

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runarberg 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I don’t speak old norse but I speak Icelandic natively. Víkingur simply means Bay-er, that is somebody from a bay. As an Icelander living in America I experience the English word “viking” as an Exonym for my identity. In Iceland we use “Nordic” or “Scandinavian”, both terms are inclusive of Finns, Sámi, and Greenlanders, so strictly speaking this is not an Enthnonym.

In Icelandic, at least to my knowledge, we have never used Víkingur as an ethnonym (well maybe during a sports game, or among right-wing nationalists). It has always meant raiders. In 2007 there was even a new word dubbed Útrásarvíkingar meaning businessmen who made a bunch of money doing business abroad (buykings would a clever translation of the term).

EDIT: I just remembered that the -ingur suffix can also be used to indicate a temporary state e.g. ruglingur (confusion) and troðningur (trampling [n.]), and was used as such e.g. að fara í víking (to embark to a viking) so víkingur could also mean, a person that embarks to a bay.