Lineage:Baux
The Balt(h)i dynasty, Baltungs, Balthings, or Balth(e)s, existed among the Visigoths, a Germanic tribe who confronted the Western Roman Empire in its declining years. The Balti took their name from the Gothic word balþa (baltha; bald or bold). It thus meant "the Bold ones" or "Bold men".
Edward Gibbon in footnote 4, Chapter 30, of the History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, adds:
This illustrious race long continued to flourish in France, in the Gothic province of Septimania, or Languedoc; under the corrupted appellation of Boax; and a branch of that family afterwards settled in the kingdom of Naples (Grotius in Prolegom. ad Hist. Gothic. p. 53). The lords of Baux, near Arles, and of seventy-nine subordinate places, were independent of the counts of Provence, (Longuerue, Description de la France, tom. i. p. 357).
Almoustine 23:40, 28 February 2009 (EET)
