Rodens äldre namn kunde betyda en rote. Sägs att roden hade militäriskt skeppslagen då rote kunde passa mycket bra för att tolka områdets namn.
Här finns svenska text om svenska regementen och där kan man hitta ordet vargeringsbataljon där första delen är vargering och vi har ju vaeringar och variager. Är vargering samma som vaering?
Jag lånar Håkon Stangs The Naming of Russia:
"1. It is inexplicable why the Slavs, knowing the two Norse self-appellations Svei and Varangians (sic) should take recourse to the Baltic Finns in order to seek out an additional name, unknown to Slavs and Scandinavians alike, not once met with in all of ancient Scandinavian literature.
2. If such really be the case, why did the Slavs have to seek this name among the farthest-off of all Balto-Fennic peoples, namely the Suomi and Hämä Finns?
3. Did not the Finns know about the existence of Swedes, under this or that name, long before the reputed expedition to and subjection of the Slavs by these Swedes in the mid-9th century?
4. The consonant -ts- in the word ruotsi does not correspond to the Eastern Sla- vonic, ancient Russian sound -s ́. (Although the apparently parallel change from Veps ́ into Ves ́ should be taken into account.)
5. It cannot be proven that the Finnish word ruotsi derives from the ancient Swed- ish tongue.
Conceding the three first points without reservation, we inspect the two latter ones. According to another Russian specialist,4 the Finnish sound -ts- had to result in an Old Russian -ts- or -c-. According to a third,5 the Old Russian -ts- was a pala- talized sound, not corresponding to the Finnish -ts-, whereby the latter would most likely be rendered by a (palatalized) s ́ in Russian. This remains a moot point, and the position held by this latter researcher is far from universally accepted.
The connection between Balto-Fennic ruotsi (etc.) and Roåen, Roåslagen, first suggested by Bureus, is even more problematic, having been subjected to devastating criticism on the part of Scandinavian philologists of a Normanist persuasion. The nickname Rospiggar, preserved until our days within the area of the one-time Rosla- gen military call-up, as well as Roslep, Rosta and the likes in Esthonia, are not deriv- atives of the form *rother ‘rowing, shipping’ as suggested,1 since the composite with the genitive case is not roth(er)s-byggiar but rothar-byggiar; which is commensurate with neither the Swedish names in question nor with the Finnish ruotsi.2
Instead of the impossible form *róther, another suggestion has been a word in the nominative case, *rothra, with the same meaning, which purportedly would give rise to a genitive form rots-.3 This proposition was however subjected to harsh criticism on a number of scores, a new proposal being *rothr ‘a vessel for rowing’ in the lei- dang.4 In turn, this construction was proved to be wholly unfounded.5 Finally, there was an effort at returning to the form *róther, but then presupposing some follow-up word beginning with an -s, such as *Róth-swear ‘rower-Swedes’; the suggestion be- ing that the Finns formed ruotsi from the first syllable plus the initial s- of the sub- sequent one, jettisoning the remainder of the latter!6
All the forms suggested by these philologists, including the last one, remain purely hypothetical, wholly unproven, each one of them giving rise to grave objections. Consequently, at the University of Oslo, one specialist, having worked long on this problem in an as yet unpublished ms., ended up by concluding that *rötsi is not to be derived from Swedish lexicology.7"
