Question about a Roman name

[Robert Vermaat]

The writer of HA includes the "double entendre" that anyone named Geticus (incidentally, this is not a name that Caracalla took) could be "conqueror of the Getae" or "killer of Geta".
I am still not convinced that this event caused the Getae to be re-named as Gothi. (I am not even sure that they are the same ethnic people

me neither. We're talking about one Emperor versus a name for a people or a group of tribes which was around for a very long time. And while any law from Caracalla would resort to some effect, this would cease as soon as he died. Widespread names such as 'Getae' do not change overnight, and as I mentioned earlier, Caracalla's writ did not run outside the Empire, where this new culture was forming.
Razvan, I know that you're still looking for a direct link between Dacians and Goths (which we very thouroughly discussed elsewhere in this forum), but I think that when you're looking for the origins of the name 'Goth', you'd need to look at why this group (or domination sub-group) chose this name. I daresay it's quite far-fetched to assume that a non-Roman culture changed it's name on the orders of a far-off Roman Emperor. Don't forget that it was not just the Romans who called the 'Goths', but they also used that name themselves.