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  • Why are there So Many Different Names for Germany?

  • Germany. Allemagne. Tyskland. Saksa. Niemcy. Deutschland.

  • So many names for one country. So many names that are all so different from each other.

  • How did this happen? The first name for the region was Germania and was given by the Romans.

  • They named it after a fierce tribe they fought against near the Rhine river there called

  • the Germani.

  • The Romans managed to eventually conquer most of western Europe, but they never had control

  • over Germania. The Latin language spread through the Empire, but the tribes in Germania kept

  • on speaking in Germanic ways.

  • In the 5th century some of the Germanic tribes there went on the move, marching all over

  • Europe and playing a large role in the eventual fall of the Roman Empire. One of those tribes,

  • the Franks, ended up taking over Gallia, but the Roman language and culture there was very

  • well entrenched and the conquering Franks were absorbed into it. What started as Frankland

  • became Francia and eventually France.

  • There were various Germanic tribes next door to France in Germania, but the one they had

  • the most contact with, and the most battles with, were the nearby Alemanni. So the French

  • came to call the whole area over there Allemagne. Spain and Portugal followed suit.

  • Germany's own name for itself, Deutschland, came about around the 8th century. They didn't

  • see themselves as Germani or Alemani, but as just people. Their language wasn't Latin,

  • that churchy, scholarly one over there, but the regular one, the one "of the people."

  • They called it "thiudisc" which was the word for "of the people." Thiudisc became the word

  • Deutsch in German, Tysk in the Scandinavian languages, and Tedesco in Italian.

  • The Finns and Estonians, speaking a non-Germanic, totally different kind of language, took another

  • approach, calling the area after yet another Germanic tribe, the Saxons.

  • In English, thiudisc became Dutch, but we just used it for those Germanic speaking people

  • that were closest to us in the Netherlands.

  • Meanwhile, the Slavs to the east had their own idea about the differences between what

  • they spoke and their western neighbors did. They based their name for German on the word

  • for "mute" or "incomprehensible mutterin" Niem. In other words, Germans were those people

  • over there who don't speak right.

  • Calling foreigners people who can't talk right has a long history. The ancient Greeks used

  • the same approach when talking about tribes who did not speak like them. They called them

  • barbaros, from a word meaning "blah blah blah" and that's where we get the word barbarian.

  • Germanic people had their own word for foreigners, walhaz, which they applied to people who spoke

  • celtic languages, and is where the words Gaul and Welsh comes from.

  • Is that the origin of the words for Germany in Latvia and Lithuania? Do Vacija and Vokietija

  • come from an old word for incoherent babbling? Or maybe the name of an ancient Germanic tribe

  • they encountered? Nobody really knows. But it's not really a surprise that it's so different.

  • Germany, large and full of tribes, smack dab in the middle of everything, had to take on

  • names from all sides.

  • The current state of affairs leaves a whole history of neighborly,

  • and sometimes not so neighborly, interaction on display.

  • And that's the story of the many names of Germany.

  • Ach, sorry...Deutschland.

Why are there So Many Different Names for Germany?

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為什麼德國有這麼多不同的名字? (Why Are There So Many Different Names for Germany)

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    陳佳銳 發佈於 2021 年 01 月 14 日
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