26. Why are there so many words for Germany?
Description
This article is from the sci.lang FAQ, by Michael Covington (mcovingt@ai.uga.edu) and Mark Rosenfelder (markrose@zompist.com) with numerous contributions by others.
26. Why are there so many words for Germany?
[--markrose]
Basically, because there were Germans before there was a Germany. Each of
the Germans' neighbors came up with their own name for them, long before
there was a German state that people might want to refer to uniformly.
_German_ is a relatively recent borrowing from Latin _Germanus_, whose origins
are uncertain. It's been referred to Latin _germanus_ 'brotherly', Germanic
_*geromann-_ 'spear-man', Old Irish _gair_ 'neighbour', etc.
_Deutsch_ comes from Proto-Germanic _*theudisko-z_ 'of the people', from
_*theuda_ 'people, nation'; originally it was used to distinguish the speech
of the people from Latin, the language of scholarship. The English word
'Dutch' is a derivative, and used to be used for any northern Germanic
people, later narrowed down to those closest to England; the older usage is
preserved in 'Pennsylvania Dutch'.
The word *theuda survived into Middle English as _thede_, but was supplanted
by Romance borrowings such as 'people' and 'nation'. Non-Germanic cognates
include Oscan touto, Irish tu:ath, and Lithuanian tauta, all meaning 'people'.
Italian _tedesco_ is another derivative of *theudisko-z.
_Teutonic_ derives from a name of an ancient tribe in Jutland, the Teutones;
if these were a German tribe their name is presumably another derivative of
*theuda.
French _allemand_ (and Spanish _alema'n_, etc., as well as older English
_Almain_) derive from a particular tribe of Germans, the Alemanni ('all men').
Finnish _saksa_ derives from the name of another tribe, the Saxons.
Russian _nemets_ is related to _nemoj_ 'dumb, mute'; to the ancient Slavs, not
speaking in an understandable language was as good as not speaking at all.
Hungarian _nemet_ is borrowed from Slavic.
Latvian _Va:cija_ may derive from a word meaning 'west'.
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