What a disappointing article. All it answers is where the name Germany comes from and what it means (men of the forest or neighbors) and briefly touches on Alemania (without explaining its etymology), but has nothing to say about the origin or etymology of Tyskland, Niemcy, or Deutschland. Why even bother writing an article if you are just going to half-ass it?
>but has nothing to say about the origin or etymology of Tyskland, Niemcy
The Polish word Niemcy is peculiar: the word "Slavs" literally means "word people" while "Germans" literally means "mute/unintelligable people". I.e. the word originally meant something like "anyone we don't understand" (similar to the Greek word "barbarian" - someone who says bar-bar, some gibberish). Apparently, at some point the most common type of an unintelligable person you'd meet was someone from a Germanic tribe, so the word began to mean "Germanic". A few centuries ago the word still meant "Germanic" in Russian, people used it to refer to the Dutch and Swedes as well. I can guess Germans have been the most common type of a Germanic person in the last few centuries so the word's meaning was narrowed again and now exclusively means "German".
Tyskland and Deutschland stem from the same root teud- "people, folk", so it's literally "land of the people". Interestingly, the word was borrowed into Slavic and now means "foreigner, stranger" (Russian "chuzhoy", Czech "cizinec"). In Russian a derivation "chush" also means "gibberish" (we've come a full circle).
Same in south slavic languages... "nemci" can be almost literally translated to "mute people", and the country is called "nemačka", "njemačka" or "nemčija", all from the same root - "nem" = "mute"
And to add, in some south-slavic languages, German people are also sometimes colloquially called "švabe", based on the region of Germany called Swabia. This is a bit silly, like saying "Texans" for anyone from United States.
Amen. However people are always going to try and game systems so that they can get in a better position than their competitors. I see no way out sadly.
Feli from Germany actually covers this topic well, in her YouTube post at https://youtu.be/1Gyhu03qHTo -- as you would expect from someone who is German by birth, but speaks English very fluently and has lived in the US for years.
More broadly, what we call Germany (or India, or China, or Italy) today are recent fictions created from very places that were ethnically diverse, and whose constituent populations would have identified more by their tribe than by their "country". The variations in terminology is the vestige of that past.
> More broadly, what we call Germany (or India, or China, or Italy) today are recent fictions
I don't know about your other examples but the etymologic root of India is millinea old.
> that were ethnically diverse, and whose constituent populations would have identified more by their tribe than by their "country".
India was not politically united but ancient works like the Arthashastra make a distinction between Indian and foreign despite the diversity within India.
Greek city states frequently waged wars against each other but the Hellenes still saw themselves as distinct from barbarians.
If anything is a recent invention, it's the idea of a country as a nation state.
> For one thing, languages are inherently inconsistent, so perhaps the better question is, why not?
Exactly.
My point was simply that we call them "Tedeschi" in Italy because it come from an ancient latin word that means "people" or "peasant" and it came to latin from a German word that meant "shepard" (or sth like that)
But the land has always been called Germany.
We use different names for different things and that's OK.
The name "Italian" was referred to a small area in the south of Italy millennia ago and then became synonim for the entire peninsula.
Names often have no real meaning, but how they came to be can sometimes be interesting.
Holland is a region within the Netherlands. It is (was?) the most populous and economically productive region, so over time got used as a substitute for Netherlands.
"Dutch" is derived from a word that means "the people". As is the Deutsch in Deutschland (what Germans call their nation - land of the people, basically). At one time, there were high Dutch and low Dutch, describing people from hilly regions in (what is now) Germany and people from the low-lying area that is now the Netherlands.
Netherlands is just what it sounds like - the low lands. Apt, since so much of the country should be underwater.
I've heard that the term Pennsylvania Dutch actually comes from English-speakers mishearing/misunderstanding when the speakers refer to their own language "Deutsch".
I think @alistairSH and @socialdemocrat stated it best!
Also, I am an American and I used to work for a Dutch company (though i was based/worked out of the U.S. side)...and i will add that as many Dutch friends as i have, they all still dislike being wholesale referred to as "Hollanders" or living in the "country" of Holland. ...Which, i can not blame them for disliking of course. ;-) Also, when i speak English i refer to them as my *Dutch* buddies, but if i'm speaking in one of the Dutch dialects, then definitely use "Nederlanders". :-)
Holland: two provinces of The Netherlands. Dutch: the ethnicity. The word has the same origin as "Deutsch". The Netherlands: the european part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands.
Not convinced. Those UK regions are clearly defined current regions and used equally wrong in most languages. In the Germany case they are extinct people and different languages have picked different ones to name the current country. I would be surprised if any language named GB after Scotland or Wales.
Holland is a province of the Netherlands. Because it was the one most active in trade abroad people came to associate Dutch people with Holland.
“Dutch” however is some peculiar English thing. The Holland/Netherlands thing exist in manny countries but in my home country Norway we call them “nederlender” or “Hollender.” This is similar to what the Dutch call themselves.
No, Deutsch is related to the word Teuton through a common ancestor, but does not descend from it.
In the Middle Ages, the word "tiudisc" (later Deutsch and Dutch) was used to refer to the "common people" and their vernacular language, as opposed to clergy and Latin. "German language" is etymologically "language of the common people".
Fun, probably not fact, but at least rumour: the general Slavic term for Germans, nemez/niemec is related to the term for a mute person (that part is true, look it up), and that's because the Slavic tribes assumed that what the Germanic tribes they had interactions with were speaking wasn't an actual language, or at least unintelligible.
Readit News
The Polish word Niemcy is peculiar: the word "Slavs" literally means "word people" while "Germans" literally means "mute/unintelligable people". I.e. the word originally meant something like "anyone we don't understand" (similar to the Greek word "barbarian" - someone who says bar-bar, some gibberish). Apparently, at some point the most common type of an unintelligable person you'd meet was someone from a Germanic tribe, so the word began to mean "Germanic". A few centuries ago the word still meant "Germanic" in Russian, people used it to refer to the Dutch and Swedes as well. I can guess Germans have been the most common type of a Germanic person in the last few centuries so the word's meaning was narrowed again and now exclusively means "German".
Tyskland and Deutschland stem from the same root teud- "people, folk", so it's literally "land of the people". Interestingly, the word was borrowed into Slavic and now means "foreigner, stranger" (Russian "chuzhoy", Czech "cizinec"). In Russian a derivation "chush" also means "gibberish" (we've come a full circle).
Btw. most of the Slavs are in for big surprise where comes English word "slave" from.
It turns out xenonym is a synonym of exonym.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/xenonym
Deleted Comment
This was the old Slavic distinction between people who they could understand, and people who they couldn't.
More specifically, Julius Caesar popularized the use of "Germania" for lands north of the Rhine.
And Tedeschi is probably from Latin "theodiscus", itself distantly probably related to Deutsch:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodiscus
More broadly, what we call Germany (or India, or China, or Italy) today are recent fictions created from very places that were ethnically diverse, and whose constituent populations would have identified more by their tribe than by their "country". The variations in terminology is the vestige of that past.
I don't know about your other examples but the etymologic root of India is millinea old.
> that were ethnically diverse, and whose constituent populations would have identified more by their tribe than by their "country".
India was not politically united but ancient works like the Arthashastra make a distinction between Indian and foreign despite the diversity within India.
Greek city states frequently waged wars against each other but the Hellenes still saw themselves as distinct from barbarians.
If anything is a recent invention, it's the idea of a country as a nation state.
Exactly.
My point was simply that we call them "Tedeschi" in Italy because it come from an ancient latin word that means "people" or "peasant" and it came to latin from a German word that meant "shepard" (or sth like that)
But the land has always been called Germany.
We use different names for different things and that's OK.
The name "Italian" was referred to a small area in the south of Italy millennia ago and then became synonim for the entire peninsula.
Names often have no real meaning, but how they came to be can sometimes be interesting.
"Dutch" is derived from a word that means "the people". As is the Deutsch in Deutschland (what Germans call their nation - land of the people, basically). At one time, there were high Dutch and low Dutch, describing people from hilly regions in (what is now) Germany and people from the low-lying area that is now the Netherlands.
Netherlands is just what it sounds like - the low lands. Apt, since so much of the country should be underwater.
Netherlands = Nederlande = "low lands", encompasses the land which is devoid of mountains
Dutch = same origin as Deutsch (like Pennsylvania Dutch, which is closer to German than Dutch)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eE_IUPInEuc
Deleted Comment
“Dutch” however is some peculiar English thing. The Holland/Netherlands thing exist in manny countries but in my home country Norway we call them “nederlender” or “Hollender.” This is similar to what the Dutch call themselves.
And actually France seems to be derived from the same word in all languages I can think of: France, Frankreich, Frankrike, Ranska, Franca.
https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/deutsch#German
In the Middle Ages, the word "tiudisc" (later Deutsch and Dutch) was used to refer to the "common people" and their vernacular language, as opposed to clergy and Latin. "German language" is etymologically "language of the common people".