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.