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Why do we call Deutschland Germany? (2020)
- ZYinMD 4y agoI've always been confused about Holland, Netherlands, and Dutch.
- PierreProstata 4y agoHolland = Holtland = "wood land", is a/the main region in the Netherlands 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)
- rvense 4y agoI've heard that the term Pennsylvania Dutch actually comes from English-speakers mishearing/misunderstanding when the speakers refer to their own language "Deutsch".
- socialdemocrat 4y agoHolland 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.
- irrational 4y agohttps://www.etymonline.com/word/dutch https://www.etymonline.com/word/dutch
- alistairSH 4y agoHolland 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.
- wholien 4y agoYou see "nether-" in other words too, like "netherworld" or "nether regions", which both mean low/lowest parts of a place.
- zokier 4y agoIsn't that bit of England/GB/UK situation?
- usr1106 4y agoNot 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.
- the_af 4y agoI'm tempted to quote George Mikes, author of "How to be an alien": > "When people say England, they sometimes mean Great Britain, sometimes the United Kingdom, sometimes the British Isles - but never England"
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- samus 4y agoHolland: 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.
- mxuribe 4y agoI 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". :-)
- tchalla 4y agoI think this video should be sufficient to explain the difference. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eE_IUPInEuc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eE_IUPInEuc
- naoqj 4y agoI find this one to be better: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fL4QfvIrUf4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fL4QfvIrUf4
- Freak_NL 4y agoIf we're going for comedic references, this clip wins my Dutch vote: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5sC6j8gH_4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5sC6j8gH_4 (Michael Troughton playing the naive politician making an ultimatum to then-queen Beatrix of the Netherlands over the phone, and of course the brilliant Rik Mayall)
- irrational 4y agoWhat 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?
- bombcar 4y agoBecause SEO is a cancer.
- boringg 4y agoAmen. 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.
- mlinksva 4y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_of_Germany https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_of_Germany seems better :)
- tuukkah 4y agoYeah, we don't call it Germany, we call it Saksa :-) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_of_Germany#Names_from_Saxon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_of_Germany#Names_from_Sa...
- tzot 4y agoAnother disappointment is giving the definitions of “endonym” and “exonym” and then using them incorrectly in the same paragraph.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- mkrecny 4y ago
- zokier 4y agoThe article gives explanation of Germani and Alemanni, but not for Deutsch/Duits/Tysk; why don't germans call themselves germani or alemanni?
- danans 4y agoDeutsch/Duits/Tysk all come from the name of yet another ancient Germanic tribe, the Teutons.
- CorrectHorseBat 4y agoNo it doesn't https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/deutsch#German https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/deutsch#German
- danans 4y agoBoth the name of the tribe and the ethnonym derive from the same PIE and proto Germanic root meaning something like "the people". They are closer to each other etymologically than any other words for "German".
- CorrectHorseBat 4y agoWhich is quite a different thing than what you said before. Just like one day I might be genetically closer to my brother than anyone else alive in the world, but he still wouldn't be my father.
- danans 4y agoI don't disagree with that - my wording was sloppy - but also consider that words aren't like genes. Horizontal phonetic transfer and phonetic reevaluation via processes like folk etymology are pervasive today and were also in the ancient past.
- zokier 4y agoOh, there is whole wikipedia article about this topic (of course..) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodiscus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodiscus > While morphologically similar, the Latin root Teutonic for "Germanic" is more distantly related, and originally a name of a Celtic or Germanic tribe that inhabited coastal Germany. It came probably via Celtic from Proto-Germanic þeudanaz ("ruler", "leader of the people"), from þeudō ("people, tribe"), from Proto-Indo-European *tewtéh₂ ("people", "tribe").
- peoplefromibiza 4y agoAnd why do we call Germany "Germania" in Italy, but the Germans "Tedeschi"?
- danans 4y agoFor one thing, languages are inherently inconsistent, so perhaps the better question is, why not? 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 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.
- unmole 4y ago> 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.
- danans 4y ago> If anything is a recent invention, it's the idea of a country as a nation state. When we use the bare word "India" in the English language today, it refers to the modern country as a nation state, and not to its etymological origin as the Hellenized Persian word for the peoples and lands to the southeast of the Sindhu (Indus) river. The great empires of subcontinental history wouldn't have called themselves India, but rather used their own names like "Magadha" or "Chola". Even the standard name for modern India used in much of the northern part of the country, "Bharat" is itself a reference to a ancient tribe of the Gangetic plain region, and not something that historically reflected the subcontinent as a whole, much like the situation with names used for Germany. When we refer to the subcontinent in other time periods, (i.e. the time of the Arthashastra), we qualify it with that time period, like , "Prehistoric India", "Vedic India", "Classical India" "Medieval India", etc. That's nothing specific to India either, we do that for all parts of the world.
- marcodiego 4y agoIn Portuguese, Germany is called "Alemanha". And "germanada" means "set of siblings". I always thought "german(y)" and "germanada" had the same root.
- usr1106 4y agoI'd say France is even weirder. Called after the Franks, a Germanic people. The French consider themselves Gaullic but they call themselves Germanic:) And actually France seems to be derived from the same word in all languages I can think of: France, Frankreich, Frankrike, Ranska, Franca.
- t_mann 4y agoFun, 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.
- hackerbeat 4y agoAlso interesting: Japan vs. Nippon.