5 ms·

And why do we call Germany "Germania" in Italy, but the Germans "Tedeschi"?

danans 5y ago
For 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 5y 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 5y 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.
- peoplefromibiza 5y ago
  > 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.
gpderetta 5y ago
And of course "teutonico" is a common adjective for German (alongside "Tedesco").

For 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 5y 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 5y 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.
peoplefromibiza 5y ago
> 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.

gpderetta 5y ago

And of course "teutonico" is a common adjective for German (alongside "Tedesco").