Looking at this map of names for Germany we can see the English take the Italian/Roman name Germania as the base for their word 'Germany' which is a little odd since English largely derives from Germanic languages.
But the French, Spanish, and Portuguese came to name the land Allemagne, Alemana, and Alemanha taking the name from the Alemanni tribe. In Britain, this continues in Cornish (Almayn) and Welsh (Yr Almaen).
But, Outside of Germany and the Netherlands no one seems to use Deutschland or it's derivatives.
So why doesn't English go down the Germanic route of calling it Deutschland and the Latin languages calling it Germany? It seems the wrong way round to me.
We all have names for places that usually different that the name of the place that the people living there call it (that's called an endonym). The name used for the place that is used by the people not living there is called an exonym.
This comes from Wikipedia which uses Germany as an example.
An exonym is a name of a person, a people group, language, or place used by people of other places and languages. An endonym is a name that people of a certain place and language call themselves. For example, the endonym of Germany is Deutschland, because that is what Germans call their country. Germans call themselves and their language Deutsch. Germany and German are its exonym because English speakers, who are not German, use those names to describe it.
There are some interesting exonym / endonym pairs.
''We'' once kicked out the Romans permanently (similar to the Scottish) where our cousins in the South didn't manage to.
And I somewhat refuse to fully see i. e. Bavarians as equal Germans :D... they are something different to me - using a language version that's related to ''real German'' , but being some kind of neighbouring hill-tribe :D
''Deutschland'' actually is a construction of a range of regions that historically share a language root - but not necessarily the culture. Much of what we see nowadays is (was) influenced by Prussia... which again isn't (wasn't) the entire German speaking culture/area.
To make it easier for the surrounding world I tolerate a simplifying and categorizing term for ''us''. It would not matter to them (or to me/''us'')
World: call me as you want... it will not change the way I perceive myself.
One other practical reason: to correctly pronounce 'doitsh-lund' it requires some language skills. And especially our estranged relatives from over the ocean will struggle 'tremendously' here.
I really don't know, but maybe because the name "Germany" is from Latin origin. I know that in Spanish "Alemania" is Germany, and that name looks like it stems from people who speak one of the Romance languages. English may be a Germanic language, but the Anglo Saxons also contributed to much of English words used today. Many English words and spellings come from Greek and Latin words (or roots). Examples are the words philosophy, (philos=Greek prefix), spectacles (spect= Latin root meaning to see), disrupt (rupt= to break through) and marina (mar in Spanish, or the Latin, mare). And then we have lots of borrowed words from Native American Indians such as moccasin, or toboggan, totem and tomahawk.
I guess because germanic tribes coming from Europe the saxons, angles and jutes took over most then roman Briton excluding Wales to form Wessex, east Anglia and Mercia when the Roman Empire pulled out, they spoke germanic languages and later the Norwegians and Danes came followed by the Norman's from france.
Latin survived in France, Spain, Italy, Spain, Portugal (romans languages) but it blended with the language of the germanics who invade. Even in Italy they speak Italian not Latin because Italy was largely taken over the by the lombards when the western Roman empire finally collapsed. Franks took over france, goths and vandals in Spain etc. If not for the Catholic Church and Latin being used as a universal language in Europe Latin would have disappeared.
Little know fact but early Norman kings of England spoke French not Norman and thought of frsnce as their homeland.
This happens to a lot of places and inhabitants. Take the Indians or "Native Americans" for instance. Columbus encountered land with around two million inhabitants that was previously unknown to Europeans. He thought he had found a new route to the East, in his quest to get to India via a new route, so he mistakenly called these people "Indians".
The term “Native American” was made up by well-meaning white people and applied to the US indigenous as a whole. But the indigenous don’t see themselves as one people. They see themselves as members of close to 600 different tribes and nations, speaking close to 200 separate languages.
Some of the endonyms and exonyms can be explained by historical events, early map making, misconceptions of how our planet looked like, or simply mistakes at calculating accurate distances over the enormous ocean surfaces.
I've wondered this too. They call themselves Deutchland but for some reason we just call them Germany. They Deutsch according to them and we just call them something different.
I've ran into this before though living in Japan. We call it Japan and they call it Nippon. Their word has meaning, but we just call it Japan.
It doesn't stop me from wanting to impregnate them and wear a baby sock to catch the leftovers.
This actually happens with a lot of countries. For example, while it is called "Japan" in English, it is called "Nihon" in the actual country. Why is it that way? Maybe the English explorers found it hard to pronounce? Maybe they misunderstood when natives told them the name of their home? Maybe they just didn't care and called it whatever they could remember? Whatever the case, we continue calling them by these English names because it's been used for so long, it would be strange to change it at this point.
The English used to use the Almain or "Alman, then with written English or printed English becoming more common, we switched to German. The word Deutsch was mainly used by the peoples that identified as Germans. Until 1848 etc there was no Germany. We also used to call them Teutons and Saxons (a level of irony there).
I worked with a lot of Germans in my career. I can still hear them say “Jerrrmannnée”. Maybe we should say it the way they do in English. They never said Deutschland when we spoke English. They were global companies so I doubt they said it much at all.
Please, no more German Works Councils F-ing up my deals. In our contracts we stipulated using “American English”, hehe. That was for India mainly, none of that proper English nonsense. And in India Mumbai is the new name but the locals all say Bombay. They saw it as a political change. In Ho Chi Minh City, it is only referred to as Saigon unless a government official joins the meeting at that only happened once. Habits are hard to break.
Deutschland is derived from the Old High German words diot and diutisc, which mean "people" and "of the people" respectively. Deutschland literally translates to "people's land" or "land of the people".
It probably goes back to the map makers in the 14th and 15th centuries, who used Latin names for places and things, Mare for sea, for example. As the post says, Romans called the area Germania in their Latin language.
Julius Caesar refereed to them as the germ anus tribes because Nazi butt holes really stink. They were just rocketing Yoo-Hoo out their ass spreading e. coli everywhere. germanus tribes lived in germania.
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Anonymous
(18-24)
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Because Deutschland is what the Germans called themselves. Deutsch is similar to Dutch because the Dutch used to be a German state too like Austria or Bavaria is, but the protestant / catholic war divided them, and they were never part of the German empire, I don't think.
due to the Roman influence on English, we call them Germans. German means something like Genuine. "Frankly" today comes from the Frank/German tribe and it essentially means "Genuinely"
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Opinion Owner
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correction: Germania appears to come from the word Germanus which meant "sibling". I'd say probably referring to Germans as siblings to the Gauls.
@Tarifa Yeah, the first time I heard that germans were naming us french as located in Frankreich it had me wonder about the whole Franks thing in History 😅
It's all a matter of history, going back to about the year 800. Charlemagne was King of the Franks from 768, King of the Lombards from 774 and Emperor of what is known as the Carolingian Empire from 800. He united most of Western and Central Europe, and was the first recognised emperor to rule in the west after the fall of the Western Roman Empire approximately three centuries earlier.
At his death in 814, he was succeeded by his only surviving legitimate son, Louis the Pious. After Louis, the Frankish kingdom was divided into West and East Francia, which later became France and Germany.
@Tarifa Considering these informations, it enforces my questioning about how everything dislocated through time, about how ethnicity has been shaped, about the Franks but not only, it's a whole sentiment at this point
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