German Language Stack Exchange is a bilingual question and answer site for speakers of all levels who want to share and increase their knowledge of the German language. It's 100% free, no registration required.
Sign up to join this community
Excuse me if this is off-topic.
When I'm learning other languages, I usually (99% of the time) find that "England" is either the same or very similar in the other language. However, I know at least five different names now for Germany in the other languages that I know... Deutschland (German), Germany (English), Tyskland (Swedish), Allemagne (French), Niemcy (Poland), Saksa (Finnish). I was wondering if there was some particular reason why this is so.
There were different Germanic tribes and thus the people living in the Germanic territory were called differently by the peoples around them.
In English it was chosen the overall expression for all Germanic tribes: German. In French and Spanish the "Alemannen" a south western tribe (and therefore locally closer to France and Spain) seemed to have left an impression: allemand, alemán.
For me, Saksa seems to follow the same pattern: the "Saxons" where the tribe in the North East, and therefore close to Finland.
The words deutsch, tedesco (ital.) and I suppose Tyskland as well derive from the Old High German word diutisc, "belonging to the people/of the people".
An addition: "deutsch" derives from the Proto-Germanic stem *þeodisk- ('*' indicates reconstruction), meaning "of the people" or "popular". It invaded (Late?) Latin via some Germanic dialect as "theodiscus" and was used in legal documents to refer to regional languages in contrast to Latin. At that time its use wasn't restricted to the languages of Germanic tribes nor the ones in modern Germany, Austria, etc.. It was instead used to refer to all popular languages.
The first attested usage of "deutsch" (or rather "diutisc") is from a Middle High German poem called "Annolied" composed in the late 11th century. Here, "diutisc" is used as an umbrella term for Franconians, Saxons and Bavarians.
The words related to Niemcy in the Slavonic languages mean something like "mute", nie meaning "not" and m being a root for "to speak", like mówić in Polish for example. This is due to the fact that Slavonic languages are on a basic level mutually understandable, so the Polish tribes could talk to all their neighbours which were other Slavonic tribes, except the Germans.
Germany is a central European country. Because of that fact, it attracts attention from widely disparate countries on all sides.This reminds me of the story of the six blind men and the elephant, where each blind man grabbed a different part of the animal, and therefore had a different view.
I consider the Swedish "Tyskland" a variation of "Deutschland," after allowing for the differences in language. The word Deutschland itself seems to resemble "Dutch," and may be a reference to the North Sea area. That's particularly true in USA, where "Dutch" often refers to "German," as opposed to "Netherlands."
Germany seems to stem from the Roman Germania, specifically a reference to the east bank of the Rhine. Allemagne also probably originated in Roman times, and was, I believe, a Gallic (French) reference.
The Finnish Saksa seems to be a reference to Saxons, a particular Group of Germans that the Finns may have come into contact with.
Niemcy in Polish seems to be derived from "Nie" (not) something, apparently the way the Poles felt about the Germans.
slavonic "Niemcy" (read: n-yem-tsi|) derives form "niemy" or "niemowa" (nie = no, mowa = speech) - due to the reason they were the only relevant neighbor (form poinf of viev of early middle ages slavic tribes) which whom they couldn't talk to. The opposite term for that is the word "a slav" itself - slovianin - from word "slovo" - "a word" - due to the fact each slavic languages are fair enough to say mutually understandable to some degree
In addition to what others already said, you may expect this to be a common situation, actually. A nation's neighbors often call it by the closes tribe to each particular neighbor. The problem here is that nations often expand and conquer each other, so the fact that Germany has so many names just mean that they were unable to conquer/eliminate their neighboring nations (which happen to be relatively powerful, as we know now). Or, as others said, they appeared pretty lately and faced strong competitors around them.
If you look closely, you will see that smaller countries/nations surrounding some big one often give that big one different names. Being Russian I can give my homeland as an example. In most countries, its names are similar: Russia, Ryssland, Russie, etc. But if you look to our smaller neighbors, you'll see Finish Venäjä and Estonian Venemaa (both named after Slavonic tribe of Viatichi), Latvian Krievija (after the tribe Krivichs or Krivichi). Smaller ethic groups in Russia can present even more names, for example Udmurts call Russian "Dzhootch" (I've no idea where could this name came from. After the tribe Drevliane? Not sure.).
According to a comment at https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/29028/why-are-germans-referred-to-so-differently-in-different-languages
"The Koreans ended up with dogil because it's the Sino-Korean reading of the Japanese 独逸/ ドイツ doitsu, which is more clearly a loan of Deutsch."
Germany itself had many names in its history and its own language.
Additional to that, "Dutch" was already given to the language spoken in the Netherlands in 16th and 17th centuries (In both Belgium and the Netherlands, the native official name for Dutch is Nederlands). It first described people speaking the language used in the vague region somewhere in between the Netherlands and Germany when people came from the Netherlands to America. All these settlers influenced the development of the dutch language and the two languages happened to have less in common. So for German they had to use another term to differentiate it from Dutch.
I think the answer can be given very briefly:
As initially there was no such thing as "the Germans" but the area was inhabited by various tribes with different names, and their respective neighbours used either those names or names they made up for them (as the Slavonic "nemec" for "not speaking", meaning: "not speaking our language"), and a nation state comprising most of them was created late, it is quite logical that there are different names around.
This is not only Germany which is called by different names. I can tell you many more countries/regions which are called with different names.
1. Iran is also called Persia, Arya, Iranshahr,Iranzamin and Aryānām.
2. India is also called, Bharat, Hindustan,Nabhivarsha,Tianzhu,Al-Hind, Hidush etc
3. Turkey is also called Ottoman Empire, Turquie,Turchia,Turkye,and Torke.
This question is regarding the evolution of country names. In different parts of the world names could be different for the same country. Therefore multiple naming of a country should not be confused with other things.
