this post was submitted on 14 Aug 2024
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[–] bolditalicroman 224 points 4 months ago (8 children)

For anyone wondering, Deutschland, Duitsland and Tyskland all have the same latin root "theodiscus" that became "deutsch". "Allemagne" derives from a germanic tribe, the "Alemanni" who lived in modern day Germany and bordered modern day france. Niemcy and Nemetorszag both stem from old slavic "nem" (or something similar) meaning "mute". They called the Germanic tribes they interacted with mute because they couldn't understand them. "Saksa" is derived from the German region "Saxony".

Please correct me in case i got something wrong.

[–] [email protected] 56 points 4 months ago (5 children)

The Latin root theodiscus is actually just the latinised form of the Old High German thiutisk from Indo-European teuta and means "people". Similarly, Alemanni means "all men". The Saxons were named after their typical sword or fighting knive, the Seax or Sax. It's still discussed where the term "German" originates from.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 4 months ago (1 children)

The Saxons were named after their typical sword or fighting knive, the Seax or Sax.

There's also a possibility the name is related to "settling", and the knife then probably named after the tribe.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 4 months ago (1 children)

That's a common misconception, they are actually named after the famous jazz instrument the saxophone.

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[–] [email protected] 36 points 4 months ago

For good measure, in Arabic, Niemcy (actually “Namsa”) is what we call Austria. Germany is “Almania”, same as in French.

Of course, we have as many curveballs as you could want for European place names. Like Venice. Somehow we ended up with “Al Bunduqiya” for Venice. Have fun with that one.

[–] modeler 21 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Just to add one more sidenote: France is of course named after the Franks, a German people who lived next door to the Alemanni and the Saxons.

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[–] then_three_more 18 points 4 months ago (2 children)

Any idea about how English came to call it Germany?

[–] [email protected] 31 points 4 months ago (1 children)
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[–] [email protected] 14 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

Niemcy and Nemetorszag both stem from old slavic “nem” (or something similar) meaning “mute”.

More precisely, the first one is from Proto-Slavic root *něm- ("mute") and suffix *-ьcь ("person with that characteristic"); ě was not quite the same sound as e, so linguists mark it with the haček, just as it is marked in Czech to this day. In modern languages the nationality is called: Ru. nemec, Pol. Niemiec, Cro. Nijemac... But the country itself is called Ru. Germanija (from Latin), Pol. Niemcy (literally plural "Germans"), Cro. Njemačka (actually a feminine adjective, taken from the syntagm "Njemačka zemlja" = "German land").

The Hungarian name is a combination of the Slavic loaned *němьcь > "német" ("German") and "ország" ("land"): Németország.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (2 children)

the “Alemanni” who lived in modern day Germany and bordered modern day france.

Alemans still live in Baden-Württemberg, parts of Bavaria, Switzerland and I think there's also a splattering in Austria. Basically, High Germans which aren't Austro-Bavarian (same culture, different kingdoms) are Alemans.

“Saksa” is derived from the German region “Saxony”.

That one can be a bit misleading: The modern state of Saxony has nothing to do with the Saxon tribe, the place the title was applied to slowly drifted over the ages. They're much more related to Prussians and Thuringians and even Franks, going all the way over to Flanders and Holland, than Saxons proper. (Holland, not Netherlands).

Here's a rough splotch of where Old Saxon was spoken, which you can consider "core Saxony". At least linguistics-wise it spread quite a bit especially during the days of the Hanse (becoming a minority language as far up as Estonia), but it definitely stops before arriving at a place where "goose meat" means "could you please". Utter gibberish.

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[–] thedirtyknapkin 11 points 4 months ago (3 children)

I'm guessing saksa is more like the others and based on the Saxon people that once lived there rather than the modern region named for the same

[–] [email protected] 8 points 4 months ago (2 children)

They‘re still living there.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 4 months ago

thiutisk/ theodisk is from a Germanic/ old high German root meaning "belonging to the people"

As is the root of most self descriptions, the name of a group for themselves means "we" or "the people" or "humans".

[–] [email protected] 79 points 4 months ago (15 children)

This is why I think Turkey's insistence it be called "Türkiye" in English is dumb. English doesn't use umlauts, most English speakers can't even pronounce "ü" properly. English doesn't use "iye" sounds. They should be happy that the country is more-or-less pronounced the way it sounds in Turkish.

I mean, look at some of Turkey's neighbours. Georgia, pronounced "sakartvelo" by the locals. Armenia, called "Hayastan" by the people who live there. Greece, called "Elláda" by people who speak Greek (sorry, speak "elliniká").

People aren't speaking your language when they're talking about your country, they're speaking their own language, and "Turkey" is about as close as English gets to "Türkiye"

[–] RedAggroBest 36 points 4 months ago

Because it's solely an "issue" that exists to stoke nationalistic thought in the populace. It's propaganda

[–] nawa 11 points 4 months ago

Honestly Sakartvelo sounds so much better than Georgia, everyone should be using that instead. Others are equal in my opinion but Sakartvelo is just great.

[–] feedum_sneedson 8 points 4 months ago

Yes, it's ridiculous. Different countries have different languages, including the words for other countries. Turkish for England is İngiltere, that's not a problem.

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[–] samus12345 55 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (2 children)

Germany: "Fine, fine, we're Germany to you. You could have called us Dutchland instead of using that for people from the Netherlands, but whatever."

USA: pointing to people who settled Pennsylvania from Germany "Pennsylvania Dutch!"

Germany: ಠ_ಠ

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[–] riodoro1 51 points 4 months ago (7 children)

Shouldnt have called yourself a „Holy Roman Empire” if you didn’t want us to get confused.

[–] [email protected] 29 points 4 months ago

You mean the heiliges römisches Reich deutscher Nation?

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[–] cholesterol 42 points 4 months ago (2 children)

'Tyskland' in Danish, not 'Tyksland'.

'Tyksland' would mean 'Thickland' or 'Fatland'

[–] [email protected] 21 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Tyksland it is! Thank you, @cholesterol.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 4 months ago

So it's Tyskland most of the time, and during the reign of Charles III it can be Tyksland

[–] [email protected] 33 points 4 months ago (4 children)

Can we also talk about "Dutch"?

[–] [email protected] 29 points 4 months ago (3 children)

English-speakers used to use it to mean all non-Scandinavian Germanic peoples. When the Netherlanders became a distinctly separate group Britain had way more contact with them than with anyone else that the word used to cover, so we used it to refer to them specifically

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 4 months ago

Yeah, it's always so confusing

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[–] norimee 26 points 4 months ago (11 children)

I personally find it worse, if city names are very different. Like Krung Thep Maha Nakhon (...) as Bangkok. Most Thai people just say Krung Thep, why can't the rest of the world? I mean, they only changed the name in 1782...

Or Italians call Munich 'Monaco' which is really confusing because there is literally a country not that far away.

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[–] norimee 26 points 4 months ago (5 children)

Deutschland is a fairly new word. Before that there were a multitude of germanic tribes and those have made their way into the language of our neighbours as the name of the country

Germanen, Allemannen, Sachsen to name a few.

Deutsch, Tysk, Tedesco... come from the Latin "theudo" - "das Volk/the people"

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[–] [email protected] 23 points 4 months ago (1 children)

So, anyone wanna revive one of the polandball communities or open a new one?

[–] [email protected] 16 points 4 months ago

I posted a few European Polandball comics here, I think it fits the mood

Polandball on a world scale might need some heavy moderation due to potential political debates

[–] [email protected] 23 points 4 months ago (4 children)

The funny thing is that most languages in the world call Finland Finland or something adjacent (usually containing the syllable 'Fin-'), while it's 'Suomi' in Finnish. Only the Baltic states call it something similar to that.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 4 months ago

France puts a lot of effort into evolving the language very specifically to avoid loanwords and the perceived dilution of the language they might create. They have an entire government cultural body responsible for this.

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[–] [email protected] 20 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Saksa, when the Wall fell.

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 4 months ago (20 children)

So which country is known by the same name to the most number of other countries?

[–] datelmd5sum 43 points 4 months ago (6 children)

Japan is Japan everywhere except Japan.

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 4 months ago (1 children)
[–] kameecoding 10 points 4 months ago (1 children)

So that's where all these god damn Voke people come from

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

saksa comes from saxony, which was historically a major power in the region. (My knowledge comes from CK2)

[–] [email protected] 8 points 4 months ago (1 children)
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[–] jaxxed 9 points 4 months ago

Latvian: Vacija ?!?

Also, it always killed me that in English, people from the Netherlands are called Dutch

[–] pigup 8 points 4 months ago

In Spanish it's Alemania.

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