Alternate names for Germany

I was just thinking of this possibility... Why didn't hold? Because of the restored HRE order in Germany and Italy?
I think the German people, as disaparate as they were with regards to identity, probably resented being thought of as "East France".

If the Allies post-WW2 really went full Morgenthau, I would imagine that this would be a great way of rubbing it in the Germans' faces.
 
I think the German people, as disaparate as they were with regards to identity, probably resented being thought of as "East France".

If the Allies post-WW2 really went full Morgenthau, I would imagine that this would be a great way of rubbing it in the Germans' faces.

But we are talking of the cultural mentality of the Germans in late tenth century, not of the ones post 1945.
 

Asami

Banned
Perhaps "Allemania" in English; following the same kind of thing as the French? I know we're talking more about the Germans themselves, but anyway.
 
I was just thinking of this possibility... Why didn't hold? Because of the restored HRE order in Germany and Italy?

They were Kings of the Franks (Francorum Rex) until Henry IV, when Pope Gregory VII called him Rex Teutonicorum (King of the Teutons/Germans) to invalidate his claim in Italy, then the to-be crowned Emperors called themselves "Rex Romanorum" (King of the Romans) to symbolize their universal rule even before being crowned by the Pope.
 
There are so many options.
The German name for ourselves (and the Dutch, too) is derived from "diutisc", which in Old High German meant "of the people, in the manner of the people, belonging to the people". If this has stuck IOTL, there`s totally no reason why the country might not also have ended up with something that derived from "the wooden lands", or "the flat / hilly lands", or "the lands of the elders", or from a word that denoted peasants, or orthodox believers, or or or....
 
Germany must be the country with the most different names amongst other languages. For Purutia I haven't heard, I must say. I know about Saksa, the ˝mute˝ variant amongst Slavs (and Hungarians too, they have a last name Nemeth, which means ˝ (a) German˝). An adjective/demonym not mentioned here is tedesco (Italian language, means ˝German˝). Also Korean Dogil, which somehow derives from Japanese Doitsu.

My own suggestion for a name: Teutonia.
 
Actually, in Finnish Germany is called 'Saxalainen', Saxa-land. Probably the ancient Finns had more dealings with the Germans from Saxony then with those from any other part.
(Curiously enough, Russia is called 'Venelainen': Sail-land. No idea because that was because it was the land where all the sailing ships came from or because it was where everyone was sailing to.)

A bit off topic, but saksalainen and venäläinen actually refer to the people (-lainen is a suffix that means more or less "someone from X"); the countries are called Saksa and Venäjä, respectively.

The German traders on the Baltic in the medieval times were often Saxon, and thus it is natural that Finns had dealings with Germans who would refer to themselves or their homeland as Sachsen. As a continuation of this theme, in Finnish an old term for a travelling salesman is kauppasaksa ("trade-German") or kamasaksa ("stuff-German"). Interestingly, a travelling salesman can also be called a laukkuryssä ("bag-Russian") especially in Eastern Finland.

The Finnish name for Russia, Venäjä, does not seem to refer to boats (unlike the Finnish word for Sweden, see below) but to "Wend", an old Germanic name for a Slavic people. It is easy to think there is a connection to boats, though, as in Estonian for example the word for Russia is Venemaa, which in Finnish looks exactly like "boat land".

In Finnish Sweden is called Ruotsi. It is said that the word is based on an old Swedish word for rowing. It is also said that Rus, for Russian, comes from the same root - due to the Varangians who ruled medieval Rus and arrived by boats. The derogatory name for Russians in Finnish, ryssä, then seems to come to Finnish through Swedish (ryss or ryska), whereas the similar term for a Swede, hurri, apparently comes from what a Swede says when a Finn does not understand or acknowledge him - hur, huru for "how, what" or hör du for "listen" or "are you listening".

I wonder what Germany could be in Finnish if it was not Saksa... There is the easy "Saksamaa" or "Saksimaa" as per Estonian, or maybe it could be "Teutsi" or "Toitsi" (or "Teutsimaa", "Toitsimaa", "Teutslanti", "Toitslanti") for Deutchland or "Tyska", "Tyskanmaa", "Tysklanti" if it is borrowed directly from Swedish.
 
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The German traders on the Baltic in the medieval times were often Saxon, and thus it is natural that Finns had dealings with Germans who would refer to themselves or their homeland as Sachsen. As a continuation of this theme, in Finnish an old term for a travelling salesman is kauppasaksa ("trade-German") or kamasaksa ("stuff-German"). Interestingly, a travelling salesman can also be called a laukkuryssä ("bag-Russian") especially in Eastern Finland.

The Finnish name for Russia, Venäjä, does not seem to refer to boats (unlike the Finnish word for Sweden, see below) but to "Wend", an old Germanic name for a Slavic people. It is easy to think there is a connection to boats, though, as in Estonian for example the word for Russia is Venemaa, which in Finnish looks exactly like "boat land".

In Finnish Sweden is called Ruotsi. It is said that the word is based on an old Swedish word for rowing. It is also said that Rus, for Russian, comes from the same root - due to the Varangians who ruled medieval Rus and arrived by boats. The derogatory name for Russians in Finnish, ryssä, then seems to come to Finnish through Swedish (ryss or ryska), whereas the similar term for a Swede, hurri, apparently comes from what a Swede says when a Finn does not understand or acknowledge him - hur, huru for "how, what" or hör du for "listen" or "are you listening".
To add, there is apparently a linguistic peculiarity in the languages of the Veps and Komi people (connected to Finns). Ročinma in Veps means Sweden, but Ročmu in Komi/Zyrian language means Russia!

(I do not speak Finnish or any Finnic language, but I'm intrigued by languages in general. This info is from Wikipedia.)
 
I Have No Idea

if this would be anywhere near a possibility, fluent speakers will correct, but how about Land of the People, or Volksland? Or is that too contrived?

(Strictly as a btw of no significance, there is a newsreader on one of the tv stations in Tucson named "Tedesco".)
 
Where does the Latin "Germania" come from?

I think it is similar to the Allimania case (it comes from "all men" in a high German language being transliterated into Latin)

Even stranger, Gallia is actually a transliterated version of walha, old german for foreigner. Walloon, Wales, and Vallachia come from that root too.
 

Tyr Anazasi

Banned
if this would be anywhere near a possibility, fluent speakers will correct, but how about Land of the People, or Volksland? Or is that too contrived?

(Strictly as a btw of no significance, there is a newsreader on one of the tv stations in Tucson named "Tedesco".)

Deutschland means Land of the people or Volksland already.
 
Perhaps "Allemania" in English; following the same kind of thing as the French? I know we're talking more about the Germans themselves, but anyway.

That would be "Almain". See Henry of Almain as one example. He was so called after his father Richard of Cornwall had been elected as "King of the Romans" by the German electors in 1257.

If the Allies post-WW2 really went full Morgenthau, I would imagine that this would be a great way of rubbing it in the Germans' faces.

How would that even work? Sure, the Allies could decree that the new German state should be called "East France" in their official papers, bat AFAIK that would not even work in French - "Do we mean 'like Hannover in East France', or like 'Nancy in East France'?"
And what kind of hyperstalinist measure could ensure that the Germans start calling themselves Ostfranzosen in daily parlance?

Slightly more on-topic, this has done the rounds a couple of times online.

Thanks. Since the link did not work for me the first few attempts, here is that map:
734px-Germany_Name_European_Languages.svg.png



The big outliers are Latvia and Lithuania, whose name for Germany we're not really sure about, but it might come from the Vagoths.

Ah, I think I have heard of them before. The Fungi from Vagoth, right?
 
Maybe it could be named after the Nemetes tribe to give a name like Nemets, which would fit in nicely with the Slavic names for Germany (e.g. Niemcy in Polish).


Cheers,
Nigel.

My understanding is that the etymology of Niemcy in Polish and its equivalents in most Slavic languages is that it comes from a root word meaning "mute," which evolved to mean "foreigner," and then "German," specifically, as the Germans were the closest and largest neighboring culture that didn't speak a Slavic language. You can imagine an ancient German-speaker arriving at a village or marketplace in Slavic-speaking territory and not being able to communicate. Interestingly, in Arabic, Farsi, and historically in Turkish, the Slavic root word for Germany was adopted for the local name of Austria - an-Nimsā is the name of Austria in Arabic, for example.

Aside from the afforementioned roots (from Germania,the Tuetons, the Allemans, the Saxons, and Slavic "mute"), another possibility is to derive the name from Prussia - The only case of this in modern language is Tahitian, which calls Germany by the name "Purutia".

Another name from Old Norse called Germany by the name "Suðrvegr," which means "South Way" as an equivalent to Norway. Perhaps Vikings in early England could spread this etymology, thus making "Sudway" as common name for Germany in English.

Interesting, the word for Austria in Arabic is "Nimsa"
 
(Curiously enough, Russia is called 'Venelainen': Sail-land. No idea because that was because it was the land where all the sailing ships came from or because it was where everyone was sailing to.)

The Finnish name for Russia, Venäjä, does not seem to refer to boats (unlike the Finnish word for Sweden, see below) but to "Wend", an old Germanic name for a Slavic people. It is easy to think there is a connection to boats, though, as in Estonian for example the word for Russia is Venemaa, which in Finnish looks exactly like "boat land".

As far as I know, the earliest known name for the Slavs was "Veneti", attested by Pliny the Elder, Ptolemy and Tacitus as living along the eastern Baltic coast. Half a millennium later, the Byzantine writer Jordanes describes the Veneti as a great and populous people occupying vast swathes of land. One of their component tribes was called the "Sclavi" (Slavs), whose name later came to encompass all the Veneti (something that seems to have regularly happened in early history with various ethnic groups). In later medieval times the older name Veneti turned into "Wend" and was applied to only a portion of the descendants of the Veneti.
 
The German traders on the Baltic in the medieval times were often Saxon, and thus it is natural that Finns had dealings with Germans who would refer to themselves or their homeland as Sachsen. As a continuation of this theme, in Finnish an old term for a travelling salesman is kauppasaksa ("trade-German") or kamasaksa ("stuff-German"). Interestingly, a travelling salesman can also be called a laukkuryssä ("bag-Russian") especially in Eastern Finland.

Interesting. The Germans who settled in medieval Serbia and Bosnia - as well as the larger community settled in Hungary - were also most often called Saxons (Sasi), even though many of them apparently came from the Rhineland and other regions. I wonder how Saxons became the "face" of Germany in so many different environments.
 
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