this post was submitted on 14 Aug 2024
893 points (98.4% liked)

YUROP

1204 readers
2 users here now

A laid back community for good news, pictures and general discussions among people living in Europe.

Other European communities

Other casual communities:

Language communities

Cities

Countries

founded 9 months ago
MODERATORS
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] norimee@lemmy.world 26 points 2 months ago (2 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"

[–] SkunkWorkz@lemmy.world 4 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Also why the Nederlanders are called Dutch by English speakers. Since the Dutch descent from a bunch of Germanic tribes.

[–] norimee@lemmy.world 3 points 2 months ago

Dutch has the same word origin as Deutsch. Obviously. The Latin "theudo" - "the people".

Back in the days, when the whole region belonged to the Holy Roman Empire and were not seperate countries yet, "dutch" refered to Nederlanders and germans both. The fact that they decent from germanic tribes is the reason the word "dutch" makes sense actually.

I find it way more weird that they call Deutsche germans now. Keeping the word dutch for germans would make much more sense in my opinion.

[–] hessenjunge@discuss.tchncs.de 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Das heilige römische Reich deutscher Nation has entered the chat.