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.
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.
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.
Or, as others said, they appeared pretty lately and faced strong competitors around them. Being Russian I can give my homeland as an example. In most countries, its names are similar: Russia, Ryssland, Russie, etc. 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. 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. 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. 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. Sign up to join this community. The best answers are voted up and rise to the top.
Stack Overflow for Teams — Collaborate and share knowledge with a private group. Create a free Team What is Teams? Learn more. Is there a reason why Germany Deutschland is called so many different things in other European languages? Ask Question. Asked 10 years, 3 months ago. Active 2 years, 3 months ago. Viewed 36k times.
Excuse me if this is off-topic. It doesn't seem to make sense. Good question! I went to my favorite linguist, Stefan. It turns out we can blame the Romans well Here's the quick run-down. So it's the language the people spoke versus the formal Latin which originated with the Romans. All the Germanic languages adopted variations on these roots.
The Dutch say de Duitsers in Duitsland. The English used to refer to the Dutch in Ducheland which was the whole region, not what we call today's Germany or the Netherlands.
Where did these names come from and why do we use them? But in Germany, they call the place Deutschland. Without one global language, speakers of a given language are going to have their own word for a certain part of the world. Some place names simply come from the people who inhabit the land. Germany, for example, was Germany to some folks long before the country united and called itself Deutschland.
The Romans named a chunk of land east of the Rhine River and north of the Danube River Germania after the first Germanic tribe they heard about from the nearby Gauls. Similarly, the Turkish name for Greece, Yunanistan , derives from the Ionians, the Greek tribe that established settlements in Asia Minor and had early contact with the Turks.
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