Is Germany named after the Germanic tribes?

 

Ian MacKinnell

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Studied some Medieval History at university, which I enjoyed.

Is Germany named after the Germanic tribes?

In English, the major nation state between France and Poland is known as “Germany”. That is purely an English affair(*).

The French call that nation “Allemagne” — named after a southern Germanic tribe, the Alemans. The Poles call it Niemcy, which comes from an ancient Slavic word meaning “mute”. I assume the Poles thought the Germans were mute because they said nothing (couldn’t understand or reply) when addressed in Polish.

Up north, the Danes call the nation to their south Tyskland, which comes from “tysk” the Norse equivalent of German “deutsch”. It came from the Germanic word for “of the people” or “the vernacular” (the language the native people spoke).

So Germany is named after mute people, if you live in Poland; after the Aleman tribe, if you live in France; after the vernacular speakers if you are actually German, or by borrowing if you are Scandinavian. The English alone(*) use the old Latin name Germania, which in ancient times was used for all the territories across the Rhine from the Netherlands down to border of Switzerland. This name is of uncertain origin, but it seems that early on both the Celts and the Romans used it to describe people on “the other side” of the Rhine, like the Franks. Eventually the term Germania was used for “East Francia” — the Germanic speaking lands across the Rhine from France (“West Francia”).

So in English the nation is called Germany because of its medieval Latin use for that territory. But Germans call themselves approximately the “people’s land” or the “vernacular land”, while the Poles call it the “mute land”, and the French call it “the land of the Alemans”. “Germany” is not THE name for Germany, it is merely one of many names for that land, and not the name they call themselves: Deutschland.

Germans speak Deutsch — their vernacular language. They don’t speak “German” unless they are speaking English. They don’t call their country “Germany” unless they are speaking English. Germany is only named “Germany” by English speakers — not by anyone else, at least not by their neighbours, and not by the people who actually live there.

EDITED TO ADD:

(*) Sorry, I failed to spell out my mental context here: I am purely focusing on the nations immediately surrounding Germany, as well as English because we speak it. As I explain in a comment, other nations further away generally adopt a name used by those close by — including the name used by the Romans who guarded the Rhine across from the Germani two thousand years ago. In terms of linguistics and history, it is the names used by Germans and those immediate neighbours who have been interacting with Germans for the last two thousand years, that are the most interesting and significant.

Useful resource, also mentioned by some commenters:

Names of Germany - Wikipedia