Re: "The Day The Earth Stood Still"

Thomas Heger wrote:

Am Dienstag000003, 03.06.2025 um 00:49 schrieb William Hyde:
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The English name you after one group mentioned by the Romans, the French after another, but the actual descendants of the Romans at least make a stab at the right name.
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The Irish use the same group as the English, but the Welsh follow the French model, as do the Spanish.
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You have the same situation as Greece, which foreigners have been misnaming since 500 BC.  And of course there are more such examples.
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 > But the British
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Not all the British, see above.
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  used 'German' instead of 'Dutch' because 'Dutch' was
 > already in use for the language of the Netherlands.
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I wish I could believe they were  that rational, but I doubt it.
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I can find no Anglo-Saxon word for "Germany".  They had words for various tribes, for the Franks and the Burgundians, and "Denmark" was a word, but no word for the lands where German speaking people lived. Perhaps they just called it "the old country".

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There was no country at that time, where all German speakers lived.
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German was actually a language, which was spoken in many areas of Europe and possibly beyond.
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Modern Germany was founded in 1871 and was created by fusing together about 1000 different mainly tiny entities.
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Prior to that year there was no Germany and certainly also not at the times of the Anglo-Saxons.

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 > So, the Anglo-Saxons had no need to name a country, which didn't exist.
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Actually the "Kingdom of Germany" dates from the breakup of Charlemagne's empire, formed in the Treaty of Verdun in 843.  It was later absorbed into the Holy Roman Empire, which was later renamed (circa 1500) "The Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation". Which I presume is why the 1871 state was the second empire.

  https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regnum_Teutonicum
 The 'Regnum Teutonicum' was obviously named after the Teutons.
 This was a people who lived in the norther region of Denmark and do not belong to the set of people, which build the population of present day Germany.
 Actually all the tribes, which were called 'Germanes' by the Romans, stem from the regions, which belonged to Denmark.
 

Naturally, the word used for "German" in the above varies from place to place - wikipedia is helpful here, giving:
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"The Kingdom of Germany or German Kingdom (Latin: regnum Teutonicorum 'kingdom of the Germans', regnum Teutonicum 'German kingdom',[1] regnum Alamanie "kingdom of Germany",[2] German: Deutsches Königreich)"
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so the Anglo-Saxons really did need a name, and they went with Caesar's version.

 'Angeln' is the name of a region in the north of Schleswig Holstein, which was a part of Denmark, too. That was the region, were the Anglo-Saxons came from.
 The German state 'Sachsen' is in no way related to Saxons, because 'Sax' was the name of an ancient weapon (kind of ax).
 These Anglo-Saxons  settled also in 'Niedersachsen', but most likely didn't speak German or called themselves 'Germanes'.
 So, why should they call their kingdom 'Germany'?

My point is that circa 850 the Anglo-Saxons in England needed a name for this new kingdom.  Ango-Saxon missionaries, active in Germany at the time, would have been well aware that the word "German" was not in use there.  But as Latin speakers they probably went with the Latin example, and used "Germania".  Which was easy to remember because every Latin speaker had read Caesar's memoirs.
Irish missionaries were also prominent in Germany (in fact Rome commanded Anglo-Saxon missionaries to go to Germany specifically to counter the Irish, who were regarded as heretical - how times change), and it seems that they, too, went with the Latin example.
It is notable that the Welsh, an independent people, disagreed.

 I have learned two languages in school (English and Latin), but tried to learn a few more.

How parallel.  My optional languages were German and Latin, though later there were small amounts of Russian and Greek.
French was not optional, but I would have taken it anyway.

 Among this was actually Italian.
 To my great surprise, the knowledge of Latin didn't make it easier to learn Italian.

I chose to study German in school, and to my surprise, those who took German were required to take Latin.  It was felt that understanding the mysteries of Latin grammar would help with German.  I was glad to take Latin anyway, but didn't really see the point.

 Instead I could see more similarities in the English language to Latin (for whatever reason).
 Possibly the Romans went to England and lived there for some time (after the destruction of Rome).

Roman forces left Britain in 407.   Britain had never been as Latinized as Gaul, and it is not clear what fraction of the remaining population spoke Latin fluently, as opposed to Celtic.
Latin in England did not survive the Anglo-Saxon conquest except for occasional loan words.  A few hundred Latin words were added with the return of Christianity,
The Latin-derived vocabulary of English comes mainly from French, though some words were added later, particularly in the renaissance, as all educated people spoke Latin.
Current Italian comes from the dialect spoken in Tuscany in the time of Dante, with French and Provencal influences. Perhaps the various German tribes, Ostrogoths, Lombards, left some linguistic influence behind, but I am only speculating here.
William Hyde