German ethnonyms

[Danielle E. Cyr]

Hi John,

Yes there is also Swedish Tyska
But  we have to consider Tyska, Deutsche and Tedesco as one only since they are
only phonetic adaptations of the same etymon I suppose.

As for why there are many others, to my knowledge each different one comes from
the name of the tribe after which the name was taken. In the Antiquity and Early
Middle Age, there were still al lot of German tribes living separate political
existence. This is only my intuition.

Cheers,

Danielle Cyr


Quoting John Myhill <john at research.haifa.ac.il>:

> Does anyone out there have any idea of why there are so many
> different words meaning `German' in different languages? Aside
> from English German, there's German Deutsche, Spanish alleman, Italian
> tedesco, and Russian nemyetski?
> Also, does anyone know others?
> Thanks, John Myhill
> --
>