German ethnonyms

[W. Schulze]

Dear John,

I guess all this has to do with historical and political issues: The lack
of a cultural / administrative / politic center in 'Germany' conditioned
that a cover term for the 'members' of the 'German society' was rarely
promoted by such a center. Instead, foreign communities were used to refer
to 'the Germans' in terms of a synecdoche, expoiting the name of a German
'community' that was close to their experience. Such a name could then be
easily transmitted to other communities that stood not in closer contact
with Germans.

In more details:

English 'German' seems to be a learnt latinism; interstingly enough, it
also is present in e.g. Albanian gjerman, Georgian germanuli etc....
Italian 'tedesco' obviously is a local derivation from the Germanic
teuta-term ('people' etc.) that also underlies the term 'Deutsch' (>
'Dutch' used by English for the 'closest' communities, that is for those
in the Netherlands') [compare Latvian tauta 'people', Old Irish tuath
'people, land' and so more cognates...]. The same term is also present in
e.g. Swedish Tysk.
French 'Allemand' relates to the Upper Rhenanian neighbors, the
'allemans', a former southern German gentile group (perhaps 'all (free)
men'). It was then transmitted to Spain, probably already in Franconian
times.
Russian 'Nemec' 'German' is derived from nem- 'not able to communicate',
used in early Russian times to denote any person who could not be
understood by a native (contrary for instance to speakers of Slvaic sister
languages). As Russians by that time were predominantly confronted with
German speaking foreigners (both ethnic and Hanse-related), the term was
later narrowed down to 'German'.
Arabic: Older form: namsi:y etc.: Probably taken from Osmanic (which used
the term for the Austrians, being the closest 'Germans' to them), which
again has taken the term from Slavic Nemec (?). But note that both Modern
Arabic and Persian have taken their terms from French (alma:ni:). The same
holds for Modern Turkish (alman).
In addition, you find Latvian va:cu 'German' (in fact a gen.pl.) and
Lithuanian vokietis 'German'. Unfortunately, I do not have at hands
Fränkel's etymological dictionary, but there you will surely find a
suggestion where to derive this form from....

Hope this helps,

Wolfgang

John Myhill schrieb:

> 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
> --

--
Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Schulze
Institut für Allgemeine und
Typologische Sprachwissenschaft
- General Linguistics and Language Typology -
Dept. II - Kommunikation und Sprachen
F 13/14 - Universitaet München
Geschwister-Scholl-Platz 1
D-80539 Muenchen
Tel.: ++49-(0)89-2180-2486 / -5343
Fax: ++49-(0)89-2180-5345
Email: W.Schulze at lrz.uni-muenchen.de
Web: http://www.ats.uni-muenchen.de/wschulze.html