That is why Germany means Germany: This is how the name came about
Not many people can answer the question why our Federal Republic of Germany is called Germany straight away. We dive into history and explain the origin of the name.
That is why Germany means Germany: This is how the name came about
The historical origin of the name of our country is in the language.
- The English word "germany" for Germany can still be seen that the Germans descend from the Teutons.
- The Franks were a large tribe among the Teutons. The Germanic tribes had their own language until the 8th century. Her word for the Franks was "frengisk", which means "Franconian".
- These Franks moved on and relocated their political and cultural center to what is now France. Here, some Franks adopted a new language, the so-called rustic Latin "rusticam romanam". Incidentally, this is the origin of the French language. Others spoke Latin, still others the Germanic language.
- The term "Franconian", ie "frengisk" was no longer so clearly defined, in fact the term no longer existed. Since there were still people who used the original Germanic as a language, a new word had to be found to clearly differentiate the language.
- This is why the name "" Theodiscus "was created. It is made up of the Germanic word" theoda "for" people "and the Latin ending" -iscus ".
- Henceforth those Germans who continued to speak the "vernacular" Germanic and not Latin were named - by those who knew Latin or peasant Latin.
- Later "theodiscus" became the Old High German word "diutsch", in Low German "düdesch" and in High German "Teutsch".
- A few years later, more precisely in 843, the Franconian Empire was divided into a West and an East Franconian part in the Treaty of Verdun. To make things easier, the language boundary was used as the basis for the division.
- Two states later emerged from the western and eastern Frankish parts: Germany and its neighboring state France. You can find the other neighboring countries of Germany in another article.
- Germany is called Germany because part of the Teutons stuck to their language.
As a federal state there are several federal states in Germany. You can read about these in the next post.