Comment on I felt so betrayed when I found out Germany isn't called Germany in Germany
webghost0101@sopuli.xyz 4 days ago
You have it backwards.
German in German is “Deutsch” or “Duits” in Dutch.
Dutch in Dutch is “Nederlands” or “Niederländisch” in German.
“Deutch” comes from an old high german word “diutisc” which meant “of the people”
“Dutch” comes from “Diest” meaning “people’s language”
When the Romans invaded England, they important the Latin “Germania” to refer to Germany and gradually started to use “Dutch” for the common people of the “lower countries” (Belgium and Netherlands)
I think the term “The Nethetlands” was coined after the Reformation and Counter-Reformation when the northern provinces ,which became Lutheran, separated from the southern provinces which remained Roman Catholic.
The country was usually referred as “Holland” (a northern province) before then.
There’s no actual difference in meaning/etymology between ‘Diets’ and ‘Deutsch’. They’re both derived from Proto-Germanic *þiudiskaz, meaning ‘of the people’. Well into at least the seventeenth century, probably the eighteenth (I’m basing this off what I’ve read myself in primary sources) ‘Duits’ was still commonly used in the Netherlands as well. It was essentially part of a distiction between ‘Duits’ and ‘Waals’, where those who were ‘Waals’ were the ‘others’.
WolfLink@sh.itjust.works 4 days ago
Where does “Alemania” (what they call Germany in Spain) come from?
teft@piefed.social 4 days ago
It comes from from french and originally from latin alamanus. There was a germanic tribe there called the the Allamani.
Dicska@lemmy.world 4 days ago
AFAIK French has something similar. I might be wrong, but similarly to the Holland/Netherlands (Nederlanden) story, it was named after one of the tribes in Germany (alamanni, “all men”), before the great unification.