Re: CHAT: Sioux/German

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                       edheil@postmark.net
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"Bill Gates is a white Persian cat and a monocle away from becoming
another James Bond villain. 'No Mr Bond, I expect you to upgrade.'"
                                           --Dennis Miller
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John Cowan wrote:

> And Rosta scripsit:
>
> > > It's a silly name.  So is "Sioux".  So is "German".
> >
> > How come?
>
> As for "German", who knows where it comes from?  The other names
> for Germans are either tribal names (variants of "Saxon" or "Allemann")
> or variants of the German self-name "Deutsch".
I knew a fellow on an internet bulletin board who was convinced that "German"
was actually a Roman racial slur and meant, in Latin, "warlike men." *  He was
not in fact German, but always punctiliously used the word "Deutsch" in
English, discouraged people from using the word "German," and tried to explain
to Germans that they should find it offensive.

Very peculiar guy.  Was also obsessed with his own Prussian ancestry and with
the project of reviving the ancient Prussian language and religion (though he
was not himself a linguist and so could not help with it much).

* No, "germani" doesn't mean "warlike men" in Latin.  It happens to mean
"brothers" in Latin, but that's a coincidence, since Germani is a
transliteration of Greek Germanoi, and nobody knows for sure where that word
comes from, as John Cowan notes.

Ed