Re: Codename "de" (was Re: Country names in national languages)

On Sun, 12 May 2002 05:53, Philip Newton wrote:
> On 11 May 02, at 12:14, Walter Tsuyoshi Sano wrote:
> > > I remembered that long ago we were trying to have a list of the
> > > name of the countries in the official/national languages. I even
> > > had a table with this names, but I lost it unfortunately.
> >
> > I wonder why 'Germany' has so many different names:
> >
> > de: Deutschland (/dOjtSland/; I know how to pronounce it,
> >                  just not sure how to represent the diphtong)
> > jp: Doitsu      (from the german pronunciation)
Derived from teuto- the names of some of the germanic tribes around about the
times of the Roman Empire.

> > dk: Tyskland    (|y| being a high front rounded vowel, like german |ü|)
This would be from one of the North German tribes, I expect, probably dating
from the Viking times.

> > en: Germany
Unsure.  Though probably a formation based on the name Germania, and related
names for some of the germanic tribes the Romans knew.

> > pt: Alemanha    (Spanish, French and Italian have similar forms)
Not sure.  I think it's probably something to do with our good friend Carolus
Magnus, a.k.a. Charlemagne, and the confederacy of tribes he commanded.
Anyone got any more accurate information?

> >
> > What else?
>
> Finnish "Saksa" (from Saxony/Sachsen, presumably).
> I think at least one of the Baltic countries (lt, lv, ee) has a
> different stem for Germany as well.
>
Then you have the Scottish sassenach, also derived from the same root; the
Welsh Saesneg, etc, so evidently the Scots and the Welsh had a lot longer
first contact with that branch of the North German/Baltic branch of germanic
speakers than they did with the others.

> Then there's Russian, which calls the country Germaniya (regularly
> enough) but the language nemets' (from a word meaning "mute",
> apparently).
>
> Cheers,
> Philip
--
Mau e ki, "He aha to mea nui?"
You ask, "What is the most important thing?"
Maku e ki, "He tangata, he tangata, he tangata."
I reply, "It is people, it is people, it is people."

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