The Etymology of Germany
Germany has more names than almost any country in Europe, and the English form is only one of them. The English Germany comes from Latin Germania, the Roman label for the territory east of the Rhine — a name made famous by Caesar's Gallic Wars and Tacitus's short ethnographic monograph Germania (98 CE). Where the Romans got the word Germani is itself disputed. Tacitus reports that it was originally the name of a single tribe and only later applied to all the related peoples. Modern proposals include a Celtic origin (a word meaning neighbour or shouter) and various Germanic possibilities (loud one, spear-bearer), but none is secure — the etymology is best treated as unknown. The Germans themselves have never used the term: their endonym Deutschland comes from Old High German diutisc (of the people), the same root that gives English Dutch. French Allemagne comes from the Alamanni tribe, Polish Niemcy means the mute ones, Finnish Saksa from the Saxons, and Russian Германия echoes the Roman label. Each name is a frozen historical encounter.