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The many names of Germany

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Germany is the country with the most different names in foreign languages.
It´s named after:

Deutsch         (from old german thiudisk/ diutisc = people/ like the people): Deutschland, Duitsland, Däitschland, Tyskland...
Allemannen    (southwestern germanic tribe): Allemagne, Alemania, Alemanha, Almanya....
Germanien     (ancient name for Germany): Germany, Germania, Germanija...
Sachsen         (northwestern tribe, that moved later eastwards): Saksa, Saksamaa...
Nemets          (westslavic and hungaryan word for people who don´t talk like us): Niemcy, Nemecko, Németország...
Vagoth           (baltic name for an germanic tribe, but this theory is not sure): Vacija, Vokietija

Some asian examples:

Japan: Doitsu (from Deutsch)
China: 德国 Deguo ( land of virtues); there is also a direct translation: "德意志"(Pinyin: Deyizhi) "Virtue and strong mind"
Korean: Dogil (from Deutsch)
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Why does Germany have so many names?

Because not many nations changed its shape as often as this state in the center of Europe.
It was often splittered in many parts, sometimes the neighbours had only contact to one tribe
of them and it needed really long until a national feeling could be created.

There is also a confusing thing with the english name for it.

We call our ancestors and our ancient region Germanien (territory) and Germanen (ancestors),
but in the early middleage had to find a new name to separate ourselves from the romanic speaking
people, so the word for "being like the people/ speaking like the people" was used more and more
and so we started to call our nation Deutschland and not Germanien anymore. The english people however
never changed the name for us in all that time.

The French just named us after the closest living tribe, the Alemannen, while they already overtook the name
of the germanic Franken for themselves.

Italy kept the latin name Germania.

The Slavs who met Germans couldn´t understand them, so they used their word for this situation to name
the whole german people after it. The Hungaryans overtook that word, but it has no special meaning in
their language and just means German.

The Finnish and estonian people have overtaken the name of the saxon tribe.

The rest of the world mostly overtook the name from the nation that colonized it, that´s why
some states conquered by France or Spain call us also Alemania or Allemagne,
and english conquered states call us Germany/ Germania etc.

There is no other state in the world with such a variety of different names in other languages.
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mr1994's avatar

There's also Nemçe. Archaic name for Germans in Albanian language (mostly in Gheg dialect).