Why do Germans call themselves Deutsch, and what are the origins of the word "Deutsch"?

Question

Please cite your sources.

Answer 1

Re: Deutsch - The name is related to Old English (Anglo-Saxon) þeod (theod) meaning "people." This root may be a Celtic borrowing into Germanic since it closely resembles Gallic Teuto- as in the name Teutorix ("The people's king"), Breton and Welsh 'tud' (people'country) and Old Irish 'tuath' (people) as in the "Tuatha De Dannan," a race of gods in the Old Irish pagan religion. The Romans, who were in close contact with the Gauls, were already calling the Germanic peoples "Teutons" by the 1st century A.D.

Answer 2

Deutsch
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Look up Deutsch, deutsch in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.Deutsch is the German language word for German (adjective). Deutsche are Germans, while [ein] Deutscher is [a] German. Deutsch, and its various forms, may refer to:

Deutschland (Germany)
Deutschlandlied (German anthem)
Deutsche Demokratische Republik (the former DDR; 1949–1989)
Deutsch (crater), a lunar crater on the far side of the Moon
Deutsch-Amerikanische Freundschaft, an influential electropunk / Neue Deutsche Welle band from Düsseldorf
Deutsch-Jozsa algorithm, a quantum algorithm, proposed by David Deutsch and Richard Jozsa in 1992
Deutsche Bank (German bank)
Deutsch (surname)

[edit] See also
Reich (disambiguation)
Deitsch
Dietsch
Dutch (disambiguation)

Answer 3

Many european nations and languages have names for themselves which are different from what others call them. In the case of Germany, it's still called Allemagne by the French, and that comes from the Latin Allemanni for one of the barbarian tribes which crossed the Rhine to invade the Roman Empire - it's easy to see where that comes from: "Alle Maenner" (which is ironic, since the French themselves derive their name from the Franks, a Germanic tribe).

England is called "Sasana" in Gaelic languages, meaning "Saxons" and the English language is called "Béarla" which originally meant jargon or gibberish.

The Welsh call themselves Cymru, whereas the English word for them originally meant foreigner (again ironic, considereing that the Anglo-Saxons were technically the foreigners when they met the Welsh, who were the native British.

Hungarians call themselves Magyar ....

Basques call themselves Euskadi ...

Answer 4

Italians call them "Tedesco" - literally Teutonic, which is cognate with German deutsch.

"Deutsch" has its origin in the Old High German word "diutisc" meaning "the language of the people" (as opposed to Latin). There are also uncertain alernatives origins of "German" as Celtic "The Noisy Men" or Old High German "The Greedy Men"!

Answer 5

"Deutschland is a little easier to understand, it is the land of the Dutch. Yes, that's right, before we started showing off our Classical educations we called all Germans Dutch. This usage survives in the term Pennsylvania Dutch, an American community of German extraction. The word itself comes from the Old High German word diutisc "vulgar" or "vernacular". That is, people who speak a common vernacular tongue rather than Latin. The land of those who spoke diutisc (Dutch, i.e. German) became known as Diutiskland (then later, Deutschland, "Germany"). The Italian word tedesco (German) is merely their version of diutisc."

Germany goes by MANY names; read more about all the origins of the names here:
http://www.takeourword.com/Issue043.html#Spotlight

Answer 6

Warum Leute von die Vereinigte Staaten von Amerika nennen diese " United States of America" ? What's in a name anyway?

Answer 7

It's a word that simply meant "people" many years ago. Same with Innuit, Just people.