Why is “Deutschland” called “Germany” in English? – ‘Germany’ (or any variation on that stem) is not used in Germany for the name of the country and neither is ‘allemagne’, ‘alemania’ (or anything similar to that) which are also utilized throughout the world. Though they are both certainly recognised at sports events or just abroad.
The Germans were essentially a bunch of tribes annoying the Romans a lot a while back. In this historic way the term is normally used and understood in German (re: Germania, Germanen, germanisch etc,).
From Wikipedia:
A region named Germania, inhabited by several Germanic peoples, was documented before AD 100. During the Migration Age, the Germanic tribes expanded southward, and established successor kingdoms throughout much of Europe. Beginning in the 10th century, German territories formed a central part of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation.
And further on the etymology of ‘Germany’:
The English word “Germany” derives from the Latin Germania, which came into use after Julius Caesar adopted it for the peoples east of the Rhine. In other languages it has various names.
The same goes for the other common names for Germany in the world. Alemanni were a specific group of Germanic tribes, so were the Saxons (used in the Estonian/Finnish area e.g.). The slavic countries just call it němьcь (nemets, “a mute / inarticulate person”, same reasoning as with the word “barbarian”), to round up all the etymological groups.
So essentially most of the different names developed from the various tribes of the area. There were many more, some of them accounting for the names of federal states or regions (Sachsen, Thüringen, Franken). Why a certain language uses exactly this or that term is each a wholly separate historical story. In general, it may be assumed that at the time and the place where that language originated from the people had to do with a specific one of the tribes (thus Germania in Italian, Allemagne in French) and it then spread from there.
Germany was not a defined state till 1871. Before that the term in any language was more loosely used for the area, the ethnic group speaking the same language or different alliances over time. All the existing and often changing small(er) nations had other names (Prussia etc.). In 1871 the term ‘Deutschland’ then became identical with an actual nation.
Concerning the term ‘Deutschland’ a few more countries do use the same stem. Mostly the closely related languages such as Dutch or Swedish, but also Chinese, Japanese, Korean.
The German term “Deutschland” is derived from Old High German duit, “people, race, nation,” from Proto-Germanic *theudo “popular, national” from
Proto-Indo-European base *teuta- “people”.
The correct inflection is ‘deutsch’ as the adjective for something German, as well as the language and ‘Deutsche/r’ as the noun for a person.
For English in particular, there is a word stemming from duit: Dutch. It just has been used for something else from the 16./17. century on:
During the Renaissance in the 16th century, differentiation began to be made by opposing duytsch (modern Duits) “German” and nederduytsch “Low German” with dietsch or nederlandsch “Dutch”, a distinction that is echoed in English later the same century with the terms High Dutch “German” and Low Dutch “Dutch”. However, due to Dutch commercial and colonial rivalry in the 16th and 17th centuries, the English term came to refer exclusively to the Dutch.
The Wikipedia articles are all quite extensive, also in English: (Why Deutschland called Germany?)
