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Finland saying “Saksa” from a distance made me chuckle.
Some etymologies:
- French “Allemagne”, Spanish “Alemania” - from the Alemanni tribe. English also attests “Almayne” in a few older texts. I’m not too sure but I think that most descendants of that tribe don’t even live in the Republic of Germany, but rather in Switzerland and Alsace.
- Finnish “Saksa”, Estonian “Saksamaa” - from another tribe, the Saxoni.
- English “Germany”, Italian “Germania” - borrowed from Latin. Beyond that the etymology is a bit messy; Julius Caesar for example uses “germanus” in De Bello Gallico to refer to non-Gaulish tribes, but we don’t know if it was a generic term or the name of one of the tribes.
- Polish “Niemcy”, Slovakian “Nemecko” - from Proto-Slavic *němьcь “foreigner, German”. The word is derived from *němъ “mute”; likely the result of an “if you don’t speak our language might as well not speak at all” mindset.
- Danish “Tyskland” - “tysk” (German) was borrowed from Old Saxon, and backtracks to Proto-Germanic *þiudiskaz (of the people). So it’s an actual cognate of German Deutschland, or the Italian adjective “tedesco”. Confusingly enough, the country itself can be called either Germania or Repubblica Federale Tedesca in Italian.
If I recall historia correctly the use “of the people” root to refer to a distinction language can be traced back to Christian missionaries and clergimen of medieval times who needed to translate religious teachings from latin to the common tongue.
I’m not sure if it’s because of Christianity.
Calling a language “of the people” pops up often across different cultures. Quechua for example does the same; the native name of the language is “runa simi”, it’s basically “people’s language”.
And in the case of the Germanic languages it’s so common that it was likely already in Proto-Germanic, thus probably older than the christianisation of those tribes.
