German

The German people call themselves the Deutsch, which originally meant something like "the people". One can also espy the root word in Teuton and Dutch. So how is it that in English there is the term German?

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It seems that by conquering most of Britain the Romans were able to put the Latin name that they used into English. Originally it came from germanus, which meant "having the same parents."

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Perhaps the Romans felt confronted with innumerable "barbarian" hordes and feeling the need to organize, coined this term to describe all those who spoke a similar language on the theory that if they did so, they must have all originally come from the same family.

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Since then, "german" has also come into its own as an adjective. There is a German cockroach which paradoxically comes from Africa. German measles, a milder form of measles, doesn't sound German at all in its other guise: rubella. German shepherd is recognized in the United States, but it is located more precisely in Britain where since 1926 it has been called Alsatian. Maybe someone thought no Americans would know where Alsace is. The German shorthaired pointer, or wirehaired pointer, a hunting dog with a liver-colored coat, apparently really did originate in Germany. German silver is not silver at all, but an alloy of copper, zinc, and nickel. The only remaining term that is germane is cousin-german, which just means having the same parents or the same grandparents on either the maternal or paternal side, i.e. basically just a cousin, but specifying no more than two degrees of separation and being of the same generation. Fairly close actually to the original Latin, "having the same parents."
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