Germanic peoples: Encyclopedia II - Germanic peoples - Etymology of German

Germanic peoples - Etymology of German

Germani is thought to be the Celtic name for the Germanic tribes: the tribes themselves never used the word. There is also a Latin adjective germanus (<- germen, seed or offshoot), which has the sense of "related" or "kindred" and whence derives the Portuguese irmão and the Spanish hermano, "brother". If the proper name Germani derives from this word, it may refer to the Roman experience of the Germanic tribes as allies of the Celts.

Another possible derivation is the one proffered by the Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology (1966), which relates the name to Old Irish gair, "neighbor", which actually means "near". The Welsh is ger.

McBain's An Etymological Dictionary of the Gaelic Language relates the word to Irish gearr, "cut, short" (a short distance) and states the Proto-Celtic root to be *gerso-s, further related to ancient Greek chereion, "inferior" and English gash. Here the etymological trail becomes decidedly obscured, but there is a good reason for this obscurement. English gash leads by one path or another to the Greek word character, which is an engraving for an identity sign of some sort. There is no clear root for this word. It could be an Indo-european root, *khar-, *kher-, *ghar-, *gher-, "cut", from which also Hittite kar-, "cut". Or, it could be a pre-Indo-European root, related perhaps to Egyptian kha-, "cut", or the Indo-European root could come from the pre-Indo-European root.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Etymology of German", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki