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Typo wrote:By the way and a bit of-topic (sorry ): im using the term "Roman Empire" on purpose.
Never existed anything called Byzantine Empire. The people that lived in the empire called themselves Romans and the empire was called Roman Empire (called Eastern Roman Empire till the fall of the Western Roman Empire).
Only the other europeans mock them caling them Greeks (what was an ofense for the people of the Empire).
And the term "byzantine" only apeared after the fall of Constantinopla: if you called someone of the empire, "byzantine" he didnt recognize that term.

Inspired by the above.

As a thought excercise how many place-holder names can you name from history. That is when historians use a name for a people/culture which the people/culture themselves didn't recognize. (This to show that it is commonplace and thus unnecessary nitpicking to try to show off pointing out this behavior).
Maybe we should keep this to non-history majors so as to not bloat it from the start.

So just to get it started:

Viking - an insult akin to thief/brigand/pirate to the scandinavians/northmen of the time
Teutonic - a 10th century latin construct named after a forest

I think Hungarian would be another term, since they were calling themselves Magyars, and are (most probably, because no one knows their early history) not related to the Huns at all.

Eskimo for the Inuit people would be a definite contender, as 'Eskimo' is some kind of insult used by other tribes, something like those who eat raw fish, if memory serves me right.

I was once told that Japanese is another term, because it is a name given to them by the Chinese. (Something like mounted archer)

Spoonist, do you have a source for teutonic?

Spoonist wrote:Viking - an insult akin to thief/brigand/pirate to the scandinavians/northmen of the time

I've always heard that viking (shortened from "to go viking") essentially meant "to go on an expedition" (trading, exploration, whatever), and only later it developed the more negative connotation involved with raping and pillaging.

Skgoa wrote:Spoonist, do you have a source for teutonic?

Yeah, that one is false I think. If anything, it comes from the Teutons and Theodisk, not the saltus teutoburgienses Tacitus mentions.

I thought the Hungarian label was deliberate by late medieval Magyars, who wanted to inflate the importance of their ancestors? (The Celts did something similar with the Scythians around that time).

Turk, for the Ottomans - under the Ottoman Empire, 'Turks' were those lowly peasants in Anatolia, while the Empire was run and ruled by Ottomans. I guess this one isn't so much historians as a common name people use, though.

Definitely not used by historians, except in the concept of Türkenlieder, Türkenkriege etc.

One thing I have been wondering about for a while, that Thanas may be able to shed some light on:
Did people refer to the Weimar Republic as such? I know its official name was German Empire, but I also know that people (including me) refer to post-war germany as Bonn republic or nowadays as Berlin Republic.

Thanas wrote:

Skgoa wrote:Spoonist, do you have a source for teutonic?

Yeah, that one is false I think. If anything, it comes from the Teutons and Theodisk, not the saltus teutoburgienses Tacitus mentions.

I was taught in school that Teutonic derives first and foremost from one of the designated Germanii tribes, the Teutones, however why it was selected as a place holder name instead of Germans/Germanii was because of the roman defeat in what Tacitus calls the "saltus Teutoburgiensis". Which was the forest where an alliance of Germanii defeated Publius Quinctilius Varus. Which was considered to be evidence of a greater commonwealth of germanic/teutonic tribes.
Could be wrong though.

Lets go search the web...
Found this:

http://www.takeourword.com/Issue077.html

By 900 Germans writing in Latin adopted the Latin term, displacing their native word tiutisch (Latinized to Theotisca). Tiutisch meant, in the German language of the time, "the national, popular, vulgar language", and it is the source of English Dutch and German Deutsch (see our previous discussion on the origin of various names for Germany). German writers so quickly adopted the term lingua Teutonica ("Teutonic tongue") over lingua Theotisca as the classical designation for their language that it seems they thought it was the same word (i.e., of the same derivation) as Theotisca.

Not totally contradictive of my schooling but it does not mention the battle so that we can chalk up to my proffessor then.

China would be a classic example. Historians usually refer to the individual dynasties, but they are still part of the history of China. The Holy Roman Empire would probably also classify at least for the early parts of its history, when either Roman nor Holy was used by the contemporaries. In a similar fashion Russia is often used to refer collectively to the Grand Duchy of Moscow, Tsardom of Russia and the Russian Empire. Sometimes only the letter two are included. Nevertheless, it is even less according to historical use if we accept the theory that the true historical name of Tsardom of Russia was in fact Muscovite Tsardom or Tsardom of Muscovy.

Ancient Egyptians of course also never called their Kingdom "Egypt". Egypt comes from the Greek mythological figure Aegyptus.

Well, Thanas, were did I go wrong?

Temujin wrote:

Spoonist wrote:Viking - an insult akin to thief/brigand/pirate to the scandinavians/northmen of the time

I've always heard that viking (shortened from "to go viking") essentially meant "to go on an expedition" (trading, exploration, whatever), and only later it developed the more negative connotation involved with raping and pillaging.

True and false. Depending on which side of the spear/axe/sword you where.
Vikingr in old norse was as you say "to go on an expedition", however there is a different word in old norse for "to go trading" so when the word was used it is almost always in a show that you are a man, muchos machos, kinda thing. Which trading wouldn't suffice for.
On runestones for instance those who took part in the Varangian guard in Byzans refered to themselves as Vikings. So hiring out as a mercenary was considered to go viking. But on another runestone from the same age a trader in amber did not call himself a viking. So the distinction is almost certainly that a viking would have to show fighting skill.
Also Erik the red of Greenland fame was designated in the norse sagas as a viking and he was expelled from Iceland for murder (as was his father from Norway so it runs in the family).

Now where the real fun begins is that the svear of eastern sweden had a seaguard against vikings, so from them we get the negative association. Those svear later conquered the goeti of western sweden (of Gothic fame) and thus formed the kingdom of proto-sweden. So their use of the term stuck around for long after.
However later in iceland and norway the term is considered more friendly since it was more associated with conquest. So their use was more of a 'conquester'. (This though did not so in denmark, probably because after 1066 it wasn't good to be reminded of what could have been).

Spoonist wrote:I was taught in school that Teutonic derives first and foremost from one of the designated Germanii tribes, the Teutones, however why it was selected as a place holder name instead of Germans/Germanii was because of the roman defeat in what Tacitus calls the "saltus Teutoburgiensis". Which was the forest where an alliance of Germanii defeated Publius Quinctilius Varus. Which was considered to be evidence of a greater commonwealth of germanic/teutonic tribes.

The teutons we know of have nothing to do with the German tribes that defeated Varus.

Thanas wrote:

Spoonist wrote:I was taught in school that Teutonic derives first and foremost from one of the designated Germanii tribes, the Teutones, however why it was selected as a place holder name instead of Germans/Germanii was because of the roman defeat in what Tacitus calls the "saltus Teutoburgiensis". Which was the forest where an alliance of Germanii defeated Publius Quinctilius Varus. Which was considered to be evidence of a greater commonwealth of germanic/teutonic tribes.

The teutons we know of have nothing to do with the German tribes that defeated Varus.

Of course, I believe the Teutones was most probably Celtish. Doesn't mean that those latin speaking germans in the 10th century knew the difference though since the roman sources used it thusly.

I doubt the Teutones were celtic, if they were the Roman sources would call them so.

Especially because we would see references to Brennus and the Gauls then.

Pretty much any Native American tribe, as most of their names were acquired from other tribes who, usually, weren't too fond of the tribes in question.

So, we have Iroquois (their own ethnonym is Haudenosaunee), the Sioux (Dakota and Lakota), Chippewa (Objibwe, though that's mostly a pronounciation error), Winnebago (Ho-Chunk), Navajo (Diné), and scores of others.

Eskimo, though, is a bit unusual. In Alaska, Eskimo is still used by the Alaskan natives to refer to the various Yupik and Inupiat peoples, while in Canada and Greenland, Inuit is used as the generic for tribes of that culture and language group. Eskimo is apparently derived not from a word meaning "to eat raw flesh," but "snowshow netter." That sort of naming isn't that unusual for Native American tribes, as Objibwe, for instance, means "cooks until it puckers," a reference to their moccasin manufacture techniques.

Greek, too, is an ethnic designator not really used by ethnic Greeks in Greece. They prefer the term Hellene.

The "eater of raw flesh" stuff is a folk etymology. Hilariously, people who strive to be politically correct by saying "Inuit" instead sometimes offend the non-Inuit Eskimo tribes when they call them that.

Although I was under the impression that there is no sure etymology for "Eskimo." But then it was a while since I read about this.

Thanas wrote:Definitely not used by historians, except in the concept of Türkenlieder, Türkenkriege etc.

"Turk" is often used here in reference to our participation in the campaigns against the Ottomans in WW1, I assume as a reflection of what the Australian soldiers at the time called their enemies.

Thanas wrote:

Spoonist wrote:

Thanas wrote:The teutons we know of have nothing to do with the German tribes that defeated Varus.

Of course, I believe the Teutones was most probably Celtish.

I doubt the Teutones were celtic, if they were the Roman sources would call them so.

Sorry. Brainfart from me, I blame it on a recent wargame.

Quick post in between works- Teutōnes is a latinisation of *þiudanōz, from *þiudanas, with the germanic noun ending -ōz swapped out for a latinate one that sounds similar, -es. The -as one has something to do with rulership, and is obviously from the PIE root teut, meaning 'people'. I'm not sure exactly what it is morphologically in Proto-German, or rather what the -anas part is morphologically. The Teutones were almost certainly not Celtic, leaving aside the Romans not calling them that, given that they spoke a type of Proto-Germanic and their name means, for all intents and purposes, "dudes who rule" [very very loosely] in proto-germanic.

þiudisc (popular, or something like 'non-foreign') is related to that word, so it's hardly swapping words- it's just choosing a latinisation for when writing in Latin [lingua teutonica, and... diu diutisc sprahha, or something]. Although Thiudisc is specifically Saxon, apparantly, if what I'm looking at is right. Diutisc is the commonly cited Althochdeutsch word, although like any highly vague dialect region, one must look at that with caution, since German can and will vary wildly with only a few miles travelled, especially before the middle 19th century, and we only have knowledge of how a few monks in a handful of cities wrote.

Akhlut wrote:Pretty much any Native American tribe, as most of their names were acquired from other tribes who, usually, weren't too fond of the tribes in question.

On this note:

Aztecs called themselves Mexica - Aztec was a name given much later
Many place names in Guatemala and southern Mexico Are Nahuatl or some other bastard derivation. For example (modern name first/Mayan name second:
* Chichen Itza = Uuc Hab Nal
* Chichicastenango = Chaviar
* Quetzaltenango = Xelaju
* Tikal = Mutul
* Copan = Oxwitik
* Palenque = Baak'


The same is true of North and South American Indian tribes (and the term Indian itself is wrong):
The Inca called their empire Tawantinsuyu
The Guarani referred to themselves as the Aba
The Cheyenne referred to themselves as Só'taeo'o and Tsétsêhéstâhese, while the name Cheyenne derives from Šahíyena which is what the Dakota Sioux called them. And as noted above, Sioux is a misnomer as well.

Ancient Egyptians of course also never called their Kingdom "Egypt". Egypt comes from the Greek mythological figure Aegyptus.

The name that the ancient Egyptians most often used for their country was the Two Lands, that is Upper and Lower Egypt. Another one is 'black', as opposed to the 'red' desert. Black referring to the rich soil along the banks of the river Nile. In the Egyptological transcription, they're t3wj and kmt respectively.

When talking about Ancient Greece, any time you talk about a state in a political sense (Athens signed a peace treaty), it's a mistake. States (like Athens, Sparta or Thebes) only had geographical significance. Politically, only the people existed (Thebans have declared a war, Athenians have signed a treaty, etc.).

hongi wrote: In the Egyptological transcription, they're t3wj and kmt respectively.

^This is just an example, but how do you pronounce all of these ancient Egyptian/Protogermanic transcriptions?

The trouble with ancient Egyptian is that they didn't write their vowels. Arabic and Hebrew don't do it either. So we don't know how the Egyptians really pronounced their language.

But Egyptologists have to talk about the words and they have to pronounce the words to do that, so they have this entirely artificial convention where they put 'e' between every consonant. So most Egyptologists would pronounce kmt as kemet. But it could have been kamut or kumat or kimat and so on.

It's not entirely hopeless. We have a fair idea of what vowels they did use, and it seems to be only a, i and u. And Egyptian was transcribed into other languages where the vowels were written down. The Amarna letters in particular are a gold mine, because a lot of Egyptian names were transliterated directly into Akkadian.

In the Egyptological transcription, the praenomen of the pharaoh Amenhotep III is Nb-m3‘t-R‘ (meaning possessor/lord of the Maat of Ra). Conventionally it looks like Nebmaatre and it's pronounced as such by most Egyptologists. But in Akkadian, it comes out looking like Nimmuaria/Nibmuaria. There's some interesting phonological reasons behind this and this page goes into it in detail.

Here's a cool detail: R' is not Ra or Re. We just call the Sun God Ra or Re for convenience, but he sounded like Ria' with the ' meant to represent an ayn, a very guttural sound that doesn't exist in European languages. The author I linked to pronounces it really well there. Interestingly enough, for the original Stargate movie, they hired an Egyptologist to reconstruct ancient Egyptian for the Abydossians to speak. I don't have the time to check on it, but the actors probably do pronounce Ra in the proper 2500 year old way.

I haven't found an Akkadian-Egyptian transliteration of kmt, but you also have the later form of Egyptian, Coptic to draw upon. They wrote down the vowels. In the northern dialect, kmt is pronounced as khemi. In Greek, it was noted that the Egyptians called their country χημία (chemia). Coptic and Greek in the 1st century AD is a long, long way away from ancient classical Egyptian, but I think we can trust their pronounciation here.

tl;dr it's complicated. kmt - probably pronounced as khemi (the t is dropped from pronounciation but in heiroglyphs it would be spelled out).