It's axiomatic that one of the most important aspects of an
identity for both an individual and an ethnic group is the name of
the group, whether that be a clan, a tribe or a nationality. It may
come as quite a surprise to find out that the commonly used name of
such a group is often not that name which the group gives itself.
However, this is more often the case than you might think. Here are a
few well-known, and a few less well-known examples.
The Scots
What comes to mind when you think of the Scots? Kilts, whisky,
Rangers, Celtic, lochs, Rabbie Burns, och aye the noo, etc., etc.
However, the original use of the term Scot was by the Romans, who
referred to the Scotti, raiders from Ireland who settled
Scotland and brought their language, Gaelic, with them. So perhaps
the Scots should really be drinking whiskey, chasing leprechauns and
kissing the Blarney Stone.
The Welsh
This is a classic example of a people bearing a name which was
given to them by a hostile people and which is essentially dismissive
of them. When the Romans abandoned the British to their fate in the
face of the invading Germanic tribes which came to be known as the
Anglo-Saxons, the British tribes took on the name Combrogi,
Fellow Countrymen, which eventually became the Welsh name of their
country, Cymru (pronounced come-re). The term Welsh came from the
invading Germanic tribes and meant foreign. So essentially, the Welsh
were called foreigners by the English in their own land – a habit
which the English have cherished right up to now with regard to other
nations. A further twist comes from the fact that the term Welsh originally came from the Volcae, a Celtic tribe
encountered by the Romans whose name they applied to all Celts. This
term was picked up by the Germanic tribes and adopted as the term for
foreign, which is still true in modern German Welsch, which denotes
peoples that speak languages descended from Latin.
The French
We talk of Gallic humour, Gallic shrugs and Gallic wit, but that
should really only apply to those of Celtic descent, who can trace
their ancestry back to the time of Gaul before Caesar conquered it
and brought it into the Roman empire. The French are technically not
Gauls – they're German. The Franks were a group of German tribes,
some of which started to settle in ancient Gaul during the time of
the Roman empire, but who eventually took over the country after the
collapse of Roman rule. In fact, Frankish vocabulary accounts for
about 10% of modern French vocabulary, with the bulk coming from
Latin and the rest mainly from Gaulish. So the French shouldn't
really be the French, as so little of what the French are is
genuinely French.
The Dutch
Now, the Dutch are used to being called Dutch, but they never call
themselves Dutch, and they don't really like the term, calling
themselves Nederlands, people from the Low Country. This is mainly
because the real Dutch are the Germans, who call themselves Deutsch.
I know, it gets confusing. The origin of Dutch and Deutsh is the
Germanic version of the ancient Indo-European form *teuta,
people, which produced Proto-Germanic *theudiskaz, of the
people, producing Old High German diutisc. So basically, the
Germans call themselves the People, but the Dutch, who English
speakers call the People, don't like being called the People. Other
languages use a word from the same root to name the Germans: Italian
Tedesco, Scandinavian Tysk, and even the languages of Eastern Asia.
Funnily enough, the Slavonic languages all refer to the Germans as
Nemtsi, literally the Dumb Ones, as the Germanic tribes were
unable to speak the language of the Slavs, who regarded themselves
literally as speakers, or people of the Word, slovo.
The Greeks
Let's get one thing straight. The Greeks have never been the
Greeks. They have been many things, but never Greeks. What I mean by
this is that the Greeks have never called themselves Greek, and are
the victims of name-calling by foreigners, in this case the Romans,
who designated them according to a subset of the wider people, which
is actually quite a common occurrence (see below). Interestingly, the
Greek government once ran a campaign to get foreigners to
effectively abolish the term Greek and use Hellene, with little
success.
The people known as the Greeks have actually called themselves
many things. Homer, writing around 750 BCE, mostly used Achaeans,
Argives and Danaans, terms which are associated with different areas
in Greece, to describe the peoples who went to war against the
Trojans. After Homer's time, the name Hellene gained currency
throughout Greece and has remained the name that the Greeks use for
themselves to this day, along with the name of the country Hellas
(modern Elladha), though that's not the whole story.
As the Romans expanded their rule through Italy, mainly to the
south, they started to come across various peoples living in cities
which were colonies settled by people from mainland Greece. The
practice of the colonies was to identify themselves strongly with
their mother-city, metropolis, in Greece, rather than with the Greeks
as a whole, who were all Hellenes (though they constantly fought
amongst themselves). The first of these people who the Romans came
into contact with called themselves Graikoi in acknowledgement
of the region they originated from in Greece, so the Romans
cheerfully called the whole of southern Italy Magna Graecia,
Great Greece. The name stuck and the rest is history.
It doesn't end there. The Greeks also founded colonies on the
coast of Asia Minor, modern Turkey, the best known of which referred
to themselves as Ionian, giving their name to that region. The coast
of Asia Minor fell under the dominion of Persia, which took the name
Ionian to refer to all Greeks. From this we get variations of the
term Ionian in Arabic, Persian and Hebrew to refer to the Greeks. All
this chimes with other instances of one tribe or group being used to
denote the wider group, such as the Chechens being named by the
Russians after a village in their country, and the Germanic Allemani
tribe giving their name to French, Spanish and Portuguese to describe
all Germans.
One final thing here; the Greeks don't even call themselves
Hellenes, really. Hellene is largely a revival of the ancient term to
denote the modern country. Before modern Greece was founded, any
self-respecting Greek would call himself Romios, Roman, and
many still do. By the time the Roman empire split into eastern and
western, Athens had long been reduced to a village and the centre of
the Hellenic world was Byzantium, or Constantinople, known just as i
Polis, the City, by the Greeks. In fact, if one Greek asked
another where he was going, he would reply “to the City”, “is
tin bolin”, which gives the modern Istanbul. As Constantinople
was the capital of the surviving Roman empire, the people living
there called themselves Romios,
Roman, even though they spoke Greek. So, essentially the Greeks
reject the name of one of their own tribes, which was applied to them
by the Romans, but are happy to call themselves by the name of the
people who actually gave them the name from their own language that
they reject. That's history for you.
The Russians, the Hungarians and the Romanians
The Russians are not really the Russians. They're actually Swedes.
Well, at least their name is Swedish. Back in medieval times, before
the Slavic tribes settled down in the countries we are familiar with
now, groups of Swedes known as Varangians, essentially eastern
Vikings, started rowing their ships from the Baltic up the rivers of
what is now modern Russia. These people were known for their rowing
skills, from which they got the name
Rus, the first name of
the kingdom which became Russia. The name also sticks in the Finnish
name of Sweden, Ruotsi.
The Hungarians are not really the
Hungarians. They're the Magyars. However, they were stuck with the
name Hungarian, which comes from the Turkic Onogur,
meaning either Ten Tribes or Ten Arrows. Medieval Latin added the
initial H.
Finally we get to the Romanians.
Romania, formerly known as Dacia, was settled by the Romans in the
2nd
century. Although the Romans pulled out around 150 years later, it
was enough for Latin to be established as the main language.
Apparently, from that time the Romanians have always regarded
themselves as the true Romans, which, in a sense they are, even
though it's debatable how many of them are actually descended from
the original Romans. Still, at least they have the name they want to
call themselves, even thought the real Rome is hundreds of miles away
in Italy.
There's a world of weird and
wonderful ethnic names just waiting to be discovered. Feel free to
find some more and bring them back here.
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