How Did The States Of Germany Get Their Names?

from 1 A.D. all the way up to the present day, decade by decade.

You'll be able to find it wherever you choose to listen to podcasts.

We have the Romans to thank for the name "Germany", in fact, none other than the most famous Roman himself,

Julius Caesar.

In one of his writings, he spoke of a tribal people he called the Germani.

People the Romans had come into contact with who resided in modern-day Germany.

And because of these people, the Romans dubbed their land "Germania",

which transformed into the name Germany we have today.

Though it wasn't just the Germani people who lived in this land,

all kinds of different tribes of people lived in the lands that would become Germany,

and all these tribes had different names.

Because of this, different outsiders gave the land different names,

depending on what Germanic tribe they first met, or had to deal with most.

In example, the French dealt a lot with the Allemani tribe,

so to them, the country became Allemagne.

Meanwhile, Finnic speakers in Finland and Estonia interacted more with the Saxon tribes, so named the land Saksa, after them.

While all these other people were giving their land a name, the actual people of the land thought themselves as just people,

so named the land after their word for "of the people", which was Thiudisc,

which eventually evolved into the German name for Germany, Deutschland.

Now, while this video isn't really about how the nation as a whole got a selection with many names,

I feel it's only right to start with this, as the many names of Germany kind of explains to us just how important the various regions of Germany are.

Germany really is a country built on its regions, for the longest time in history, there was no nation called Germany,

but just a collection of Germanic states that shared very little in common, other than languages that all sounded somewhat similar.

And it stayed this way, all the way up till the 18th of January, 1871,

where after war with the French, the various Germanic states were unified, simply into the single nation of Germany.

This was all done under the guidance of Otto von Bismarck,

a statesman who went to become the first chancellor of Germany, and luckily enough was an incredibly German-looking man himself.

What a coincidence.

Because for so long, Germany was little more than an un-unified set of states, many of these states built strong images for themselves,

and are perhaps just as well known as the nation as a whole.

A name like Bavaria conjures up a strong image in one's mind of greenery, castles, and beer,

whereas Berlin conjures up an image of modern history, and a much more modern design.

At least for me it does anyway.

And Bavaria and Berlin are both states of Germany.

Except you may have noticed that one is a huge ?, and one is just a single city.

This is because the states of Germany really do vary in size like this, which you will see as we look into them.

And Germany has an incredibly rich history, in that many states have disappeared, or only come into existence in the last 30 years or so.

I really don't think there are many countries that have changed their borders as much as Germany has.

Just look at maps of Germany throughout history.