Theodisca
Encyclopedia
, the Latinised form of a Germanic word meaning "vernacular" or "of the people", is a Middle Latin adjective referring to the Germanic
vernacular
s of the Early Middle Ages
. The Old High German
language in Latin sources of the time is referred to as . It also appears as theudiscus, theotiscus, thiudiscus. The various Latin forms are derived from West Germanic *þiudisk and its later descendants.
The use of theodisce/deutsch was first attested in 786 in a report to Pope Hadrian I. Texts from a synod held in Corbridge
, England were read "both in Latin and in the vernacular".
It is derived from Common Germanic . The stem of this word, , meant "people" in Common Germanic, and was an adjective-forming suffix, of which -ish is the Modern English
form. The Old English form is , the Old High German one (attested ca. 1090 in the Annolied
).
The contrasting term appears to have been walhisk
("Welsh"), which was used to refer to Celtic and Roman (Gallo-Roman), but not Slavic, populations.
The Proto-Slavic language
borrowed the word as ťōďь with the meaning "not one's own" (the opposite of svojь), giving rise to contemporary Polish
cudzy, Czech
cizí, Serbo-Croat
tuđi, Russian
чужой etc.
The Proto-Indo-European
root - ("tribe"), which is commonly reconstructed as the basis of the word, is related to Lithuanian
tautà ("people"), Old Irish
túath ("tribe, people") and Oscan
touto ("community"). French
tout and its cognates in other Romance languages
are unrelated, being derived from Latin
("whole, complete, all", from an older *tŏvĕtǒs, "filled, stuffed").
The word came into Middle English
as thede, but was extinct in Early Modern English
(although surviving in the English place name Thetford
, 'public ford'). It survives as the Icelandic
word for "people, nation", the Norwegian (Nynorsk)
word for "people, nation", and the word for "German" in many European languages including German , Dutch , Yiddish , Danish
, Norwegian
, Swedish
, Spanish
tudesco and Italian
.
While morphologically
, the modern term Teutonic is a direct derivation from Teutones, its semantic
components consist of an amalgam of notions traditionally associated with the Germanic peoples
and the Germans
.
Starting with the publication of Julius Caesar
's Commentarii de Bello Gallico
(ca. 50 BC), a report on the Gallic War supplemented with various ethnographic remarks, Latin scholars generally considered the Teutones as the epitome of a wandering Germanic tribe. In later years, Roman writers would sometimes use the term Teutonicus as a poetic pars pro toto
synonym for their existing adjective Germanicus
. Both linguistically and ethnographically, however, neither the Teutonic ethnos
nor the term from which their name was derived can be clearly identified as either Germanic or Celtic. Some modern scholars consider the Teutones to be more closely associated with the Celtic Helvetii
than with Germanic groups, whilst the IE
root *teutā ("people") is well attested in both the Germanic and the Celtic lexica.
Around the year 900, Germans writing in Latin
started to use the more learned teutonicus to replace the earlier theodiscus, the Latinised form of Germanic diutisc ("vernacular"). This fairly random equation of an ancient ethnonym
with a contemporary term was common practice during the Middle Ages
, comparable to the equation Getae
- Goths
popularised by Jordanes
, or the even more adventurous Dacia
- Dania (Denmark
) found e.g. in French chronicles. Hence the official Latin title of the Teutonic Order (Ordo domus Sanctæ Mariæ Theutonicorum Ierosolimitanorum - "Order of St. Mary's house of the Germans of Jerusalem").
The term Teutonic was used by the economist William Z. Ripley
to designate one of the three "races" of Europe, which later writers called the Nordic race. Due to related abuses down to the first half of the 20th century, the term "teutonisch" has since fallen out of favour amongst German-speaking scholars, and is restricted to a somewhat ironical usage similar to the archaic teutsch, if used at all. While the term is still present in English, which has retained it in some contexts as a translation of the traditional Latin Teutonicus (most notably the aforementioned Teutonic Order), it should not be translated into German as "teutonisch" except when referring to the historical Teutones.
Theodism is a neologism for a branch of Germanic neopaganism
based on the Old English form of the word.
Germanic languages
The Germanic languages constitute a sub-branch of the Indo-European language family. The common ancestor of all of the languages in this branch is called Proto-Germanic , which was spoken in approximately the mid-1st millennium BC in Iron Age northern Europe...
vernacular
Vernacular
A vernacular is the native language or native dialect of a specific population, as opposed to a language of wider communication that is not native to the population, such as a national language or lingua franca.- Etymology :The term is not a recent one...
s of the Early Middle Ages
Early Middle Ages
The Early Middle Ages was the period of European history lasting from the 5th century to approximately 1000. The Early Middle Ages followed the decline of the Western Roman Empire and preceded the High Middle Ages...
. The Old High German
Old High German
The term Old High German refers to the earliest stage of the German language and it conventionally covers the period from around 500 to 1050. Coherent written texts do not appear until the second half of the 8th century, and some treat the period before 750 as 'prehistoric' and date the start of...
language in Latin sources of the time is referred to as . It also appears as theudiscus, theotiscus, thiudiscus. The various Latin forms are derived from West Germanic *þiudisk and its later descendants.
The use of theodisce/deutsch was first attested in 786 in a report to Pope Hadrian I. Texts from a synod held in Corbridge
Corbridge
Corbridge is a village in Northumberland, England, situated west of Newcastle and east of Hexham. Villages in the vicinity include Halton, Acomb, Aydon and Sandhoe.-Roman fort and town:...
, England were read "both in Latin and in the vernacular".
It is derived from Common Germanic . The stem of this word, , meant "people" in Common Germanic, and was an adjective-forming suffix, of which -ish is the Modern English
Modern English
Modern English is the form of the English language spoken since the Great Vowel Shift in England, completed in roughly 1550.Despite some differences in vocabulary, texts from the early 17th century, such as the works of William Shakespeare and the King James Bible, are considered to be in Modern...
form. The Old English form is , the Old High German one (attested ca. 1090 in the Annolied
Annolied
The Annolied was composed around 1100 in Early Middle High German rhyming couplets by a monk of Siegburg Abbey.-Dating:A principal point of reference for the dating is the mention of Mainz as a place of coronation...
).
The contrasting term appears to have been walhisk
Walha
Walhaz is a reconstructed Proto-Germanic word, meaning "foreigner", "stranger", "Roman", "Romance-speaker", or "Celtic-speaker". The adjective derived from this word can be found in , Old High German walhisk, meaning "Romance", in Old English welisċ, wælisċ, wilisċ, meaning "Romano-British" and in...
("Welsh"), which was used to refer to Celtic and Roman (Gallo-Roman), but not Slavic, populations.
The Proto-Slavic language
Proto-Slavic language
Proto-Slavic is the proto-language from which Slavic languages later emerged. It was spoken before the seventh century AD. As with most other proto-languages, no attested writings have been found; the language has been reconstructed by applying the comparative method to all the attested Slavic...
borrowed the word as ťōďь with the meaning "not one's own" (the opposite of svojь), giving rise to contemporary Polish
Polish language
Polish is a language of the Lechitic subgroup of West Slavic languages, used throughout Poland and by Polish minorities in other countries...
cudzy, Czech
Czech language
Czech is a West Slavic language with about 12 million native speakers; it is the majority language in the Czech Republic and spoken by Czechs worldwide. The language was known as Bohemian in English until the late 19th century...
cizí, Serbo-Croat
Serbo-Croatian language
Serbo-Croatian or Serbo-Croat, less commonly Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian , is a South Slavic language with multiple standards and the primary language of Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Montenegro...
tuđi, Russian
Russian language
Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...
чужой etc.
The Proto-Indo-European
Proto-Indo-European language
The Proto-Indo-European language is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European languages, spoken by the Proto-Indo-Europeans...
root - ("tribe"), which is commonly reconstructed as the basis of the word, is related to Lithuanian
Lithuanian language
Lithuanian is the official state language of Lithuania and is recognized as one of the official languages of the European Union. There are about 2.96 million native Lithuanian speakers in Lithuania and about 170,000 abroad. Lithuanian is a Baltic language, closely related to Latvian, although they...
tautà ("people"), Old Irish
Old Irish language
Old Irish is the name given to the oldest form of the Goidelic languages for which extensive written texts are extant. It was used from the 6th to the 10th centuries, by which time it had developed into Middle Irish....
túath ("tribe, people") and Oscan
Oscan language
Oscan is a term used to describe both an extinct language of southern Italy and the language group to which it belonged.The Oscan language was spoken by a number of tribes, including the Samnites, the Aurunci, the Sidicini, and the Ausones. The latter three tribes were often grouped under the name...
touto ("community"). French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
tout and its cognates in other Romance languages
Romance languages
The Romance languages are a branch of the Indo-European language family, more precisely of the Italic languages subfamily, comprising all the languages that descend from Vulgar Latin, the language of ancient Rome...
are unrelated, being derived from Latin
Latin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
("whole, complete, all", from an older *tŏvĕtǒs, "filled, stuffed").
The word came into Middle English
Middle English
Middle English is the stage in the history of the English language during the High and Late Middle Ages, or roughly during the four centuries between the late 11th and the late 15th century....
as thede, but was extinct in Early Modern English
Early Modern English
Early Modern English is the stage of the English language used from about the end of the Middle English period to 1650. Thus, the first edition of the King James Bible and the works of William Shakespeare both belong to the late phase of Early Modern English...
(although surviving in the English place name Thetford
Thetford
Thetford is a market town and civil parish in the Breckland district of Norfolk, England. It is on the A11 road between Norwich and London, just south of Thetford Forest. The civil parish, covering an area of , has a population of 21,588.-History:...
, 'public ford'). It survives as the Icelandic
Icelandic language
Icelandic is a North Germanic language, the main language of Iceland. Its closest relative is Faroese.Icelandic is an Indo-European language belonging to the North Germanic or Nordic branch of the Germanic languages. Historically, it was the westernmost of the Indo-European languages prior to the...
word for "people, nation", the Norwegian (Nynorsk)
Nynorsk
Nynorsk or New Norwegian is one of two official written standards for the Norwegian language, the other being Bokmål. The standard language was created by Ivar Aasen during the mid-19th century, to provide a Norwegian alternative to the Danish language which was commonly written in Norway at the...
word for "people, nation", and the word for "German" in many European languages including German , Dutch , Yiddish , Danish
Danish language
Danish is a North Germanic language spoken by around six million people, principally in the country of Denmark. It is also spoken by 50,000 Germans of Danish ethnicity in the northern parts of Schleswig-Holstein, Germany, where it holds the status of minority language...
, Norwegian
Norwegian language
Norwegian is a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Norway, where it is the official language. Together with Swedish and Danish, Norwegian forms a continuum of more or less mutually intelligible local and regional variants .These Scandinavian languages together with the Faroese language...
, Swedish
Swedish language
Swedish is a North Germanic language, spoken by approximately 10 million people, predominantly in Sweden and parts of Finland, especially along its coast and on the Åland islands. It is largely mutually intelligible with Norwegian and Danish...
, Spanish
Spanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
tudesco and Italian
Italian language
Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...
.
While morphologically
Morphology (linguistics)
In linguistics, morphology is the identification, analysis and description, in a language, of the structure of morphemes and other linguistic units, such as words, affixes, parts of speech, intonation/stress, or implied context...
, the modern term Teutonic is a direct derivation from Teutones, its semantic
Semantics
Semantics is the study of meaning. It focuses on the relation between signifiers, such as words, phrases, signs and symbols, and what they stand for, their denotata....
components consist of an amalgam of notions traditionally associated with the Germanic peoples
Germanic peoples
The Germanic peoples are an Indo-European ethno-linguistic group of Northern European origin, identified by their use of the Indo-European Germanic languages which diversified out of Proto-Germanic during the Pre-Roman Iron Age.Originating about 1800 BCE from the Corded Ware Culture on the North...
and the Germans
Germans
The Germans are a Germanic ethnic group native to Central Europe. The English term Germans has referred to the German-speaking population of the Holy Roman Empire since the Late Middle Ages....
.
Starting with the publication of Julius Caesar
Julius Caesar
Gaius Julius Caesar was a Roman general and statesman and a distinguished writer of Latin prose. He played a critical role in the gradual transformation of the Roman Republic into the Roman Empire....
's Commentarii de Bello Gallico
Commentarii de Bello Gallico
Commentarii de Bello Gallico is Julius Caesar's firsthand account of the Gallic Wars, written as a third-person narrative. In it Caesar describes the battles and intrigues that took place in the nine years he spent fighting local armies in Gaul that opposed Roman domination.The "Gaul" that Caesar...
(ca. 50 BC), a report on the Gallic War supplemented with various ethnographic remarks, Latin scholars generally considered the Teutones as the epitome of a wandering Germanic tribe. In later years, Roman writers would sometimes use the term Teutonicus as a poetic pars pro toto
Pars pro toto
Pars pro toto is Latin for "a part for the whole" where the name of a portion of an object or concept represents the entire object or context....
synonym for their existing adjective Germanicus
Germanicus
Germanicus Julius Caesar , commonly known as Germanicus, was a member of the Julio-Claudian dynasty and a prominent general of the early Roman Empire. He was born in Rome, Italia, and was named either Nero Claudius Drusus after his father or Tiberius Claudius Nero after his uncle...
. Both linguistically and ethnographically, however, neither the Teutonic ethnos
Ethnos
Ethnos may refer to:*Ethnic group*Ethnos...
nor the term from which their name was derived can be clearly identified as either Germanic or Celtic. Some modern scholars consider the Teutones to be more closely associated with the Celtic Helvetii
Helvetii
The Helvetii were a Celtic tribe or tribal confederation occupying most of the Swiss plateau at the time of their contact with the Roman Republic in the 1st century BC...
than with Germanic groups, whilst the IE
Indo-European languages
The Indo-European languages are a family of several hundred related languages and dialects, including most major current languages of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and South Asia and also historically predominant in Anatolia...
root *teutā ("people") is well attested in both the Germanic and the Celtic lexica.
Around the year 900, Germans writing in Latin
Latin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
started to use the more learned teutonicus to replace the earlier theodiscus, the Latinised form of Germanic diutisc ("vernacular"). This fairly random equation of an ancient ethnonym
Ethnonym
An ethnonym is the name applied to a given ethnic group. Ethnonyms can be divided into two categories: exonyms and autonyms or endonyms .As an example, the ethnonym for...
with a contemporary term was common practice during the Middle Ages
Middle Ages
The Middle Ages is a periodization of European history from the 5th century to the 15th century. The Middle Ages follows the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 and precedes the Early Modern Era. It is the middle period of a three-period division of Western history: Classic, Medieval and Modern...
, comparable to the equation Getae
Getae
The Getae was the name given by the Greeks to several Thracian tribes that occupied the regions south of the Lower Danube, in what is today northern Bulgaria, and north of the Lower Danube, in Romania...
- Goths
Goths
The Goths were an East Germanic tribe of Scandinavian origin whose two branches, the Visigoths and the Ostrogoths, played an important role in the fall of the Roman Empire and the emergence of Medieval Europe....
popularised by Jordanes
Jordanes
Jordanes, also written Jordanis or Jornandes, was a 6th century Roman bureaucrat, who turned his hand to history later in life....
, or the even more adventurous Dacia
Dacia
In ancient geography, especially in Roman sources, Dacia was the land inhabited by the Dacians or Getae as they were known by the Greeks—the branch of the Thracians north of the Haemus range...
- Dania (Denmark
Denmark
Denmark is a Scandinavian country in Northern Europe. The countries of Denmark and Greenland, as well as the Faroe Islands, constitute the Kingdom of Denmark . It is the southernmost of the Nordic countries, southwest of Sweden and south of Norway, and bordered to the south by Germany. Denmark...
) found e.g. in French chronicles. Hence the official Latin title of the Teutonic Order (Ordo domus Sanctæ Mariæ Theutonicorum Ierosolimitanorum - "Order of St. Mary's house of the Germans of Jerusalem").
The term Teutonic was used by the economist William Z. Ripley
William Z. Ripley
William Zebina Ripley was an American economist, lecturer at Columbia University, professor of economics at MIT, professor of political economics at Harvard University, and racial theorist...
to designate one of the three "races" of Europe, which later writers called the Nordic race. Due to related abuses down to the first half of the 20th century, the term "teutonisch" has since fallen out of favour amongst German-speaking scholars, and is restricted to a somewhat ironical usage similar to the archaic teutsch, if used at all. While the term is still present in English, which has retained it in some contexts as a translation of the traditional Latin Teutonicus (most notably the aforementioned Teutonic Order), it should not be translated into German as "teutonisch" except when referring to the historical Teutones.
Theodism is a neologism for a branch of Germanic neopaganism
Germanic neopaganism
Germanic neopaganism is the contemporary revival of historical Germanic paganism. Precursor movements appeared in the early 20th century in Germany and Austria. A second wave of revival began in the early 1970s...
based on the Old English form of the word.
See also
- TeutonsTeutonsThe Teutons or Teutones were mentioned as a Germanic tribe by Greek and Roman authors, notably Strabo and Marcus Velleius Paterculus and normally in close connection with the Cimbri, whose ethnicity is contested between Gauls and Germani...
- Furor TeutonicusFuror TeutonicusFuror Teutonicus is a Latin phrase referring to the proverbial fierceness of the Teutones, or more generally the Germanic tribes of the Roman Empire period....
- Theodism
- TheodoricTheodoricTheodoric is a widespread Germanic given name. First attested in the 5th century, it became widespread in the Germanic-speaking world, not least due to its most famous bearer, Theoderic the Great, king of the Ostrogoths....
- WalhaWalhaWalhaz is a reconstructed Proto-Germanic word, meaning "foreigner", "stranger", "Roman", "Romance-speaker", or "Celtic-speaker". The adjective derived from this word can be found in , Old High German walhisk, meaning "Romance", in Old English welisċ, wælisċ, wilisċ, meaning "Romano-British" and in...
- DietschDietsch-Languages:*German *Middle Dutch*Low German including Dutch*Low German excluding Dutch by definition*Low Dietsch, transitional Limburgish-Ripuarian dialects-People:* John Dietsch, author on the subject of fly fishing...
- FolkFolkThe English word Folk is derived from a Germanic noun, *fulka meaning "people" or "army"...
- TúathTuathTúath is an Old Irish word, often translated as "people" or "nation". It is cognate with the Welsh and Breton tud , and with the Germanic þeudō ....