Just wait til’ you hear about what they call Japan in Japan.

Take it up with your ancestors (or the English, if you have no English ancestors yourself). They started calling the Dutch “Dutch” when people in what is today The Netherlands and Germany were both called deutsch/dutch, and the English didn’t care to adjust when the distinction started to matter/people from the Netherlands stopped calling themselves deutsch/dutch.

But Germans are not much better, it’s absurd that Italian city names that aren’t at all hard to pronounce for Germans have different names in German, e.g. Torino, Milano, Roma (Turin, Mailand, Rom), and we also call Japan “Japan”, even though Japanese is one of the few languages that uses a word for Germany that is derived from “Deutschland” and “Nippon” isn’t hard to pronounce for Germans, either.

Also, the saxons never lived in the area of the German federal state of Saxony.

i really wonder where you are from

There’s many such examples, just off the top of my head: Hungary, Finland, Greece, Georgia, Egypt and Japan.

As someone from Czech Republic, I am not surprised. There are sometimes huge differences between country names in czech and English. And the closer the country is, the bigger the difference.

For the German speaking countries eng - ger - cze:

Germany - Deutschland - Německo

Austria - Österreich - Rakousko

Switzerland - Sweiz - Švýcarsko

Other examples (eng - cze):

Czech - Česko

Slovakia - Slovensko

Slovenia - Slovinsko

Greece - Řecko

Georgia - Gruzie

Spain - Španělsko

Greenland - Grónsko

Hungary - Maďarsko

Croatia - Chorvatsko

Saksa in finnish. And Finland is Suomi in finnish.

Apparently even Tacitus said it was a made up name. It seems like it might have originally applied to lands west of the Rhine, or some tribe living there in Roman times. So it might have applied to as much of modern Netherlands and Belgium as to modern Deutschland.

Don’t forget the ‘Heiliges Römisches Reich’ though - that always seemed a bit contrived.

Wait until you learn about Japan

Americans are slowly learning about the rest of the world.

Better late than never.

What about the Swamp Germans

You have it backwards.

German in German is “Deutsch” or “Duits” in Dutch.

Dutch in Dutch is “Nederlands” or “Niederländisch” in German.

“Deutch” comes from an old high german word “diutisc” which meant “of the people”

“Dutch” comes from “Diest” meaning “people’s language”

When the Romans invaded England, they important the Latin “Germania” to refer to Germany and gradually started to use “Dutch” for the common people of the “lower countries” (Belgium and Netherlands)

Uhh WTF? It is called Germany in Germany….

It’s interesting how countries have names that we just don’t use. To be fair, the UK calls it Germany, too, at least the BBC does. And not just their .com (American) site, which still uses English rather than American English (e.g. honour instead of “honor,” centre instead of “center,” and other minor spelling differences… to stranger ones like manoeuvre vs “maneuver” and so on), so that tells me they call Deutschland “Germany” in the UK as well. Even the English Wikipedia (which covers English and American English) says the official name of the country is “The Federal Republic of Germany”.

We call Turkiye “Turkey”, I guess because the name of the bird is more familiar and easier to type?

What we call Japan, people who live there say Nihon (or Nippon). But what they write is 日本, but I don’t know how to make my keyboard (or computer) produce those symbols without copying and pasting them. It’s easy to remember these symbols. One looks like a skyscraper (like in Tokyo) and the other looks like clouds around the peak of Mt Fuji, together representing the manmade and natural beauty of the country. It might be coincidence that those glyphs look like that, though.

Let’s take it a step further, shall we? So we were talking about countries that call themselves something other than what you (I’m assuming American) call them. There are companies that do it, too, but other than having extra words and symbols at the end, it’s mostly pronunciation… and I only have two examples. There may be more. The first one is Nokia, which people try to pronounce like it’s Korean or Japanese. It’s not, it’s Finnish (from Finland, one of the places Vikings come from). That’s why they’re so sturdy. It’s not just a meme. Anyway, while it’s fine for you to call it “No-kia,” like you’re saying you don’t drive a Kia, the Finns pronounce it “Knock-ya.” Like, throw a Nokia at you and “knock-ya” TF out!

Going back to Japan, the Japanese language is made up of glyphs which represent the syllables that make up the spoken language. Japanese is both simpler and more complex than you might think. So 日本 means Nihon, or Ni and Hon. Maybe you see where this is going… Hon isn’t pronounced like it rhymes with Don, it instead rhymes with “bone.” So to say 日本, you say “Ni” (knee) “hon” (hone). Those are the sounds represented by those glyphs. Now say “Honda.” You probably said it wrong. 本田 is pronounced “Hon” (hone) “da” (duh). Of course, if you say “Hone-duh” to car guys, they’ll look at you like you’re a fool, because no one outside of Japan pronounces it that way, even at the dealer. And you won’t score home field points by going to the dealer and pronouncing it correctly. (Of course, when they speak to leadership in Japan, if they ever do, you bet your ass they’re saying it right. But outside of Japanese corporate, they’re pronouncing it the way you always have.)

Does any of this even matter? No, not really. It’s trivia, which means it’s fun to know but not exactly useful to know, in most situations. German people will likely tell you they are German, not that they are Deutsch. Then again, Germans are far nicer than their rough language would imply (you can thank Rammstein for making you think it’s rough in the first place, especially if you’re Gen X or Millennial). They would just as soon you say hello as hallo (German for hello), though I will almost always use “auf widersehen” over goodbye, because goodbye sounds more formal. “Auf widersehen” translates to “Until next time.” Compare that with the Japanese “さようなら” (sayonara), which means “farewell.” Three languages, the other two translate to “goodbye,” but they all actually mean different things. This is why learning some of your more common phrases in other languages helps. I’d much rather say “auf widersehen” to someone I’m going to see again tomorrow rather than “goodbye.” And as much as I’d love to tell my boss さようなら… well, it’s just not the appropriate parting phrase.

to fix it:

🇳🇱Netherland, where Netherlanders live is Netherlands

🇩🇪Dutchland, where Dutchlanders live is Dutch

While it is quite common that countries have different names in other languages, germany is special because it really has a lot of very different names. Alemagne in french, germany in englisch, deutschland in german, tyskland in danish, Niemcy in poland and so on.

There is actually a wikipedia article about it, that also explains the origin of the different names.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_of_Germany