Re: [tied] Danaan as ethnonym.

From: Marc Verhaegen
Message: 3433
Date: 2000-08-28

I believe it was the Dutch who first called their own language Dietsch or Duytsch or (when they wrote in Latin) Teodisca. Weren't the words Dutch, Diets, Deutsch etc. first used for the language of the people (=Dutch+German) as opposed to that of the Church?
 
Marc
who and when first started using terms such as Dutch or Deutsch? The Dutch don't call themselves Dutch. Was there ever a people who called themselves Teutons or their language Teutonic, other than the medieval Latin scribes who used the term "teodisca lingua"? Surely it's significant that the Germanic peoples who remained outside the Carolingian Empire - the English, Danes, Norwegians and Swedes - don't employ a derivative of this term.
Likewise for the Slavs - wasn't it the Germans who coined this as a general term for all the various Slavic peoples? No doubt it is based on a slavic word, but did the Slavs use it for themselves, or did just one particular group call themselves by this name?
 
Cheers
Dennis