Teutonic
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Teutonic or Teuton(s) means Germanic. It may refer to
- Germanic peoples
- Germanic languages
- The (medieval) Germans in general (so for example in the computer game Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings) [1]
- A famous German historical military order, the Teutonic Knights.
The word Teutonic derives at once from both the Latin name for a tribe who were thought by the Romans to be Germanic, the Teutone, and from the Germanic word tiutisch (New High German deutsch = German), originally meaning belonging to the people.
The Romans identified the Teutone as a Germanic tribe, and therefore Roman writers began to use the term Teutonicus as a synonym for their existing word for Germanic peoples, Germanicus.
Many scholars today think that the Teutone were not a Germanic tribe at all, but were actually a Celtic tribe, and it has been suggested that Teutone derives from the Celtic word tuath meaning "the people" or "the tribe" (as in the mythical Irish race, the Tuatha de Danaan, the "tribe of Danaan").[citation needed]
Tiutisch is the source of the German word Deutsch, as well as the English word "Dutch".
By 900 Germans writing in Latin used Teutonicus, instead of the earlier Theodisca, which was a Latin word form of the Germanic tiutisch, which meant Germanic. It appears they thought it was an alternative form, of the same Germanic derivation, as Theodisca. The words Teutone and tiutisch thus merged into one modern term, Teutonic. The Italian form Tedesco derives from the older Theodisca.
The term was used by the economist William Z. Ripley to designate one of the three "races" of Europe which by later writers was called the Nordic race.
This word was also incorporated into The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald as part of a phrase describing "The Great War" or in other words, World War I.
