•  Malgas   ( @Malgas@beehaw.org ) 
    link
    fedilink
    English
    221 month ago

    IIRC a lot (all?) of these come from the names of specific Germanic tribes that these languages had contact with back before Germany existed as a unified entity, which then metathesized into a demonym for the entire cultural group and then the nation state. “Saksa”, for example, is a doublet of “Saxon”.