Talk:Germanic peoples

Germani are Germans in English???

A cn tag has been added to our opening sentences, on these words Another term, ancient Germans, is considered problematic by many scholars since it suggests identity with present-day Germans. Many sources have been discussed for such statements on this talk page in past versions of the article, but when I went to confirm that this is covered in the body I notice that we now have this surprising statement: The direct equivalents in English are, however, Germans for Germani and Germany for Germania. This is being sourced from the last paragraph of a preface to a work that is only being used to back this one sentence up: Winkler, Martin M. (2016). Arminius the Liberator : myth and ideology. Oxford University Press. It is on Google books [1]. He does not use the term "direct equivalents" but he does say that Germanen and Germania are called Germans and Germany in English, noting that this usage breaks down a distinction which is clear in German. He says he will use "ancient Germans", and explains, the blurring is not such a bad thing for his book, which is about 20th-century mythmaking, because such blurring is part of the story he is telling about ideologies and nationalism. I think that although the sentence we have is not literally wrong it distorts what both this work and more specialist works emphasize, which is that academics are uncomfortable with the lack of common distinct terms in everyday English, and tend to use other terms. I will try to tweak the wording, but I am a little uncomfortable that we are using sources about other topics like this, when we have so many possibilities to use sources that are about the exact topic of our article. It looks like cherry picking? Andrew Lancaster (talk) 07:25, 18 January 2025 (UTC)

I’m not sure that I understand the problem with Winkler? Also, we have Green and Kulikowski in the next sentence discussing something similar.—-Ermenrich (talk) 13:43, 18 January 2025 (UTC)

I also removed the cn tag. I’m not sure why even veteran editors feel this need to go around adding tags to the leads of articles when they clearly haven’t bothered looking at the body.—-Ermenrich (talk) 13:46, 18 January 2025 (UTC)

Having fixed the text my only concern about Winkler is just that we don't seem to need that specific source, for that specific information. Like you say, we also have Green and Kulikowski. We also have an extra footnote in the lead, because Steinacher 2022 also notes this issue. In the following I will use the Latin term Germani to avoid ambiguity. In English “German” refers to modern Germans, “Germanic” to the ancient Germani / Germanic peoples. Anyway, it is not an big issue unless it gets used in the wrong way. (The article body wording was apparently trying to give the impression that Winkler was saying something different to Green and Kulikowski?) However, I think this is an article where we sometimes risk having too many sources for every point. In situations like that it can sometimes ironically become more difficult for readers and drive-by editors to verify what is sourced and how. BTW, to be fair to Zacwill our body text was not saying things as clearly as it could. I've tweaked that now, and I hope this resolves it.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 14:17, 18 January 2025 (UTC)

I guess the next question is whether we feel that we need to add a citation to the lead to prevent future tagging? I think this particular sentence has been targeted before. For a source, I think Green, p. 8 would work fine.--Ermenrich (talk) 14:42, 18 January 2025 (UTC)

I think so. His text focuses on the point nicely, and he is a philologist after all.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 17:45, 18 January 2025 (UTC)

Green is the right choice to substantiate and clarify this point of contention in my estimation as well. --Obenritter (talk) 20:00, 18 January 2025 (UTC)

Were they "new peoples" or "new names" in the third century?

• In our lead: After this major disruption, new Germanic peoples appear for the first time in the historical record, such as the Franks, Goths, Saxons, and Alemanni.
  • Suggestion => In the third century, Roman authors began referring to regional groupings with new names such as Franks, Goths, Saxons, and Alemanni.
• In the body: The period after the Marcomannic Wars saw the emergence of peoples with new names along the Roman frontiers, which were probably formed by the merger of smaller groups.[157 is Todd p.55] These new confederacies or peoples tended to border the Roman imperial frontier.[159 is Halsall p.120] Many ethnic names from earlier periods disappear.[160 is Pohl Die Germanen pp.26-27]
  • Suggestion => In the third century Roman authors began to use new names for large regional groupings of previously known Germanic peoples, sometimes working in coordination near different parts of the Roman imperial frontier.

Reasoning:

• 1. We should not imply that these new names suddenly appeared immediately after the Marcomanni wars in the second century. They pop up here and there over the following century, and clearly weren't all seen as the names of "peoples" at first, let alone political units. (Or at least there is no simple consensus on this.) Nor did each of the new names follow the same pattern.
• 2. We should not imply that that these were all "new peoples", at least at first. The Rhine groups were essentially just the same old people as before. As I think our own text says elsewhere, the term Saxon, which first appears in the 4th century, was probably not "ethnic" at that time.
• 3. The names of older tribes within the groups did not at all suddenly disappear in the third century. Pohl does say that 1st century tribal names disappear (from the Roman record) in the third century, but the previous sentence implies that this might be because the Romans, going through their own problems, lost their ability to keep track of the region's ethnic complexities. Offenbar geriet im 3. Jarhhundert nicht nur die politische Kontrolle der Römer über die Germania, sondern auch ihr ethnisches Orientierungsvermögen ins Schwanken (I would add that many of the old tribal names came back when Roman's were more in control of their own northern regions for a while in the fourth century, under leaders like Constantine and Julian.)

One thing I also note being mentioned by some sources is that official Roman use of Germani soldiers increased in this period and became an important factor in Roman affairs. Andrew Lancaster (talk) 08:28, 19 January 2025 (UTC)

While the "new names" are solely known through the works of Roman authors, we should avoid a wording ("Roman authors began to use") that solely attributes the terminological shifts to a question of Roman subjective perception, without any mention that these may well have been the result of objective realignments among the groups that were previously referred to collectively as Germani (reflected in "which were probably formed by the merger of smaller groups"). I don't how to phrase the middle ground between the exisiting versions and your proposed texts, but anything that doesn't entirely portray the people behind the limes as deprived from agency will do, because our sources do not necessarily put it that way either. –Austronesier (talk) 11:35, 19 January 2025 (UTC)

Yes we don't know how the Franks (for example) saw it, or indeed precisely what was going on with the Romans' minds. In fact we know very little at all. Some of the first occasions when Franks seem to have worked in a coordinated way involved Roman civil wars. And of course the stories for Saxons and Goths are probably completely different to those of the Franks and Allemani, who were apparently ruling buffer states under Roman control sometimes. Maybe we could use a passive voice construction "new names appear" or something like that.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 11:50, 19 January 2025 (UTC)

Did the first Franks live near the Weser?

Another small point. Our text: The Franks are first mentioned occupying territory between the Rhine and Weser.[163] The citation is to Malcolm Todd. I don't have his book and the page is not currently visible via Google Books. Having recently worked on the Franks article I have seen the original position of the Franks defined over and over in terms of the lower section of the Rhine around Roman Germania Inferior. The listing of tribes who were definitely Frankish is not easy, but the most certain ones do not stretch as far as the Weser. I can imagine some authors think they stretched as far as the Weser, because the area between Rhine and Weser is seen as a region with an archaeological culture. However, we don't really have clear definitions of the names of tribes living there in the third century, and there are indications that parts of the Weser might already have become "Saxon" (and perhaps Frisian?), whatever that meant at the time. Perhaps someone should look at Todd first, but other sources can be brought in to this discussion if necessary. Andrew Lancaster (talk) 08:43, 19 January 2025 (UTC)

Todd writes: A confederacy under the name ‘Franks’ formed itself out of the many small groups settled between the Rhine and the Weser and soon began to threaten the lower Rhine frontier and later the Channel coast. His own sources are: "P. Périn and L.-C. Feffer, Les Francs I (Paris 1987); E. James, The Franks (Oxford 1988), 34–51." So he actually does not directly talk about the territory they inhabited when first appearing in the Roman record, but about the area where they presumedly have formed. (Please email me if you need a copy of Todd's book). –Austronesier (talk) 13:41, 19 January 2025 (UTC)

We can rephrase slightly to better reflect Todd? Or do you have a better source, Andrew?--Ermenrich (talk) 14:41, 19 January 2025 (UTC)

Thanks for looking that up. It might be better to use another source. The idea that the new name involved people making new settlements is also not typical.

• I have James, and on p.35 he actually writes that Franci ... was used to refer to various Germanic peoples living just north and east of the lower Rhine in what are now the Netherlands and the north-western part of West Germany. That seems much more typical to me.
• Looking at the Reallexikon of course there are several articles for this topic and many are a bit waffly, but for example the opening of the archaeological article is this: Als Ursprungsgebiet der Frk. hat den Schrift-Qu. zufolge das rechtsrhein. Vorfeld der röm. Prov. Germania Inferior, später Germania II genannt, zu gelten. The quote is from page 388, and I think this is correct: Ament, Hermann (1995), "Franken §6. Ursprungsgebiet", in Beck, Heinrich; Geuenich, Dieter; Steuer, Heiko (eds.), Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde, vol. 9 (2 ed.), De Gruyter, pp. 388–390, ISBN 978-3-11-014642-4
• The main history article in the Reallexikon starts like this Die Frk. sind in den größeren Zusammenhang der Germ. einzufügen, die im Gebiet des niedergerm. Limes ihre polit. Unabhängigkeit von Rom bewahren konnten. The reference: Anton, Hans H. (1995), "Franken § 17. Erstes Auftauchen im Blickfeld des röm. Reiches und erste Ansiedlung frk. Gruppen", in Beck, Heinrich; Geuenich, Dieter; Steuer, Heiko (eds.), Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde, vol. 9 (2 ed.), De Gruyter, pp. 414–419, ISBN 978-3-11-014642-4
• Nico Roymans gives this, Te Late Roman frontier dynamics in the Lower Rhine region are closely linked to the appearance of the Franks. ‘Franks’ is a Roman collective label for a series of smaller tribes in the areas east and north of the Lower Rhine who had long maintained relations with the Roman Empire. However, it wasn’t until the early 3rd century that they were given this name by the Roman authorities.. From: Roymans, Nico; Heeren, Stijn (2021), "Romano-Frankish interaction in the Lower Rhine frontier zone from the late 3rd to the 5th century – Some key archaeological trends explored", Germania, 99: 133–156, doi:10.11588/ger.2021.92212

I could go on but the main pattern I keep seeing is that they live on the non-Roman side of the lower parts of the Rhine including the delta, and approximately as far south as Germania Inferior went. (Somewhere north of Koblenz I believe.) --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 16:10, 19 January 2025 (UTC)

A wording tweak in the lead?

We have After this major disruption, new Germanic peoples appear for the first time in the historical record, such as the Franks, Goths, Saxons, and Alemanni. There is an "standard" concern about wordings like this: that all or most of the peoples involved were not new. Connected to this, they did not (apart from the Goths) necessarily move much, and they were not necessarily political entities in any lasting or meaningful way, as was often assumed too easily in older scholarship. For Roman authors there was often an implication of new alliances being made, but we need to be careful about making that too simplistic. I was tempted to just insert "groupings of" after "new", but was wondering if anyone has a better idea. In reality these were new "categories", but that seems like a dry and uninformative word, and "groupings" perhaps carries the right fuzzy implication of alliances? Andrew Lancaster (talk) 14:18, 8 April 2025 (UTC)

Andrew, that is a valid concern in my eyes and we should probably use the expression "other groupings of Germanic peoples appear" since they were not necessarily single tribal units. --Obenritter (talk) 20:07, 8 April 2025 (UTC)

Changes: 2025-04-09

I recently changed the following:

Original

New

The letters of the Elder Futhark are arranged in an order called the futhark, so named after its first six characters. The alphabet is supposed to have been extremely phonetic, and each letter could also represent a word or concept, so that, for instance, the f-rune also stood for *fehu ('cattle, property'). Such examples are known as Begriffsrunen ('concept runes'). Runic inscriptions are found on organic materials such as wood, bone, horn, ivory, and animal hides, as well as on stone and metal. Inscriptions tend to be short, and are difficult to interpret as profane or magical. They include names, inscriptions by the maker of an object, memorials to the dead, as well as inscriptions that are religious or magical in nature.

The letters of the Elder Futhark are arranged in an order called the futhark, so named after its first six characters. The alphabet is overall extremely phonetic, but each letter could also be used ideographically to represent their name as a word, so that, for instance, the f-rune, which was named after the Germanic word for "livestock" (reconstructed Proto-Germanic: *fehu, Old English: feoh, Old Norse: fé), could represent such, but also "loose wealth" (akin to personal property) by extension (in English the word survives as 'fee'). Such examples are known as ideographic runes. Runic inscriptions are found on organic materials such as wood, bone, horn, ivory, and animal hides, as well as on stone and metal. Inscriptions tend to be short, and are difficult to interpret as profane or magical. They include names, inscriptions by the maker of an object, memorials to the dead, as well as inscriptions that are religious or magical in nature.

@Ermenrich didnt find this an improvement and undid it.

Ait, so, first of, "The alphabet is supposed to have been extremely phonetic". This formats the fact like an opposition. It "is" overall phonetic. Then we have "and each letter could also represent a word or concept", which is flawed for several reasons. The "and" doesn't tell the reader anything about how common this was in relation to it being phonetic, which is weird since the phonetic use and ideographic use are completely different concepts. The ideographic use is a secondary use, and overall uncommon (not counting magic, which is a totally different discussion). Then we have "represent a word or concept". This also doesn't give the reader the full image, which is that the ideographic use specifically derives the rune's name. In turn, "the f-rune also stood for *fehu ('cattle, property')", just glosses over this, and the translation is insufficient. It means livestock, not just cattle (even if such was most common), with property being an extension of this sense, even so, it specifically means 'loose property' (like money), not fixed such. "Hippity hoppity, get off my *fehu" is incorrect.

Lastly, "Such examples are known as Begriffsrunen ('concept runes')." - this loanword is obsolete. They are called ideographic runes in English (including our Wikipedia article: Ideographic rune), which is also what the German term "Begriffsrunen" entails from the start. "Concept runes" is a lazy translation. Blockhaj (talk) 03:18, 9 April 2025 (UTC)

My 2 cents:

• I would remove the "so" from "so named" (in both versions).
• I prefer the "supposedly" of the current version. It warns the reader that this is a reconstructed and uncertain assertion. If you've ever seen WP cited on social media you'll know that the internet needs more such warnings. The value of "overall" is not clear here.
• The proposed text is longer, and reads less fluently. We should keep digressions like these to a minimum: in English the word survives as 'fee'). Such examples are known as ideographic runes. We can try to use wikilinks instead to help readers.
• I think in the 20th century the term "concept runes" in the current version is a useful one because "concept" is widely understood by non-academics. We could add a wikilink to ideographic rune though.
• I think what you mean by "loose wealth" would normally be expressed by in European languages with words meaning "movable". See personal property. Loose wealth will not be immediately clear to many readers. An old word which might be useful here is "chattel", but overall the whole distinction being made is a difficult one to explain to younger readers especially, in this age where the richest people alive don't need "bricks and mortar". I am open to the idea of using "livestock" instead of cattle in the current *fehu ('cattle, property'), and a wikilink to personal property could be attached to the word "property". Potentially, we could add a wiktionary link to the entry there for *fehu also. --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 06:38, 9 April 2025 (UTC)

Well, i did consider the complexity of fehu as an issue and considered switching it for something simpler like jāra, which just mean yearly harvest. Blockhaj (talk) 06:56, 9 April 2025 (UTC)

Is it certain that German Begriffsrune is obsolete as a loan in English language runology? I seem to still encounter it. This is not a topic that gets a lot of discussion in English runology but here is a book from 2012 I read through today that utilizes it: [2] :bloodofox: (talk) 08:27, 9 April 2025 (UTC)

It's obsolete in the sense that there is an established English term for it, so there is no need for us to use it. The average American Joe unfamiliar with the term wouldn't understand it, unlike ideographic rune, which at least is an English construction. Blockhaj (talk) 08:56, 9 April 2025 (UTC)

I have no preference either way. I just think it is an interesting question. :bloodofox: (talk) 10:22, 9 April 2025 (UTC)

I think we need more evidence before stating that the term is obsolete. In any case, I found the new text longer, bulkier, and more difficult to understand.—-Ermenrich (talk) 12:10, 9 April 2025 (UTC)

Im not saying we should state that it is obsolete, i am saying it is obsolete for us. Blockhaj (talk) 13:53, 9 April 2025 (UTC)