Teutonic

From Metapedia

Teutonic refers to Germanic peoples and/or Germanic languages. The word Teutonic derives at once from both the Latin name for a tribe who were thought by the Romans to be Germanic, die Teutonen (wich means the Teutons), and from the Germanic word tiutisch (New High German deutsch = German), originally meaning belonging to the people.

The Romans identified die Teutonen 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.

Today many scholars think that die Teutonen 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."

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.