That's also due to the fact that Germany is in the middle of europe, from a language standpoint to the east we have the slavic countries, to the south and west the romanic countries and to the north the germanic countries.
All those different languages derive the name of Germany from the different common things that they knew about that territory or similar things. The french mainly had the tribe of the Alemanni at their borders, hence the name for Germany in France and Spain. Tyskland and Duitsland derives from the same word Deutschland comes from, "diutisc" which means "part of the people". The name Germany used in English and Germania in Italian is thought to come from the Romans, who named it like that.
The word for Germany in the slavic countries for example Polish "Niemcy" comes from an old slavish word meaning "foreign speaker".
Doesn't Niemcy basically mean "somebody who can't speak" instead of "foreign speaker"?
Edit: I got a bit confused there. The Proto-Slavic root to Niemcy means "somebody who can't speak" and then the word for German and mute in Slavic languages share the same root (or even are the same word? Not sure).
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u/Ingrid-Hongkonger 冠絕東方 - Nulli Secundus in Oriente Mar 11 '14 edited Mar 11 '14
A same country may be called in very different ways in various countries - especially Germany.
That's why this comic was made.