Of the People: Difference between revisions

This trope is inspired by--but not the same as--a fairly common occurrence in the names that peoples historically gave to themselves and their neighbors. The most famous example in the West is the autonym (name given to themselves) of the Germans of late antiquity and the early Middle Ages, ''diutisc''. ''Diutisc'' means "[[Trope Namer|of the people]]" and is reflected in the modern German word ''Deutsch'' ("German", with the meaning "of the people" known only as a curiosity to the linguistically inclined) and the English word "Dutch" (which Netherlandish people haven't used for centuries). Its linguistic opposite was ''Walha(z)'', "stranger" or "foreigner", which gave its name to such diverse places as [[Useful Notes/Belgium|Wallonia]], [[Useful Notes/Romania|Wallachia]], and [[Land of My Fathers and Their Sheep|Wales]], which have in common that they were places Germanic people met non-Germanic ones. Similarly, the word "Slav" is derived from a common Slavic word for "speech" or "talk"; the Slavic peoples often applied the term "nemetsi" (or similar terms), meaning "mute", to their neighbors, particularly Germans (resulting in many Slavic languages having derived words for Germany and German--and Persian and Arabic calling Austria ''Nimsa''/''Nimse'' to this day). On a related note, "Inuit" means "the people" in Inuktitut.