Just Call me Dennis

 

My sur name . . .

As it turns out my family were never from Deutschland. And the word pronounced “jer mun” is not in the Deutsche language.

So, where did this come from?

German

Gjeremann

Et al

 

Danish

gjere mun = do mouth

 

Norwegian

gjere mun = do mouth

gjere mund = make mouth

 

swedish

gjere mund = open your mouth

 

Apparently, my ancestors talked a lot.

 

The proper pronunciation is how any native Deutsche speaker would pronounce it:

ˈgar-ə-mən

Sounds something like: “air a done”

The “g” is followed by a slight “y” sound, like the “j” in fjord.

The middle syllable is barely pronounced.

 

The nation in north central Europe is Deutschland and the people there are Deutsche who speak Deutsche. There is no place called germany; there is no people called germans and there is no language called german.

Listen to their national anthem

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s2IaFaJrmno

The word “german” does not appear anywhere.

Got it?

Now go straighten out the world for all the Deutschlanders . . . what’s that song again?

“Deutschland Uber Alles”

 

Yes, I know, it shows on a lot of historical data, but . . .

 

But why do we call them GERMANS?

Perhaps it is from the French term for war?

“guerre”

Maybe the French called those warlike people from north central Europe “war men”

“hommes de guerre”

But the English reversed the words (Latin to Anglo grammar) and ended up with

“guerre hommes”

I can easily imagine the average Brit pronounced this as

ˈgar-mən

But then they decided to pronounce the “g” like a “j” . . .

And the rest is etymological history.

I know; that is redundant, since etymology is the history of words.

 

And why did the English call them Jerries?

One of the possible answers:

Edwardian nicknames for a Chamber Pot was a “Jeroboam” often shortened to “Jerry”. In WWI the shape of the Pickelhaube Helmet worn by German troops had a shape similar to a chamber pot; hence the nickname “Jerries”.

 

The English are guilty of butchering other languages. My favorite is:

Κυβερνητικός

The first letter is the equivalent of a “k”. But the English turned it into a “c”, which they pronounce as a “s”. Brilliant, huh?

And the word we might hear as a reference to a self-serving, servile flatterer, sycophant from the Greek, συκοφάντης, which actually means slanderer, mud slinger . . . I learned that one from a guy who was from Greece . . .

Etymology is so much fun . . .

According to my DNA, I am about 2/3 Norwegian.

The rest is from the British Isles, The Baltics, Holland (now known as The Netherlands) and Belgium.

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