this post was submitted on 14 Aug 2024
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[–] Malgas@beehaw.org 22 points 1 month ago

IIRC a lot (all?) of these come from the names of specific Germanic tribes that these languages had contact with back before Germany existed as a unified entity, which then metathesized into a demonym for the entire cultural group and then the nation state. "Saksa", for example, is a doublet of "Saxon".