ENGLISH NAMES AND MISNOMERS FOR THE GERMANS 37
tory to the domain of language, we have to state first of all that
not a single word of the Teutonic language is known, except pos-
sibly the word Teuton in case it was used by the Teutons them-
selves. The similarity of the sounds of its stem teut- with the word
deutsch makes it appear likely that they both have the same origin.
You may perhaps have been able to gather from the introduction to
this address that the word deutsch, in its early history, shows the
characteristic consonant shifting by which Germanic had diverged
from the other Aryan language groups two or three millenia be-
fore the Christian era. This sound change is the only criterion by
which we can decide whether languages or peoples are Germanic
or not. The word Teutons (Teutones or Teutoni in Latin and
Teutonen in German) does not show any sound shifting at any
time. Its initial consonant t, like that of Irish Gaelic tuath, meaning
people, and Latin tota, has remained unaltered throughout. The
words Teuton and Teutonic are consequently not Germanic but
probably Keltic!
As stated before, the English language has no suitable and en-
tirely satisfactory noun at its disposal for denoting, corresponding
to the German noun Germanen, the entire Germanic race. This
terminological difficulty is acknowledged by the Oxford Dictionary
toward the end of its article on the word Teutonic as follows :
In English there is an awkwardness and sometimes ambiguity in using
Germanic beside German (in its ordinary political sense), which does
not arise in German or French, where germanisch and germanique are
entirely distinct from deutsch and allemand. To avoid this, many
English scholars prefer ‘Teutonic’ as the term for the linguistic family,
and it is commonly so used in this dictionary.
Due to the strong influence of this important and excellent dic-
tionary the use of Teutons and Teutonic has spread widely all
over the British Commonwealth. I am afraid the expedient has not
solved the dilemma but rather added to the existing confusion. I
venture to declare it most unfortunate and regrettable that words
of such, to say the least, problematic and doubtful meaning and
origin should be used as scholarly terms. I have reason to speak
with a certain amount of personal feeling on the matter. During
the last five years preceding the First World War, I enjoyed the
privilege of teaching German literature and Germanic philology in
a British university, the Queen’s University of Belfast, but had to
put up with as awkward an official name of my department as
“German and Teutonic Philology”! The terms Teutonen and teu-
tonisch are not used by philologists in Germany.