Talk:List of early Germanic peoples

message: The Scottish Lowlands is not a nation.  If speaking English makes a person a Germanic person or makes an ethnic group Germanic, then all the British and Irish peoples are Germanic peoples.  The wording needs to be cleaned up or all the British peoples should be added.  If possessing a Celtic language regardless of how widely spoken then omits the Germanic category and surpasses it, then that's just bloody stupid Enzedbrit 21:38, 11 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The Scottish Lowlands are no more "Germanic" than are the Highlands of Scotland. English is the predominant language of both regions and Gaelic WAS the historically dominant language of both regions. The Lowlands were not part of the Engilsh kingdom of Northumbria - this is a huge generalisation - but the extreme south east, i.e. the Lothians, were and this is the ONLY part of Scotland where Gaelic never became entrenched or the dominant language and was known, in more honest times, as "the land of the English in the Kingdom of the Scots" just as the Lowland Scots language was more honestly referred to as Inglis by its speakers before they decided to try and usurp Gaelics status as the Scottish language. RE Enzedbrit : Of course Possessing a Celtic language ( so long as it is as a mother tongue) omits the Germanic category just as any French, Russians, Aboriginal Australians do not suddenly become 'Germanic' by mere dent of having English as a second language. I do however agree that the major criteria for how a nation or people should be classed is the language they speak which would indeed make all of the nations of the British Isles "Germanic" (albeit possessing Celtic enclaves in Wales, West of Ireland and North West of Scotland and the Isles).siarach 11:48, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

text: RE: User:82.41.4.66 yes you are quite right - it really is ridiculous to use supposed ancestry/genetics as a criteria to define people when historically people were clearly defined on the basis of language. siarach 09:23, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: English speaking nations

message: Greetings ladies and gentlemen. Some of the replies almost seem provocative. I understand why and I tried to indicate that in my precautionary note in the article. Now that we are getting into this, I see that the note is not going to be enough.
You have all discovered the problem, of course, and it is not specific to Wikipedia, or any of the individuals whose interest has been taken. The "ethnic" classification is at best an amorphous one. You just can't put people in slots, now can you? Good Lord, how many people have died for the concept! Uncountable I'm sure. But in fact we do put people in slots. So, the historians and ethnographers want to ask, what slots to people get put in and why? These slots are in fact operational identities. They operate on populations. A formerly native population now speaking a European language does NOT get treated the same as natives speaking their aboriginal language by any of the parties concerned.
But how do you define identity? How can there be an answer to that one? Who am I? Who are you? I wish I knew. It seems to me we want to get an "I'm OK, you're OK" stance on Wikipedia. Language is a good neutral ground. The problems with it are manifest. Isn't it better than race however? Remember the Caucasian race, which isn't Caucasian and is not a race? Do you want that back? So, what I would like to see is some solutions to these problems we all can see instead of provocation.
With regard to the Germanic languages, it is obvious that the contemporary range of the language far exceeds the original range, but even in ancient times the problem is to be found. Who is germanic? Well, says Tacitus, they live in Germany. That just doesn't do it. It's a tautology, the Germans are they who live in Germany, Germany is the place where the Germans live.
For solutions we cannot apply a rigorous standard. The concept is not rigorous. Such statements as "by that standard ..." bla bla bla, are going to lead nowhere. This is one of those Platonic indefinables. No matter how you try to define it, you end up in a morass of hyperdefinition without resolution. And yet, each and every one of YOU (me too) use identity concepts every day. So somewhere we have to make a judgement, "good enough" and let it go at that. That cannot be a racist jugement. We aren't going to encourage anyone to purge anyone.
One commonly used solution, which also is used by the Encyclopedia Britannica, is to make the distinctions between societies and populations that have spoken Germanic since ancient times and those that adopted it in replacement of another, or use it extensively as a second language. No, it isn't a perfect solution. There are no perfect solutions. It is NOT a rigorous science, only history, the views of our ancestors and of us concerning them. What is that worth? I'd like to know a little more than what my grandfather told me, wouldn't you?
So, we need a THIRD category in addition to ancient and contemporary, or maybe we need to split contemporary. Populations that have adopted Germanic, populations that speak Germanic as a second language, identities that have assimilated to Germanic, societies with more than one identity, etc. You get the idea. I'm mainly interested in the ancient. Why don't YOU come up with the right words for a good solution, my friends?
One practice I do not see as being too useful is sarcastically throwing in identities that do not primarily fit the Germanic just to protest that you don't like the standard. Each identity will require a decision and a proper category. What, you don't decide, you only tear down the decisions of others? The Huns, for example, do not belong under Germanic! Some of them assimilated no doubt but on the whole they kept their society and politics distinct and they were gone before the assimilation was complete. We shouldn't be adopting a WWI curse word to apply to a group formerly at war with English speakers.
Well, there it is. Get to work, all of you, or forever hold your peace.Dave 12:51, 23 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Summary of problem and suggested solution

message: Shouldn't the Anglo Saxon who are mainly the descendants of Saxons, Jutes, and Angles be listed as a Germanic people as well? I added them for the time being. Regards, SignaturebrendelNow under review! 20:13, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: No, because Angles, Saxons and Jutes are different Germanic tribes. There was never a tribe of Anglo-Saxon peoples. - Yorkshirian (talk) 16:28, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Maybe but someone like William Marshal, 1st Earl of Pembroke (1146–1219),  who was only of Norman descent, not Anglo-Saxon, but born in England, considered himself as English. Nortmannus (talk) 01:29, 7 September 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: IIRC the term Anglo Saxon is modern, and is meant to describe the group which eventually which is otherwise difficult to classify. The English called themselves English, but the word Saxon, one of the original immigrant nations, is a word that was used by Celts and Latin speakers stuck to for some reason. So I think if we are going to call the unified Anglo Saxons by a tribal name it is just English (perhaps as opposed to Angles?)--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 19:34, 22 September 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: Anglo Saxons?

message: Does the "introduction" part really fit? It looks unencyclopedic and makes the article look like an essay. 惑乱 分からん 21:57, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree. The bulk of the introduction is entirely out of place (as well as unsourced and quite possibly a case of WP:SYN). I suggest we get rid of it. Aryaman (☼) 18:37, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text:  This is definitely the case with the "Classical philosophy" section which is, at best, irrelevant. -- llywrch (talk) 19:28, 9 August 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Introduction

message: I deleted the list since no sources have been given. First, there is no evidence that the modern ethnic groups/nations  listed are in fact Germanic peoples. Secondly, some of them are not even ethnic groups - they are linguistic groups or regional identities - and no source is given for the claim that they are.
No source for listing as Germanic: Danes, Faroese, Icelanders, Norwegians, Swedes, Finns, English, Frisians, Dutch, Flemings, Afrikaners, Germans,  Austrians, Luxembourgians.
No source for listing as a separate 'people' or ethnic group: Alemannic, Dano-Germans, Holsteiners, Schleswigers, Swabians, Swiss Germans, Liechtensteiners, Alsatians, South Tiroleans, Lorrainians, Vorarlbergian minority, Bavarians, Slesvigers, "English speaking nations", "proportion of Lowland Scots", "cultural descendants of the Anglo-Saxons around the world", "Belgian Dutch majority of Belgium", Belgian French, Walloons, German Belgians.
If this list is to include groups speaking a Germanic language or with some Germanic ancestors, then it should be renamed as such.Paul111 11:58, 18 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Ive reinserted the list, renamed it and stuck some  tags up to give people a chance/encourage people to reference the various entries rather than have it completely absent. This article really does need a section dealing with the modern Germanic peoples - however they are defined. siarach 12:49, 18 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: On reflection i think the easiest way to have a reasonably sound contemporary list is simply to list ethnic groups which speak a Germanic language.siarach 12:58, 18 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Makes sense. 惑乱 分からん 14:28, 18 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  I just understood what the list is about. Shouldn't it be entitled The list which follows covers the major ethnic groupings or populations which have descended from a Germanic people and speak a modern Germanic language.breadstic 23:47, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

text: I appreciate your discontent with the list - i too share the feeling and for similar reasons - but i do no necessarily think the article/list misnamed. Germanic is a blanket term which, without qualification, could well be used to simply list Germanic speaking peoples. siarach 00:39, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Probably the only proper way it could be used, currently. Concepts of ethnic origins tend to get fuzzy rather quickly... 惑乱 分からん 23:49, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  List of modern Germanic peoples 

message: ::As far as I know, until the development of the European colonies in America, Africa, etc. the Germanic languages were almost only vernacular languages. For sure, the Germanic peoples assimilated some Celtic (south of Germany, Austria, GB etc.), Slavic (Eastern Germany, etc.) and other minorities, when they moved to the east, to the west or to the south of Europe, but the Germanic languages became predominant only where there was a majority of the Germanic componant in the population, for the simple reason that these Germanic languages were historically never lingua franca, compare to vulgar Latin for example. Quite the opposite many Germanic populations were assimilated by other ethnical majorities, when these Germanic tribes moved to the east, to the west or to the south of Europe and so far that some of them adopted the linguae francae (like vulgar Latin, f.e in the north of France : the Franks) or (Norman-French in Normandy, Slavic in Russia, etc. : the Scandinavians) and their civilization. That is to say the Germanic peoples were very often migrating peoples who tried to extend to live a better way than in the dark and cold countries of the North. The power of the Roman civilization, political system, way of life was so strong that they wanted to imitate it (see Charlemaine), on the contrary, nobody wanted to live the Germanic way and speak a Germanic language, that is to say that the places who were germanized were only the lands, where Germanic people were numerous (fe. the Anglo-Saxon on the eastern and southern part of the British Isles). To compare again, the Romans never moved physically to the northern countries of Europe, except in some cases politicians, administrations, merchants, but the power of their civilization, economy, so of their language, was so strong that the native, the local populations (Celts, Germanic people) became Romans. To simplify : Most people who talked a Germanic languages had Germanic ancestors and most people talking a Romance language did not have any Roman ancestor. It makes the whole difference between "Latin Europe" and "Germanic Europe". Later, with the economical and cultural power of the British empire, the development of the "Germanic colonies" outside Europe, a Germanic language like English became for the fist time in the history of the Germanic peoples a lingua franca, that is to say that nowadays most native speakers of the English language don't have any Germanic ancestry. Now, with an important immigration from the southern countries to the north of Europe, the low birth rate, there are less and less people of Germanic origin. There are no more Germanic peoples, but only speakers of Germanic languages. Nortmannus (talk) 19:09, 7 September 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Modern Germanic peoples ?

message: Any thoughts on the map used at the beginning? It seems a bit sloppy to me: there are no Saxon(e)s in the Germania, as they most likely only formed as a tribal entity much later; there were no "Iuti" but Eudoses, and the "popoli Baltici" and the "Slavi" are completely anachronistic for the late 1st century AD. These are just those that jumped right at me, but I wouldn't be surprised if there were a few more. Does anyone have a more accurate map of the Germanic peoples at that time? Trigaranus (talk) 15:20, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Map 

message: I started this article many moons ago. Numerous criticisms have been levelled at it but it seems to have survived. My original intent was to address the Germanic tribal names of history. I don't see any reason not to go on with it. We can't put the moderns in here, a complete Atlas would be required. Maybe I should have said ancient Germanic peoples, but some of those names descend to the modern, such as the Saxons. That should probably be explained in the intro. I'm leaving the title. This is not an ethnic treatise so those criticisms are bunko. The writers of the ancient sources were ethnic-minded. I'm sorry if you don't like that but it is too late to convert them to our way of thinking. We don't alter history. In contrast to what someone said, the intro is not irrelevant, rather, it is an explanation of what the article is up to. I'm sorry if I'm not trying to do what you think I ought to have been trying to do and disapprove. I personally don't give a rat's tail what the ethnicity of any of those characters really was or was thought to be, or what yours or anyone else's is either. That seems to me irrelevant. Furthermore, since the intro is only an explanation of what the editor, me, is trying to do in this article, it does not need any references. To whom would I refer? But, if I see a place where there should be a ref I will certainly put it in. Now for the topic of this section, as an added bonus. The proposal to merge is over one year old. Whoever made it, I think you misunderstand the situation. Those other names are already in here, were from the beginning. No merger is required. Moreover I see no discussion at all here. I'm the only one discussing. Now, I intend that those names should remain here. If you want to keep another article breaking out the confederacies I have nothing at all to say. I'd be happy either way. Maybe you should keep the confederacies one. Do as you please. I consider the matter discussed and am taking off the tag. Since I started this article long ago WP has come a long way. There is more and better code and most of these names are covered by supporting articles, which they were not before. So, I'm going to jazz the list up a little. It may take me a while to do this. Pitch in if you like. Bye now. As you can see, I'm just as long-winded as ever.Dave (talk) 01:10, 28 November 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: Proposed merger

message: it is completely wrong one . Some Italian Megalomania .Check real map
 to see how wrong this one is
 Edelward (talk) 00:06, 7 February 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Remove this ridicilous map  

message: I noticed that norwegians are a germanic people on this list, but not swedes, Danes or Scandinavians generally. Why? --195.0.176.100 (talk) 20:17, 30 August 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Norweigans, but no swedes? 

message: Cimbri,Teutons and Ambrones is celtic? Had you see any celts in Jutland? And what for a people say, they was from Scandinavia, that is soooooooo stupid. 
This "Antigerman Construct" is completly stupid and have no genetic or linguistic or historic fact. That is a modern way to kill germanic history.
They are  a part of mesolithic northeuropean population, than Funnelbeaker culture, Single grave culture, Corded ware culture and Jasdorf culture like frisi and sugamber.They have 6000 years germanic history!!!  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2003:46:D50:5EBB:F146:133A:4138:BFBC (talk) 18:26, 13 June 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Northsea Germans with Celtic roots - this stupid theory had no facts. 

message: Substituted at 22:11, 29 April 2016 (UTC)
thread_title: Assessment comment

message: Can someone please fix this gallery? -- PK2 (talk) 09:14, 8 May 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Image gallery 

message: :The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
The result of the move request was: moved. (closed by non-admin page mover) The Night Watch (talk) 23:02, 17 April 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: List of ancient Germanic peoples →  – The main category is already called :Category:Early Germanic peoples. "Early Germanic" has the advantage of not having to comply to the periodisations of "ancient" to pre-500 CE (Ancient history) and "medieval" to 500–1500 CE (Middle Ages). The category tree also already includes Early Germanic culture, Early Germanic warfare and Viking Age Norsemen (all up to the 10th/11th century, see e.g. :Category:Viking Age women, dated to ), so it makes sense to rename this list to List of early Germanic peoples, so that it doesn't have to stop in the year 500 CE. For comparison: this is similar to Early Slavs (dated to ); Ancient Slavs also redirects to Early Slavs. Cheers, Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 22:38, 10 April 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Requested move 10 April 2023