Betty or Veronica?

[mudshark]

Originally Posted by catalina_marina

Just in your lifetime, hm? :P

Yes, yes -- cue the "antiquity" jokes. I can take it.

The name Germany doesn't make much sense anyway. Historically speaking, we're all Germans. People who think up those words should start looking at what countries call themselves, sometime, and only mangle it just a bit to make it fit in their own language. :P

I suppose Deutschland really isn't much better, is it?

Useless information: In our local dialect, we call them Prusen.

How, then, do you keep the Prussians sorted out from the Bayerischers? (Actually, the Bavarians probably tended to stay home with their beer and cheese, while the Prussians were the ones who came to your town uninvited, so yeah... )

Originally Posted by Nate the Great

How are we all Germans? "German" is a cultural label, one that is not shared by most of us.

Oh? And what is your background, then -- Basque? Samoyed? Greek? Native American? Sino-Tibetan?

Most of Europe that isn't south of the Alps is, at the very least, culturally informed by one or more German branches and the language in which you speak and write is a Germanic language. The Lutheran religion which pervades your neighborhood originated in a city midway between Berlin and Leipzig, and just who did you suppose the Angles and the Saxons were? Unless you're a Martian or a Gray alien or something nearly as exotic, you're most likely up to your eyebrows in German, whether you knew it or not.

Edit: Come to think of it, Germans did a fair bit of mucking about in the rest of Europe, too, so if your family came from pretty much anywhere west of the Urals, there's a German influence in there somewhere or other.