Despite the battalions of Power-Frauen “powerful women” with impressive voices like the legendary German actress Hannelore Elsner and the dominance of feminism since the German diva Alice Schwarzer, feminist number one in Germany, there are only Ger-mans but no Ger-Frauen in sight. The word “German” as well as the French word for German “Alémann” show men in their endings and are said to be of Romance origin, not much different from the word “Deutsch” which is Latin as well.

So Germans couldn’t find Germanic names in order to call themselves a nation. Maybe that’s why you can only speak of Bayern or Schwaben and so on. The word German as the English word “germane” which refers to some kind of relation, shows, is from Latin germanus "of brothers and sisters," related to germen "sprout, bud," like the German “Nachwuchs” offspring or “Sprössling” dissimilated from Proto Indo-European (PIE) gen(e)-men-, from base gene- "to give birth, beget” as in genus. Thus your cousin-german (also first cousin) is the son or daughter of an uncle or aunt.

However, my sweet angelic German wife who “kann keine Fliege etwas Leid tun”, cannot do harm even to a fly, says German is from old German “Ger” meaning “spear” + man which refers to men carrying spears while hunting since Germanic tribes were originally hunters. No wonder, meat and Metwurst, a kind of sausage which reveals the Germanic origin of the word meat, tops the shopping list next to beer.

You might say English is more “Manglish” but the moment you start learning German you realize what a manly language it is not only because of its numerous hard male sounds and the slippery gliding Umlaut sound which sounds more Turkish than German but because of the many occurrences of the word “Herr” as well: die Sprache beherrschen “master the language”, Herr der Lage werden “be in control of the situation”, herrlich “wonderful”. Thanks God the word “dämlich” which means “stupid” is not the opposite of “herrlch” since it is not derived from “Dame” lady as etymological dictionaries say.

Dr. Jamshid Ibrahim
Bremen - Germany