Chatti

The Chatti (also Chatthi or Catti) were an ancient Germanic tribe whose homeland was near the upper Weser (Visurgis) river. They lived in central and northern Hesse and southern Lower Saxony, along the upper reaches of that river and in the valleys and mountains of the Eder and Fulda regions, a district approximately corresponding to Hesse-Kassel, though probably somewhat more extensive. They settled within the region in the first century BC. According to Tacitus, the Batavians and Cananefates of his time, tribes living within the Roman Empire, were descended from part of the Chatti, who left their homeland after an internal quarrel drove them out, to take up new lands at the mouth of the Rhine.

19th Century usage
At the Congress of Vienna the Elector of Hesse, restored with the fall of Napoleon, unsuccessfully attempted to get recognized as "King of the Chatti" - though by then the Chatti had long since ceased to exist as a distinct ethnic group

Chasuarii and Chattuarii
Two tribes in northern Germany have names that are sometimes compared to the Chatti. The Chattuarii, whose name appears to mean that they are dwellers upon the Chatti lands, or else Chatti people, lived near the Rhine, probably between IJssel and Lippe. They came to be seen as Franks and apparently moved over the Rhine as a Frankish people, to settle into the corner of land between the Rhine and Maas rivers.

The name of the Chattuarii is in turn, sometimes compared to another people called the Chasuarii mentioned by several classical authors. The Chasuarii were a Germanic tribe mentioned by Tacitus in the Germania. According to him, they dwelt to the north of the Chamavi and Angrivarii, who dwelt in turn to the north of the Bructeri, between Ems and Weser, however the name of the Chasuarii most often is interpreted to mean "dwellers on the Hase [river]", a tributary to the Ems. The second century geographer Claudius Ptolemy mentions that the Kasouarioi lived to the east of the Abnoba mountains, in the vicinity of Hesse, but this account of northern Europe is thought to contain confusions derived from using different sources.

Places named after the Chatti

 * Hesse: probably derived from "Chatti" through the High German consonant shifts.
 * Kassel: derived from the ancient Castellum Cattorum, a castle of the Chatti
 * Katwijk: from Chatti and Dutch wijk, "village/settlement"
 * Katzenelnbogen: historians speculated that the name derives from *Cattimelibocus, a combination of two words: the Chatti and Melibokus, from Μηλίβοκον (Mēlíbokon), the name of a mountain range in Ptolemy's Geography which has been (probably incorrectly) identified with the Malchen.
 * Mont des Cats

In popular culture

 * The Light Bearer (1994), a historical novel by Donna Gillespie.
 * Mark of the Lion Series (1993), a series of historical fiction novels by Francine Rivers.
 * Barbarians (2020), one of the tribes that unites against the Romans prior to the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest.