File talk:World 500 BCE.png

Not proto-germans. LOL. Proto-germanic people is right. --212.247.27.168 (talk) 17:15, 19 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Germans originally referred to the ancient people. (In our own language, we still call them Germanen, and ourselves Deutsche. Except jocularly, Germanen never refers to modern people.) After the rediscovery of Tacitus' Germania in 1425, the term Germans was initially established for the ancient people. At the time, the modern people were known as Almains (the term only disappeared in the course of the 18th century) or Dutch. Only in the 16th century, the term Germans began to be used for the modern people too; Shakespeare still uses Almains and Germans side by side. To differentiate, it is often said the ancient Germans, even today. Calling us Germans is like calling the English Anglo-Saxons or the Italians Latins, Romans or Italics. It's a revived ancient name that we don't even use ourselves to refer to us (and that the ancient people never seem to have used as a self-designation either). Not to mention that strictly speaking, the Danes for example are "modern Germans" too in that sense. See Wikipedia.
 * Considering that Germans still rightfully refers to the ancient people sometimes, the term Proto-Germans is not wrong, and cannot be misunderstood easily. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 18:27, 18 December 2016 (UTC)