Zompist Bboard Again

How is it that the names for Spain and Italy ended up as Spanien and Italien in German? Are these forms derived from accusatives?

Different dialects? Compare also Ungarn and Arabien.

And Indien?

My gut said no, not least because -am isn't -en and that's a bit of a stretch. I assumed it was to fit the pattern of place names ending in -n like Thüringen and Köln.

Grimm has a detailed account of the history of Spanien and it looks like I was right!

der im mhd. übliche nom. sing. wurde dann nhd. nach der analogie von Baiern, Thüringen u. s. w. (dat. plur. des bewohnernamens) umgebildet: von ungeschick fur ein raubschiff daher, das wolt von Algeri auff Spanien zu streyffen. Schumann nachtb. 127, 1;

Etymology is a very interesting field of linguistics and, generally speaking, it's important to remember that most humans don't care about etymology, especially across languages. Changing a word to make it fit in better is perfectly viable.

tldr: they changed it to make it sound more German.

Gulliver wrote: ↑Sat Sep 01, 2018 4:39 pmf place names ending in -n like Thüringen and Köln.

Funny considering that Köln is ultimately another import from Latin!

So Haleza Grise wrote: ↑Sat Sep 01, 2018 5:05 pm

Gulliver wrote: ↑Sat Sep 01, 2018 4:39 pmf place names ending in -n like Thüringen and Köln.

Funny considering that Köln is ultimately another import from Latin!

That was my guess before I looked it up. I've had a few glasses of wine and apparently German etymological dictionaries are how the cool dudes spend their Saturday nights.