It’s been exactly 8 years since this was posted and honestly, I don’t think we have an answer yet. But all of what Eric posted back then still stands.
– Bethanne Kim (Publisher, Eric Flint’s 1632 & Beyond magazine)
Baen’s Bar
24 April 2018 17:24
I can give you a few guidelines:
1) It won’t be “German,” for two reasons. First, not all Germans will be citizens of the USE. Austria is also a German nation, and if Bavaria retains its independence (which is still an open question) it will be also. Second, not all citizens of the USE are Germans. That’s already true and will become more true as things progress. (Tum te tum te tum…)
Finally, there will be considerable political resistance to making the citizenship and ethnic terms synonymous.
2) It won’t be “Amideutsch.” The idea is preposterous.
3) There are two most likely possibilities:
a) Someone who knows German better than I do may come up with a nifty way to solve the issue. “Vereinigen” (or something similar — I don’t remember the exact spelling) has already been suggested.
b) Somebody comes up with something completely off the wall. These things do happen, after all. The term “American” came off the wall. So did the term “Ram Rebellion.” So did the terms “Yankee” and “Yank.” So did the term “Dixie.”
My own preference would be for alternative 3-b.
What about a term like “Yankee”?
The following was in response to:
Yankee didn’t come from nowhere. I read that the earliest use in English referred to the Dutch, from Janke, a diminutive of Jan. The association with the New England colonies is most likely because of 17th century Nieuw Nederland colony, which was taken over by the English as a result of the Anglo-Dutch Wars.
25 April 2018 05:52
When I said “came from nowhere,” I didn’t mean that the term literally had no connection to anything. All words have some sort of origin. What I meant was that the term has no clear connection to what it depicts, especially when you look at it “ahead of time.”
What does that mean? Simple. Perhaps someday people will refer to citizens of the USE as “Jaggers” or “Melicans” or “the Varetese” or whatever. Where do any of these names come from? I have no idea — any more than someone in the 16th century would have foreseen that inhabitants of New England would wind up being called a name derived from Dutch.
Someone needs to figure out something equivalent and write a story that illustrates how it came to pass.
