(Untitled)

[bofh1459]

There's this girl at my school that I've had a horrible crush on for the past... year. Anyways, her last name is Rácz (she's Hungarian) and I looked it up for meaning, and found some interesting info about Hungarian names for nearby ethnic groups. Here's the list

Comments

[boonleong]

I don't know about Serb and Slovak, but I can contribute one more...

Nemet - German - "Dumb"/"mute" - still used today.

Hurray for political incorrectness!

[bofh1459]

Whoopsie, forgot that one. That's also a Slavic import, cognate to Polish "Niemiec"/Russian "немец", and present in all Slavic languages (afaik). It comes from the fact that the Germans were called as such by the Slavs as they did not speak a Slavic language.

[muckefuck]

There's also Szász "Saxon" from German Sachse.

[jkrissw]

Shades of the Greeks' "barbar"...

[optimussven]

Or the Arabic 3ajami...seems like a popular concept.

[prezzey]

huh?

I'm a native speaker, I've lived in Hungary all my life (22 years) and I've never heard "German"("német") used in the sense of "dumb" or "mute". Where did you get that from?

[boonleong]

My Hungarian language teacher. Is it archaic? He also told me silent films were labelled "német".

I've only been in Hungary for a semester.

[prezzey]

You must've misheard that - "mute" is "néma", not "német". I'm quite sure the two words have absolutely nothing in common (but I can ask a historical linguist for you if needed).

[boonleong]

Hm, thanks for the correction, then.

[zubird]

it's not Hungarian for "mute", it's a Slavic word.