Excuse me if this is off-topic.
When I'm learning other languages, I usually (99% of the time) find that "England" is either the same or very similar in the other language. However, I know at least five different names now for Germany in the other languages that I know... Deutschland (German), Germany (English), Tyskland (Swedish), Allemagne (French), Niemcy (Poland), Saksa (Finnish). I was wondering if there was some particular reason why this is so.
There were different Germanic tribes and thus the people living in the Germanic territory were called differently by the peoples around them.
In English it was chosen the overall expression for all Germanic tribes: German. In French and Spanish the "Alemannen" a south western tribe (and therefore locally closer to France and Spain) seemed to have left an impression: allemand, alemán.
For me, Saksa seems to follow the same pattern: the "Saxons" where the tribe in the North East, and therefore close to Finland.
The words deutsch, tedesco (ital.) and I suppose Tyskland as well derive from the Old High German word diutisc, "belonging to the people/of the people".
An addition: "deutsch" derives from the Proto-Germanic stem *þeodisk- ('*' indicates reconstruction), meaning "of the people" or "popular". It invaded (Late?) Latin via some Germanic dialect as "theodiscus" and was used in legal documents to refer to regional languages in contrast to Latin. At that time its use wasn't restricted to the languages of Germanic tribes nor the ones in modern Germany, Austria, etc.. It was instead used to refer to all popular languages.
The first attested usage of "deutsch" (or rather "diutisc") is from a Middle High German poem called "Annolied" composed in the late 11th century. Here, "diutisc" is used as an umbrella term for Franconians, Saxons and Bavarians.
The words related to Niemcy in the Slavonic languages mean something like "mute", nie meaning "not" and m being a root for "to speak", like mówić in Polish for example. This is due to the fact that Slavonic languages are on a basic level mutually understandable, so the Polish tribes could talk to all their neighbours which were other Slavonic tribes, except the Germans.
Germany is a central European country. Because of that fact, it attracts attention from widely disparate countries on all sides.This reminds me of the story of the six blind men and the elephant, where each blind man grabbed a different part of the animal, and therefore had a different view.
I consider the Swedish "Tyskland" a variation of "Deutschland," after allowing for the differences in language. The word Deutschland itself seems to resemble "Dutch," and may be a reference to the North Sea area. That's particularly true in USA, where "Dutch" often refers to "German," as opposed to "Netherlands."
Germany seems to stem from the Roman Germania, specifically a reference to the east bank of the Rhine. Allemagne also probably originated in Roman times, and was, I believe, a Gallic (French) reference.
The Finnish Saksa seems to be a reference to Saxons, a particular Group of Germans that the Finns may have come into contact with.
Niemcy in Polish seems to be derived from "Nie" (not) something, apparently the way the Poles felt about the Germans.
In addition to what others already said, you may expect this to be a common situation, actually. A nation's neighbors often call it by the closes tribe to each particular neighbor. The problem here is that nations often expand and conquer each other, so the fact that Germany has so many names just mean that they were unable to conquer/eliminate their neighboring nations (which happen to be relatively powerful, as we know now). Or, as others said, they appeared pretty lately and faced strong competitors around them.
If you look closely, you will see that smaller countries/nations surrounding some big one often give that big one different names. Being Russian I can give my homeland as an example. In most countries, its names are similar: Russia, Ryssland, Russie, etc. But if you look to our smaller neighbors, you'll see Finish Venäjä and Estonian Venemaa (both named after Slavonic tribe of Viatichi), Latvian Krievija (after the tribe Krivichs or Krivichi). Smaller ethic groups in Russia can present even more names, for example Udmurts call Russian "Dzhootch" (I've no idea where could this name came from. After the tribe Drevliane? Not sure.).
slavonic "Niemcy" (read: n-yem-tsi|) derives form "niemy" or "niemowa" (nie = no, mowa = speech) - due to the reason they were the only relevant neighbor (form poinf of viev of early middle ages slavic tribes) which whom they couldn't talk to. The opposite term for that is the word "a slav" itself - slovianin - from word "slovo" - "a word" - due to the fact each slavic languages are fair enough to say mutually understandable to some degree
Germany itself had many names in its history and its own language.
Additional to that, "Dutch" was already given to the language spoken in the Netherlands in 16th and 17th centuries (In both Belgium and the Netherlands, the native official name for Dutch is Nederlands). It first described people speaking the language used in the vague region somewhere in between the Netherlands and Germany when people came from the Netherlands to America. All these settlers influenced the development of the dutch language and the two languages happened to have less in common. So for German they had to use another term to differentiate it from Dutch.
According to a comment at https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/29028/why-are-germans-referred-to-so-differently-in-different-languages
"The Koreans ended up with dogil because it's the Sino-Korean reading of the Japanese 独逸/ ドイツ doitsu, which is more clearly a loan of Deutsch."
I think the answer can be given very briefly:
As initially there was no such thing as "the Germans" but the area was inhabited by various tribes with different names, and their respective neighbours used either those names or names they made up for them (as the Slavonic "nemec" for "not speaking", meaning: "not speaking our language"), and a nation state comprising most of them was created late, it is quite logical that there are different names around.
This is not only Germany which is called by different names. I can tell you many more countries/regions which are called with different names.
1. Iran is also called Persia, Arya, Iranshahr,Iranzamin and Aryānām.
2. India is also called, Bharat, Hindustan,Nabhivarsha,Tianzhu,Al-Hind, Hidush etc
3. Turkey is also called Ottoman Empire, Turquie,Turchia,Turkye,and Torke.
This question is regarding the evolution of country names. In different parts of the world names could be different for the same country. Therefore multiple naming of a country should not be confused with other things.
When I'm learning other languages, I usually (99% of the time) find that "England" is either the same or very similar in the other language.
This is incorrect. We do not distinguish Britain, UK and England, at least not in the common sense of Inselaffen, informally speaking. In political terms we may be more particular: Not every Englishman is Angelsachse, but nobody is counting on the difference.
Many political entities and their names are newer than that, and more foreign1, which explains why there is less variation. England or China for example are just not very good examples.
1: An often repeated Heuristic after Bartoli says, the center innovates, the periphery remains conservative, cf. Trudgill on "Sociolinguistic typology and the speed of linguistic change" in Journal of Historical Sociolinguistics, vol. 6, no. 2, (2020).
The same principle holds for Germany and German speaking regions. The political divide is always fairly subjective and technical or emotional2.
2: “Bayern gehört zu Österreich” is banter heard in the north of Germany. Mittelbairisch is indeed spoken in both countries. “Piefke” on the other hand is an offensive or meliorative Austrian German word for Germans, potentially including those from Bavaria on political grounds. Both agree that northern Germans are “Saupreußen”. “Saksa” is reportedly used as a slur in Finnland. Ethnic slurs are not scarce at all and often reciprocal. The modern use of “Nazi” seems to continue the older sense of Ignatz > Nazi ("idiot"). The political tangent from National Socialism is barely metaphoric as in “grammar nazi”.
The question is just too broad:
Is there a reason why Germany (Deutschland) is called so many different things in other European languages?
There are many reasons. Not all of them are actually reasonable
It may be argued that “Deutschland” is a metonym. For example, “Germany has voted” ipso facto defines Germany as the sum of subjects who have voted. I disagree because it would mean that I either am not German (false Scotsman fallacy) or I voted for something I haven't actually voted for (another fallacy, not understanding metonymy). Yet it is entirely lexical to say so.
Other languages have simply calqued from usage. They haven't borrowed "Deutsch" because the name is fairly new in reference to geography and it's too easy to confuse with the name of Dutch, from the same word. The word may be older but it had different meanings, which is a subject for another day under another question. It had therefore many different possible calques depending on the meaning in each instance. Besides, it is used today to calque different words.
Other Germanica are off-topic3, except when they may be explained in German. So for example among Family names, Niemczyk, Nimschik etc. are well attested variants to Niemtschke, Nimtz, Nimz, Niemetz etc. (Polish Niemeć "German”) beside Nie- for neu "new" (Niemeyer; Dutch Nijmegen ~ Ger. "Nimwegen") or Nier ("nieder"), Neymar (?) and what not; Meijering is but a form of Meyer, from maioris, mega-, compare michel (Middle Low German "big") rather than Mikael, Mike, Mitchel; only Neumerkel comes close to Mark, which has several explanations (Digitales Familiennamenwörterbuch Deutschlands). This would be my best guess at relating Niemeć to Morvec, Morvek, Moravia. That's impossible without some heavy lifting which the Erbfeinde on all sides will fight tooth and nail. Further, Frankish Merowingian is impossible to pin point.
The origin of the Germanic tribes is lost to history (thus Wilhelm Schmidt, Geschichte der Deutschen Sprache, 12. Auflage. (2020). p. 45).
That said, the Polish suffixes may be derived from Proto-Slavic, from Proto-Balto-Slavic (PBS)
-iec /jɛts/ << PBS *-ikas,
-(i)eć /ɛt͡ɕ/ << PBS *-ḗˀtei and
-(iec)ki << PBS *-iškas; niemiecki "German".
(en.Wiktionary)
Although, the palatalized consonant ć before high vowel may be identified with palatalized Swedish tjod [ˈtɕʌð], Old Saxon thīod, Gothic þiuda < PG *þeudō, Swedish tysk, German deutsch, Dutch duits < PG *þeudiskas. This implies that c /ts/ and ć /t͡ɕ/ may be an analogical reflection of the same word, except where PBS has *k it might imply PS *kelawaikas (compare Czech), from *(s)kʷel- “crowd, people”, from *kʷel-, whence also Greek tele- ("far"). Similar arguments hold for Allemagne and Sasse. I mean it's speculative.
3: Anyway, Polish mówić is not exactly related to niemeć (en.Wiktionary; cf. Vasmer, Trubachev).
