Hi Tatjana, Yes it is interesting. Actually I always use the term nijem or mute to explain the origin of Nijemac. According to the web page below the root simply means... that they could not understand them. http://www.cs.uu.nl/wais/html/na-dir/german-faq/part2.html Robert [email protected] wrote: .Robert, this article expains nicely the names German, Deutsch etc. http://www.linguistlist.org/~ask-ling/archive-2000.1/msg00585.html Fascinating- at least for me- is the origin of "Nijemac". It comes from Russian: because the Russians could not understand the Germans' speech they called them nijem= dumb. There is a certain (rather twisted) logic there. If you do not understand them it is because they do not know or are able to speak. Isn't this a little how at times the immigrants were approached by some? Tatjana Interested in visting Croatia? Click on the link below to find out about a wonderful tour of Croatia! http://www.kollander-travel.com/