Germanic Peoples - Classification

Classification

By the 1st century CE, the writings of Caesar, Tacitus and other Roman era writers indicate a division of Germanic-speaking peoples into tribal groupings centred on:

• the rivers Oder and Vistula/Weichsel (East Germanic tribes),
• the lower Rhine river (Istvaeones),
• the river Elbe (Irminones),
• Jutland and the Danish islands (Ingvaeones).

The Sons of Mannus, Istvaeones, Irminones, and Ingvaeones are collectively called West Germanic tribes. In addition, those Germanic people who remained in Scandinavia are referred to as North Germanic. These groups all developed separate dialects, the basis for the differences among Germanic languages down to the present day.

The division of peoples into West Germanic, East Germanic, and North Germanic is a modern linguistic classification. Many Greek scholars only classified Celts and Scythians in the Northwest and Northeast of the Mediterranean and this classification was widely maintained in Greek literature until Late Antiquity. Latin-Greek ethnographers (Tacitus, Pliny the Elder, Ptolemy, and Strabo) mentioned in the first two centuries the names of peoples they classified as Germanic along the Elbe, the Rhine, and the Danube, the Vistula and on the Baltic Sea. Tacitus mentioned 40, Ptolemy 69 peoples.

Classical ethnography applied the name Suebi to many tribes in the 1st century, apparently partly replacing the word "Germanic". After the Marcomannic wars the Gothic name steadily gained importance. For the end of the 5th century the Gothic name can be used – according to the historical sources – for such different peoples like the Goths in Gaul, Iberia and Italy, the Vandals in Africa, the Gepids along the Tisza and the Danube, the Rugians, Sciri and Burgundians, even the Iranian Alans. Though speaking Germanic languages, these peoples were sometimes classified as Scythians and often said to descend from the ancient Getae (most important: Cassiodor/Jordanes, Getica around 550).