Origin and history of Dietrich

1610s, "of or pertaining to the ancient Germanic peoples or tribes," from Latin Teutonicus, from Teutones, Teutoni, name of a tribe that inhabited coastal Germany near the mouth of the Elbe and devastated Gaul 113-101 B.C.E.; the name is said to be probably via Celtic from Proto-Germanic *theudanoz, from PIE root *teuta- "tribe" [Watkins].

In linguistics, an old name for the Germanic languages, or for the ancestral speech of the Germanic languages (by 18c.). It later was used in English in anthropology to avoid the modern political association of German. But in this anthropological sense French uses germanique and German uses germanisch, as neither one uses its form of German for the narrower national meaning. Compare French allemand, for which see Alemanni; and German deutsch, under Dutch.

An earlier adjective in English was Teutonie "Germanic" (mid-15c.), from Latin plural Teutoni. The Teutonic Knights (founded late 12c.) were a military order of German knights formed for service in the Holy Land, but who later crusaded in then-pagan Prussia and Lithuania. The Teutonic cross (1882) was the badge of the order.

masc. proper name, from Late Latin Theodoricus, from Gothic, literally "ruler of the people," from Gothic þiuda "people" (see Teutonic) + *reiks "ruler" (see Reich). For spelling, see Theobald. The French form of the name, via the Franks, is Thierry.