The Alemanni or AlamanniThe spelling with "e" is used in Encyc. Brit. 9th. ed., (c. 1880), Everyman's Encyc. 1967, Everyman's Smaller Classical Dictionary, 1910. The current edition of Britannica spells with "e", as does Columbia and Edward Gibbon, Vol. 3, Chapter XXXVIII. The Latinized spelling with a is current in older literature (so in the 1911 Britannica), but remains in use e.g. in Wood (2003), Drinkwater (2007). were a confederation of Germanic peoples who first appeared in the region east of the Upper Rhine river during the third century AD, where they eventually took control of a large swathe of lands previously ruled by the Roman empire, within the province of Germania Superior.
From about the fifth century, written records start occasionally referring to the Alemanni with an old name, Suebi, that had traditionally been used by Roman writers to refer to a diverse range of Germanic peoples found in several parts of Europe. This name used to refer to their medieval and modern successors, the Swabians, whose country eventually came to be called Swabia (). The connection between the Swabians and the ancient Suebi is however unclear and likely to have been indirect.
The first apparent written mention of the Alemanni that has survived is in reports of the works of Cassius Dio, who mentioned them in the context of a campaign of Roman emperor Caracalla in 213 AD. The Alemanni captured the in 260 AD, and later expanded into present-day Alsace and northern Switzerland, leading to the establishment of the Old High German language in those regions, which by the 8th century were collectively referred to as Alamannia.in pago Almanniae 762, in pago Alemannorum 797, urbs Constantia in ducatu Alemanniae 797; in ducatu Alemannico, in pago Linzgowe 873. From the ninth century, Alamannia is increasingly used of the Alsace specifically, while the Alamannic territory in general is increasingly called Suebia; by the 12th century, the name Suebia had mostly replaced Alamannia. S. Hirzel, Forschungen zur Deutschen Landeskunde 6 (1888), p. 299.
In 496 AD, the Alemanni were conquered by the Frankish leader Clovis and incorporated into his dominions. Mentioned as still pagan allies of the Christian Franks, the Alemanni were gradually Christianized during the 7th century. The is a record of their customary law during this period. Until the 8th century, Frankish suzerainty over Alemannia was mostly nominal. However, after an uprising by Theudebald, the Duke of Alamannia, Carloman executed the Alamannic nobility and installed Frankish dukes.
As the Carolingian Empire weakened in later years, the Alemannic counts became almost independent, and a struggle for supremacy took place between them and the Bishopric of Constance. The chief family in Alamannia was that of the counts of , who were sometimes called margraves, and one of whom, Burchard II, established the Duchy of Swabia, which was recognized by Henry the Fowler in 919 AD and became a stem duchy of the Holy Roman Empire.
The area settled by the Alemanni corresponds roughly to the area where Alemannic German dialects remain spoken, including German Swabia and Baden, French Alsace, German-speaking Switzerland, Liechtenstein and Austrian Vorarlberg. The French-language name of Germany, , is derived from their name, from Old French aleman(t),recorded as aleman in c. 1100, and with final dental, alemant or alemand, from c. 1160. Trésor de la Langue Française informatisé s.v. allemand. and from French was loaned into a number of other languages, including Middle English, which commonly used the term Almains for Germans.F.C. and J. Rivington, T. Payne, Wilkie and Robinson: The Chronicle of Iohn Hardyng, 1812, p. 99.H. Kurath: Middle English Dictionary, part 14, University of Michigan Press, 1952, 1345. Likewise, the Arabic name for Germany is (Almanya), the Turkish is Almanya, the Catalan is Alemanya, the Spanish is Alemania, the Portuguese is Alemanha, the Welsh is Yr Almaen and the Persian is (Alman).
Name The name Alamanni is generally analysed as a Germanic compound of *ala- and *man(n)-, the latter meaning "man" or "person". The precise sense of the compound is disputed. Rübekeil interprets *ala- as having a collective or universal sense, and understands the name approximately as "the Manni as a whole" or "the totality of the Manni", rather than as "men from all tribes". Haubrichs argues that *ala- could instead have an intensifying sense, so that the name may have meant something like "true", "complete", or "pre-eminent men".
The sixth-century historian Agathias, citing a tradition which he attributed to Gaius Asinius Quadratus in the third century, reports that the Alemanni were "gathered together and mixed" people and that their name expressed this character. Modern linguistic discussions do not generally treat this as the literal meaning of a different name formation. Rather, Rübekeil and Haubrichs both interpret it as a hostile or mocking reinterpretation of a Germanic name whose components were transparent.
An older proposal that the first element was *alah "sanctuary" is incompatible with the early spellings of the name and is not accepted by scholars anymore.
Relationship with the Suebi Modern scholars think it is probable that Suebian groups such as the Neckar Suebi or Semnones contributed to the ancestry of the Alemanni. On the other hand, although the two terms Alemanni and Suebi gradually became interchangeable in later centuries, the reasons for this are unclear today, and it is unclear whether any third or fourth century Alemanni would have seen themselves as Suebi. In this period the term Suebi was not normally associated by Roman authors with the Alemanni, but most often with the neighbours and allies of the Marcomanni and Quadi who lived north of the Danube.
The distinction is also visible in the early fourth-century Laterculus Veronensis, probably compiled in 314. In its geographically ordered list of peoples near the Rhine, it gives the sequence Burgunziones Alamanni Sueui Franci ... Iotungi, treating the Alemanni, Suebi and Juthungi as separate names within the same broad regional ethnic landscape.
There are on the other hand some indications of a Suebian association in early records. A third century monument associates the Juthungi with the Semnones, who were certainly known as Suebi, and the Juthungi at least eventually came to be seen as part of the Alemannic population in the fourth century. The Laterculus Veronensis is important in this respect because it still lists the Juthungi separately from the Alemanni in the early fourth century, whereas Ammianus Marcellinus later described them as a division of the Alemanni (). The distinction is also reflected in the Tabula Peutingeriana, which shows Svevia and Alamannia as neighbouring but separate regions beyond the Rhine. The surviving map is medieval, and these particular labels have sometimes been regarded as later additions, but Liccardo argues that they could preserve a late antique geographical scheme: the name Alamannia was already in Roman use by 297/298, and the separate representation of Svevia and Alamannia fits a period when the two names had not yet become synonymous.
Another special case is the fourth-century poet Ausonius, who described his captive Bissula as a "Suebian girl", although he located her homeland beyond the Rhine near the sources of the Danube, in an area otherwise associated with the Alemanni. Modern scholars have generally regarded this use of Suebi as literary or archaizing rather than as evidence that the names Suebi and Alemanni were normally interchangeable in the fourth century. citing Ausonius, Bissula 1–3, 17–28.
The connection between the names of the Suebi and Alemanni may have developed later. For example, writing about fifth-century events, the 6th-century writer Jordanes described a group of Suebi who moved from the east under the rule of a leader named Hunimund, after he lost a battle with the Ostrogoths. He reported that they settled together with the Alemanni, but treats them as a distinct group living in the same area. citing Jordanes, Getica 273–281. By the time of the Ravenna Cosmography, compiled around 700, the names Suebi and Alamanni had become interchangeable, and the corresponding regional names were likewise equated in geographical writing. In the ninth century the two names could be treated explicitly as synonyms. Walafrid Strabo, himself writing in Alemannia, stated that Alamanni and Suebi were two names for the same gens: neighbouring Latin-speaking peoples used the former, while local Germanic usage employed the latter. citing Walafrid Strabo.
Prehistory Before the third century, much of the region east of the Rhine where the Alemanni later became established was under Roman control, but Germanic groups had been settling there since the first century AD. Around the lower Neckar, a Suebian population known as the Neckar Suebi (Suebi Nicretes) was centred on Lopodunum (Ladenburg), and their settlement community later developed into the Roman Civitas Ulpia Sueborum Nicretum.
The connection between these populations and the later Alemanni is unclear, but connections are likely. Modern scholarship generally rejects the older model in which an already formed Alemannic people migrated into the region in the third century. The prevailing view instead places the formation of the Alemanni after the abandonment of the Upper German–Raetian limes, among groups settling between the Upper Rhine and the Danube. Archaeological evidence likewise suggests origins among several different groups rather than a single migrating population.
On the other hand, in the third century the wider Germanic world was itself undergoing major changes since the Marcomannic Wars (166–180), and a part of the Alemanni probably entered the region from elsewhere. Older political groupings and elites were disrupted and new confederations emerged, eventually including the Alemanni. The Alemanni are not named in contemporary accounts of those wars, but for example the Juthungi are associated with the Semnones in a third-century Roman monument. In short, Germanic peoples known from before the third century probably contributed to the population which later formed the Alemanni, though a direct continuity cannot be demonstrated.
Earliest mentions The earliest undoubted contemporary mention of the Alemanni under that name is a panegyric delivered for Maximian in 289, although many scholars accept evidence that the name was used much earlier. The early history of the Alemanni, like their northern neighbours the Franks, is difficult to reconstruct because before the late third-century contemporary sources mainly describe the enemies of the Romans there using broad terms such as Germani or barbari. Later historians sometimes identify groups involved in third-century events as Alemanni or Franks. Notably for example, the third-century Juthungi are specifically described as Alemanni in later records. However, modern scholars consider such later mentions to be uncertain, and possibly anachronistic.
A further possible third-century attestation is preserved by the sixth-century historian Agathias, who attributes to the mid-third-century writer Asinius Quadratus a description of the Alemanni as a mixed people, but once again some modern scholars consider this uncertain because it is only reported in a much later source.