Why are there so many different names for Germany?

Germany. Allemani. Tyskland. Saksa. Niemcy. Deutschland.

So many names for one country. So many names that are all so different from each other.

How did this happen? The first name for the region was "Germania" and was given by the Romans.

They named it after a fierce tribe they fought against near the Rhine river there called the "Germani"

The Romans managed to eventually conquer most of western Europe, but they never had control over Germania. The Latin language spread through the Empire, but the tribes in Germania kept on speaking in Germanic ways.

In the 5th century some of the Germanic tribes there went on the move, marching all over Europe and playing a large role in the eventual fall of the Roman Empire. 

One of those tribes, the Franks, ended up taking over Gallia, but the Roman language and culture there was very well entrenched and the conquering Franks were absorbed into it. What started as Frankland became Francia and eventually France.

There were various Germanic tribes next door to France in Germania, but the one they had the most contact with, and the most battles with, were the nearby "Alemani". 

So the French came to call the whole area over there Allemani. Spain and Portugal followed suit.

Germany's own name for itself, Deutschland, came about around the 8th century. They didn't see themselves as Germani or Alemani, but as just people. Their language wasn't Latin, that churchy, scholarly one over there, but the regular one, the one "of the people."

They called it "thiudisc" which was the word for "of the people." Thiudisc became the word "Deutsch "  in German, "Tysk" in the Scandinavian languages, and "Tedesco" in Italian.

The Finns and Estonians, speaking a non-Germanic, totally different kind of language, took another approach, calling the area after yet another Germanic tribe, the "Saxons".

Meanwhile, the Slavs to the east had their own idea about the differences between what they spoke and their western neighbors did. They based their name for German on the word for "mute" or "incomprehensible mutterin". In other words, Germans were those people over there who don't speak right.

Calling foreigners people who can't talk right has a long history. The ancient Greeks used the same approach when talking about tribes who did not speak like them. They called them barbaros, from a word meaning "blah blah blah". 

Germanic people had their own word for foreigners, "Walhaz" which they applied to people who spoke celtic languages, and is where the word Welsh comes from.

Is that the origin of the words for Germany in Latvia and Lithuania? 

Germany, large and full of tribes, smack dab in the middle of everything, had to take on names from all sides.

The current state of affairs leaves a whole history of neighborly, and sometimes not so neighborly, interaction on display.

And that's the story of the many names of Germany.