Graecum and the Term Greeks is Defamatory it Means Dog Dung

Album Graecum or Graecum for short means Dog Feces in Latin. The term was popularised during the Rise of Germanic Europe. Later Graecum was pronouned in different ways, the term Greek for example derived from the Latin term Dog Dung. Ever since Western Europe has been calling Hellenes, Dog Dung. Will this edition of Age Of Empires correct the terminology and and call the Greeks Hellenes? Hellene is their proper name as used by academics because they know what the term Greek means. Could you please make sure the Definitive edition makes this alteration to the historical footnotes and in game UI? Please change the term Greek or Greeks to Hellenes.

It’s the other way around. The term for the Greeks didn’t derive from canine feces, the name for a commodity made from canine feces was derived from Greece. And it wasn’t derogatory.

Album grÊcum, or stercus canis officinale, is the dung of dogs or hyenas that has become white through exposure to air. It is used in dressing leather.

White dog dung was formerly used as a medicinal drug, often mixed with honey, to cleanse and deterge, chiefly in inflammations of the throat. Externally, it was used as a plaster, spread on skin to close and heal wounds.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Greek#English

From Old English Grecas (“Greeks”), from Latin Graecus, of uncertain origin, perhaps derived via Illyrian or other Paleo-Balkans forms from a tribal name Graii, or possibly from the toponym ĂŽâ€œĂÂĂŽÂ±ĂĄÂżâ€“ĂŽÂ± (Graßa); Greek in any case has the cognate ĂŽâ€œĂÂĂŽÂ±ĂŽÂčÎÂșσς (Graikós), the mythological ancestor of the Graecians (ĂŽâ€œĂÂĂŽÂ±ĂŽÂŻĂŽÂżĂŽÂč (Graíoi)

My gut tells me, you’re probably trying to push a nationalistic agenda.

There are many different exonyms for the Greeks and, over time, there were some different endonyms, too. Most European languages use a word derived from Latin Graecus, from the Middle East to India Greeks are literally referred to as Ionians (e.g. Turkish Yunan). Hellene was used by the Greeks themselves mainly in antiquity and then again in modern day for their newly found national identity. For the long time in-between, Greeks called themselves mainly ĂĄÂżÂŹĂâ€°ĂŽÂŒĂŽÂ±ĂĄÂżâ€“ĂŽÂżĂŽÂč (Rhomaßoi) — Romans.


White dog dung was formerly used as a medicinal drug, often mixed with honey, to cleanse and deterge, chiefly in inflammations of the throat. Externally, it was used as a plaster, spread on skin to close and heal wounds.

The term Album means white ( as in Albino) and Graecum means Dog Dung.

@“Spartan Hoplite” According to your logic, a Russian must be a drink because a White Russian is one. None of the components of album graecum means dog feces on its own.

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Graecum means dog dung. It’s the same word that Germanics pronounced as Greek. The correct word as used at universities is Hellenic and Hellene.

You’re just repeating yourself. Your whole argument is built on taking a phrase’s figurative meaning and deducing its components’ literal meanings from that. It just doesn’t work that way. Until you come up with any actual evidence that Graecum on its own meant canine feces (Roman texts, etymologies from historical linguists, 
), arguing with you doesn’t make any sense.

The term has been tackled by many historians without any evidence of origin. But having dog dung equating to the term Greek goes a long way in describing the Germanic psyche. The term Hellene was used in all ancient manuscript until the advent of the Germanic Western Roman Empire.

Post sources. Mostly of people don’t call Greek as Hellenes.

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There is univetsal lack of etymology for the word graecum. It suggests it could have been a swear word. Swear words usually lack etymology as their meaning become perverted.

I’m just gonna say what a famous psychologist once said. “Sometimes a cigar is only a cigar.” People don’t really call Greeks Hellenes for a reason. The country they’re from is Greece. Greek only makes sense etymologically speaking. They were Greeks long before the term was used as a derivative of dog dung lol. Call them what you will, but most people, laymen and academic alike, call them Greeks because that makes explaining their historical significance easier. They are described differently throughout history, but most will continue to use the term Greek out of ease alone.

I know it’s hard to believe, but sometimes amateur linguists bark up the wrong tree. Until better evidence is presented, I see no reason to stop calling them Greeks.

The offense is in a single language. Why censoring the rest.

Andy P, what better evidence do you need than Album Graecum means dog dung? So if I call you all the offspring of the cuckold that gave birth to you, you wouldn’t be offended just because the words I used aren’t documented as being swear words? Try finding a serious author that documented swear phrases.

@“Spartan Hoplite” said:
The term has been tackled by many historians without any evidence of origin. But having dog dung equating to the term Greek goes a long way in describing the Germanic psyche. The term Hellene was used in all ancient manuscript until the advent of the Germanic Western Roman Empire.

Romans called Greeks Graeci long before Rome was conquered by Germans. By the way, the etymology of the Latin word Germanus which is the origin of English German, is even more unclear than the ultimate etymology of Graecus. So, according to your logic, that must have been an even worse insult. :stuck_out_tongue:

But that would probably fit your weltanschauung perfectly. You seem to be quite disdainful of Germanic people.

@“Spartan Hoplite” said:
There is univetsal lack of etymology for the word graecum. It suggests it could have been a swear word. Swear words usually lack etymology as their meaning become perverted.

Even if your assumption (that swear words usually lack etymology) were true, your argument is based on a logical fallacy. If A implies B, that doesn’t mean that B also implies A.

And, as I already stated, the etymology of Graecus, while not perfectly clear, isn’t that mysterious, either. It does have the clear cognate ĂŽâ€œĂÂĂŽÂ±ĂŽÂčÎÂșσς in Ancient Greek, which according to Aristotle was of Illyrian origin:

ΓραÎčÎșός - Wiktionary, the free dictionary
Uncertain origin. Aristotle wrote that it was an Illyrian word used to describe the Dorian tribes in Epirus, from Graii, an indigenous name of peoples in the coastal region.[1]

In modern scholarship, the name is traced to ĂŽâ€œĂÂĂŽÂ±ĂĄÂżâ€“ĂŽÂ± (Graßa), a city on the coast of Boeotia, a name given to the Greeks by the Romans, where they first met. The city’s name itself means “grey,” from Proto-Indo-European *ǔerhñ‚‚- (“to grow old”).[2]

As far as I can see, no serious scholar of Latin or Ancient Greek or any professional historical linguist suggests that Graecum was an insult.

Album Graecum or Graecum for short means Dog Feces in Latin. The term was popularised during the Rise of Germanic Europe. Later Graecum was pronouned in different ways, the term Greek for example derived from the Latin term Dog Dung. Ever since Western Europe has been calling Hellenes, Dog Dung. Will this edition of Age Of Empires correct the terminology and and call the Greeks Hellenes? Hellene is their proper name as used by academics because they know what the term Greek means. Could you please make sure the Definitive edition makes this alteration to the historical footnotes and in game UI? Please change the term Greek or Greeks to Hellenes.

It doesn’t mean dog dung, as I told you in your other thread on the same topic.

You don’t know what you are talking about though as pointed out in another thread: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Album_graecum

White dog dung was formerly used as a medicinal drug, often mixed with honey, to cleanse and deterge, chiefly in inflammations of the throat. Externally, it was used as a plaster, spread on skin to close and heal wounds.

Album means white Graecum means Dog Dung!

The term greek stems from Graecus, and Graecus doesn’t mean dog dung. Anyways, Hellenes is way more accurate, as in the time span the game deals in, in reference to the Hellenistic empire, was actually called the Hellenistic period. Historics actually call it that way. But not in general, but for this very time span.

That being said, I’d prefer it to be correct. Which would be Hellenes.

@“Spartan Hoplite” said:
Album means white Graecum means Dog Dung!

No, album graecum literally means “Greek white thing” and refers to dried dog feces, which were used as medicine. Graecum on its own does not mean dog dung, in the same way that no part of the word White Russian on its own refers to a drink.

@CoyRock3565968 said:
Anyways, Hellenes is way more accurate, as in the time span the game deals in, in reference to the Hellenistic empire, was actually called the Hellenistic period. Historics actually call it that way. But not in general, but for this very time span.

That is a valid argument. I’d say that AoE isn’t scientific and should refer to things by their traditional English popular names, where they exist. Hellenes is quite established, though, and has a long history in all kinds of English texts as a more poetic name for the Greeks.

So, I wouldn’t mind if they called Ancient Greeks Hellenes in the next AoE they’re in. But I don’t think anything should be renamed in AoE DE without necessity.