Tentons, a group of peoples speaking Teutonic tongues, an important division of the Aryan (q.v.) family of languages. The name is derived from the ancient Teutones (and is a form of the modern German Deutsch, O. H. Ger. Diuutise, or Gothic
Thindisko; see GERMANY). The Teutonic stock of nations, as they exist at the present day, is divided into two principal branches: (1) The Scandinavian, embracing Danes, Swedes, Norwegians, Icelanders; and (2) the Germanic, which includes, besides the German-speaking inhabitants of Germany proper (see GERMANY) and Switzerland (q.v.), also the population of the Netherlands (the Dutch), the Flemings of Belgium, and the descendants of the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes in Great Britain, together with their offspring in North America, Australia, and other British colonies—the English-speaking peoples of the world. It is necessary in this case, as in all similar cases, to guard against making language the sole test of race. In many parts of Germany where German now prevails Slavic dialects were spoken down to recent times, and in some places are not yet quite extinct. And in Great Britain it is unreasonable to suppose that the Anglo-Saxon invaders exterminated the native Celtic population, or even drove more than a tithe of them into Wales and the Highlands. The mass undoubtedly remained as subject serfs, learned the language and customs of their masters, and gradually amalgamated with them; so that, in point of blood, the English are perhaps as much Celtic as Teutonic. The same remark applies more strongly to Scotland and Ireland than to England; and the mingling of races in the United States has been very great, although the non-Teutonic elements have been dominated and assimilated. See the articles on the several Teutonic lands; EUROPE, Vol. IV. p. 464; ETHNOLOGY; and (for the languages) PHILOLOGY.