Teutons

[2] It transparently originates from the Proto-Indo-European stem *tewtéh₂-, meaning "people, tribe, crowd," with the addition of the suffix -ones, which is frequently found in both Celtic (e.g., Lingones, Senones) and Germanic (e.g., Ingvaeones, Semnones) tribal names during the Roman period.

Gothic þiuda), which suggests that if it is indeed Germanic, it must derive from an earlier stage of the language (prior to the first consonantal shift), unless the Greek and Latin renditions are corrupt and do not accurately represent the original form.

The stem tewtéh₂- is so widespread in Indo-European languages that linking the ethnonym to other names with the same origin, such as the Teutoburg Forest (Teutoburgensis saltus), is challenging.

[3] Later on, beginning with ninth-century monastic Latin texts, the term Teuton came to refer specifically to speakers of West Germanic languages—a usage that has persisted into modern times.

Originally, it was used as a learned alternative to the similar-sounding term theodiscus, which was a Latinized form of the contemporary West Germanic word meaning "of the people.

Apparently, this distinction was first made by Julius Caesar, whose main concern was to argue that raids into southern Gaul and Italy by northern peoples who were less softened by Mediterranean civilization, should be seen in Rome as a systematic problem that can repeat in the future, and thereby demanded pre-emptive military action.

Abalus was one day's sail from a tidal marsh or estuary facing the ocean (aestuarium) called Metuonis inhabited by another Germanic people, the Guiones (probably either the Inguaeones, or Gutones).

Gudmund Schütte proposed that the two peoples should be understood as one, but that different versions of works based on that of Ptolemy used literary sources such as Pliny and Mela to place them in different positions somewhere near the Cimbri, in a part of the landscape they did not have good information for – either in Zealand or Scandinavia, or else somewhere on the southern Baltic coast.

[3] After achieving decisive victories over the Romans at Noreia and Arausio in 105 BC, the Cimbri and Teutones divided their forces.