Rome: Total War II

[Marcus F.]

I don't think that you can say that Alamanni = Suebi. the Alamanni are referred to as enemies of the Roman empire from different times than the Sueves. When the latter enter Gaul and reach Spain, they are clearly smaller than and different from the Alamanni.

Those Suebi, who went to the Iberian peninsula, were just another sub branch and not the Suebi in their entirety. Just because they migrated there doesn't mean that other people, who also saw themselves as Suebi, didn't stay in central Europe.

This is what I found:
"nam regio illa Suavorum ab oriente Baibaros habet, ab occidente Francos, a
meridie Burgundzones, a septentrione Thuringos quibus Suavis tunc iuncti
aderant etiam Alamanni" (Iordanis, De origine actibusque Getarum, 55, 551)

and

"hos secuti suebi, id est alemanni, Gallitiam adpraehendunt" (Gregory of Tours, Historia Francorum 2,2)

So it seems that since this era (around 15 centuries ago), the Suebi were the dominant element in SW-Germany and merged with the Alamanni.

In modern Germany, 'Schwäbisch' is a dialect related to 'Alamännisch'. Both belong to 'Westoberdeutsch'.
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:A...German.png

I know that. My impression is that over the centuries, people in Baden, Switzerland, Alsace, Allgäu and Vorarlberg forgot that their ancestors also used to identify themselves with the name Suebi/Schwaben. I had a coworker from Baden, who didn't want to hear anything like that.