name of a Suebic tribe or confederation that settled in Alsace and part of Switzerland (and source of French Allemand "German, a German"), from Proto-Germanic *Alamanniz, probably meaning "all-man" and denoting a wide alliance of tribes, but perhaps meaning "foreign men" (compare Allobroges, name of a Celtic tribe in what is now Savoy, in Latin literally "the aliens," in reference to their having driven out the original inhabitants), in which case the al- is cognate with the first element in Latin alius "the other" and English else.