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Indeed Germanic is a Roman invention, Caesar used it -to separate them from the Celtic (Keltoi), left of the Rhine lived the Celts and right of the Rhine the Germanics. That's rough and of course not based on 'anthropological' considerations, that is a modern thought not classic. Anyhow according tp the Tacitus the tribes right of the Rhine, had a disgust for the label Germanic. So it's no coincidence that the name Germanic became after the Roman period in disuse.
Actually, at first, it was difficult for the Romans to differentiate between Celtic and Germanic tribes. Both groups were kind of the same to them. However, the Romans started to distinguish between Celts and Germanics after coming more frequently into contact with Germanic and Celtic cultures and after examining the "differences" and the "common" lifestyles. Of course, the Celtic and Germanic identities were fluid in certain regions of Gaul or Germania. Claiming that the Romans or Julius Caesar "invented" the Germanic people is a stretch. The descriptions and information about the Gauls and Celts that Caesar provided were, in fact, fairly accurate. Caesar, for instance, pointed out that Germanic tribes were significantly taller and "bigger" due to the fact that they hunted different types of animals with more meat and had cheese and milk in their diets. Furthermore, unlike the Celts, Augustus believed that the Germanic tribes were not "civilized." That said, most people are unaware that the names and adjectives we now associate with Germanic peoples were originally Celtic group names. The word "Teuton," for instance, was originally the name of a Celtic tribe in northern Europe. The name became the name of a Germanic people as a result of either gradual merging through marriage or possible absorption of the original Celts into the Germanic stream, resulting in the original Teutonic people becoming German-speaking.