Germany

The disease is named for the physicians who described it.

German doctors distinguished it from measles and scarlet fever in the 18th century, and English named it for them. Rubella is now the preferred term.

Britain called it the Alsatian for nearly sixty years to avoid the word German.

Max von Stephanitz fixed the breed from Württemberg and Thuringian herding stock beginning in 1899. Anti-German feeling after the First World War pushed British registries to rename it the Alsatian wolf dog, after Alsace, and American ones to drop the word too; the United Kingdom only restored the original name in 1977.