Apparently it's most likely tied to the German municipality of Waake or the Swedish tribe of Vagoths. However most Lithuanians would likely explain it in the form of a joke - either about Germans being thieves ('vogti' = to steal) in reference to Teutonic/Livonic ordins, or about them being 'tough' or well armored ('vo kiets' ~= 'wow, tough/hard').
Another fun fact: at least in Croatia, we colloquially call them "schwabs" which originates from another group of germanic people https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suebi
It comes from the fact that Germany didn't unify until very late, so the people were called by the small city-states that they came from. In American revolutionary war, some British mercenaries were called Hessians....
According to Wikipedia [1], it’s a matter of some debate, with the theories being the (standard) corruption of a name for the first Western Baltic people encountered, or a take on the “unintelligible war cry” people from the Latvian root for speaking.
Similarly, the word "barbarian" comes from the ancient Greeks describing the people who lived around them as sounding like they were saying "bar bar bar".
The word is probably borrowed into Hungarian from Slavic. We have a similar word in our language as well, but it's used as someone who doesn't understand. Also used interchangeably with Turk.
No, it's very similar to nemec, basically the same thing also borrowed from Slavic. The "c" ending is pronounced as "ts". The full phrase goes like: "Why don't you understand, are you German/Turk?" (as in not understanding the language). There's also a place, a citadel and river with that name, which your ancestors might have been familiar with:
Interesting that Finland/Estonia call them, essentially, Saxony.
The Latvian/Lithunian name for Germany is the only one I don't understand. Does anyone know?