The poetic name, "Swabian Sea" was adopted by authors of the early modern era and the Enlightenment from ancient authors, possibly Tacitus. However, this assumption was based on an error (similar to that of the Teutoburg Forest and the Taunus): the Romans sometimes used the name "Mare Suebicum" for the Baltic Sea, not Lake Constance. In times when the Romans had located the so-called "Suebi", then an Elbe Germanic tribe near a sea, this was understandable. The authors of the Early Modern Period overlooked this and adopted the name for the largest lake in the middle of the former Duchy of Swabia, which also included parts of today's Switzerland. Today the name Swabian Sea ("Schwäbisches Meer") is only used jocularly as a hyperbolic term for Lake Constance.