From Britannia to Anglia to Engla Land, our country has had a few names before settling on England, or the 'land of the Angles' which got me thinking that every country had to be named after something or someone and apparently the majority of country names fall into just four categories: a tribe name or a person, a feature of the land or a description of the country,
France is named for the Franks, Italy for the Vitali tribe, Switzerland for the Schwyz people, Korea after the Han tribes, America is named after either Richard Ameryk or Amerigo Vespucci, Colombia takes its name from Christopher Columbus, St. Kitt’s after Saint Christopher and St. Lucia the only country to be named after a woman, Saint Lucy.
The Philippines are named after Spain’s King Philip II, Bolivia after the Venezuelan revolutionary Simón Bolívar, Mauritius after a 16th-century Netherlands magistrate, Belgium after the Belgae tribe, Hungary’s name comes from the On Ogur tribe.
Montenegro’s means 'black mountain', Iceland is self explanatory, Costa Rica means 'the rich coast' and named by Christopher Columbus as the indigenous people wore a lot of gold, Honduras means 'deep water' and Sierra Leone is named 'lion mountains' due to explorers hearing thunder there, Singapore means 'lion city' as hunters wrongly thought there was lion there. Ecuador is a reference to the equator running through the country and Jordan after the River Jordan.
Japan means 'land of the rising sun' as it is direction of the Sun rising and Australia is a shortened version of 'Terra Australis Incognita', or Unknown Southern Land.” Ireland means Land in the West' but some names are a bit more silly such as Tobago is named after a pipe, Brazil and Barbados are named after a type of tree, Malta means honey and Venezuela named so because European explorers thought it looked like Venice and Grenada because sailors thought it looked like Granada in Spain.
Mexico means 'in the navel of the moon' and Nauru is named after the indigenous words for 'I go to the beach'.
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Iceland is obvious huh? So then, how about Greenland?
ReplyDeleteHow is Japan "in the (sic) direction of the Sun rising"? It only makes sense if it was it named by someone in China, and you can't even see Japan from China. Sounds dubious...
Interestingly, Greenland was deliberately misnamed named by Vikings who wanted to attract settlers to it.
ReplyDeleteJapan was named by the Chinese.
yes, we were taught that about greenland in middle school geography.
ReplyDeleteso, the japanese were egoless enough to let the chinese name their nation... interesting... i will have to verify that
ehhhh, wikipedia says differently...
ReplyDelete"The name for Japan in Japanese is written using the kanji 日本 and is pronounced Nihon or Nippon.[11] Before 日本 was adopted in the early 8th century, the country was known in China as Wa (倭, changed in Japan around 757 to 和) and in Japan by the endonym Yamato.[12] Nippon, the original Sino-Japanese reading of the characters, is favored for official uses, including on Japanese banknotes and postage stamps.[11] Nihon is typically used in everyday speech and reflects shifts in Japanese phonology during the Edo period.[12] The characters 日本 mean "sun origin",[11] which is the source of the popular Western epithet "Land of the Rising Sun".[13]"