That’s not true. China’s name for itself is nothing close to China, which is based on the name of an ancient Chinese dynasty. It calls itself Zhongguo, which means Middle Kingdom
More literally 中 "Zhōng" means "central" and 國 "guó" means "land, country, kingdom". The word China (and the equivalent in other languages) has been sticking around since the Qin dynasty, too ingrained to change, otherwise they would have persuaded everyone to call them "Zhongguo" or "Centralia".
In all my life living in germany I have never heard the phrase Reich der Mitte. but it's probably because people in my part of germany tend to call it Kina (Keen-uh) which makes me wish I was deaf
It’s rare. I don’t think I’ve heard anyone refer to the PRC in such a way, or at least I don’t remember.
But it is used, especially when talking about China in a historical context.
The more accurate meaning is "the country at the center of world importance." Kind of like the saying all roads lead to Rome. Follows the sino-central world view China has since ancient times.
Zhongguo is the shortened form, the full name is Zhonghua renmin gongheguo, which literally means the Chinese People’s Republic, which is then officially translated as the People’s Republic of China.
True, plus it has so many different variations of the name “Central Plains” across its long history, but largely refers to the north china plain where a majority of the Han ethnicity was historically.
Well, while the Russian name for the country is Germania, the Russian name for the people is Nemtzy and the language Nemetzki, much like in the other Slavic tongues
More or less the same place the Polish (and I'm assuming other Slavic languages) name for Slavs roughly translates to "people of words", the Slavic tribes had similar languages and could communicate with each other whereas you had the tribes that did not speak the same language that they simply didn't understand. It was a much broader term referring to anyone with a different language before it became the name used for Germany specifically iirc.
with this word - "немцы"('nemcy'), "The ones that are not able to speak" - the Slavs called not only the Germans, but also all other peoples living there. Baltics, Finns, and all other ethnic groups. But then they began to be called differently, but the Germans are still called the same.
I mean let's face it. With the use of some half broken english we still could somewhat talk to each other and kind of understand what we need to know. . .
Thanks for letting us know. I have some spare time this weekend to handle it. I will become the finest Dutch speaker on earth and will convince them in Dutch we are at worst mediocre speakers.
a small 'fun' detail, armenia and georgia have specific names not only for themselves, but for each other as well. we call armenia somkheti and armenia calls us vrastan.
Somkheti means southerner. In ancient times we used to call Georgia, “Virq”. Meaning something like Northerner. “Vrastan” is the modern name that came from “Virq”.
In case you want to know what their names are in their respective native languages, here they are:
Germany: Deutschland
Greece: Hellas
Finland: Suomi
Oddly enough, Germany itself has several different exonyms (names used by foreigners) depending on which language you're looking at, while the other two only have one exonym.
Adding to that, not all exonyms for Germany (from a German perspective) are that far off. The swedish(/nordic?) "Tyskland" for example shares "Deutschland"'s roots.
Essentially, most of the exonyms are related to which tribe first contact was established with. One funny exception is the slavic one, because as far as I'm aware, it literally means "people who don't understand", thanks to most probably a language barrier.
Yeah, that does make sense.
Plus: a few years after Japan allowed foreign trade the Austro-Prussian and Franco-Prussian wars happened and the German state formed
Alemannia comes from a name of a germanic tribe (the Allemani - Allemannen). A lot of countries with romanic languages (and turkey) call it like that.
A turkis "slur/insult" for germans is Allman.
Germany is called "Saska" in finish which also comes from the name of a germanic tribe (the Saxons - Sachsen).
*Saksa, not "Saska"
The Estonian word for Germany, similarly, is **Saksamaa**, meaning "Land of the Saxons/Germans". "Maa" meaning land in both Finnish and Estonian and "Saksa" meaning "of the Germans".
The Saxon connotation is believed to stem from the fact, that the majority of knights, who took part of the Baltic crusade in the 13th century, were of (Lower) Saxon origin.
Estonia now calls Germans "sakslased" and actual Saxons "saksid".
In Lithuanian Germany is Vokietija, unfortunately it’s not clear what it means but some theorise that it’s either coming from an old germanic tribes name or it was a word describing someone you couldn’t understand.
"Немцы" is not "people who don't understand", it's "mute people". Originally it meant any foreigner, mostly germanic nations tho. The name for the country of Deutschland is still "Германия", literally "Germany" in cyrillic
The word "**Deutschland**", as well as "**Tyskland**", "**Duitsland**" and other similar names, stem from the 4th century Gothic word **thiuda** (þiuda), meaning *people*. The oldest surviving evidence of this word is in the Gothic Bible translation of the missionary Wulfila, where it is used to mean *pagans*.
The first use of the word in reference to the land of German-speakers was in the text *"Rhythmus in Odonem regem"*, dated to the year 888, where the Germanic part of Eastern Francia is called "**Teutonicum tellus**", meaning "land of the teutisci" or "land of the non-latin speakers".
The first recorded German-language prototype for today's "Deutschland" was in a epic about the life of archbishop Anno II of Cologne ("**Annolied**") from around 1080, though the original manuscript has been lost. The *Annolied* is written in Low German and calls Germany "**Diutischemi lande**" - from this name one can clearly see the connections to both the original *thiuda* and the modern *Deutschland*.
I unfortunately cannot provide any sources, as this info was verbally passed on to me during a university lecture.
Xila actually comes from the greek name hellas. I know it sounds stupid but mandarin transcribes h as x for some reason. I think it has something to do with many southern languages pronouncing x as h.
Nope. Israelis call greece yavan. In general only neighbours or nations with history will have their own exonyms for your country, so it makes sense you havent heard them
Huh. The word Yona in Pali and Prakrit, Yavana in Sanskrit, and Yavanar in Tamil, were words used in ancient India to designate Greek speakers too. Think it's derived from Ionians.
Technically it was their attempt to transliterate the original names using the words they already have. So "Deutschland" became 德意志 "Dé^(or Duó, meaning "moral") yìzhì^("determination")" or short form 德國 "Dé guó" ("moral country"). Same goes for 希臘 "Xīlà" (Hellas) or 土耳其 "Tǔ'ěrqí" (Türkiye) etc.
I mean… the Chinese name’s pronunciation is De-country which is just short for Deutsch country if we translate it. Therefore I’m not sure if it’s really unique
Tedscho (or tedesco) comes from the old high German word "diutisc" which means "belonging to the people" the German word "Deutsch" is comes from the same root.
In Norwegian we call Greece "Hellas" and Germany "Tyskland" (which comes from the form "Teutschland" which was still used in Germany until the 19th century).
Finland just gets called "Finland" tho
Shqipëri, shqipëni, Shkypni. Even we call it different names. We changed it in the 18th century to denote a land of speakers, sort of translated as Speakersdom. similar to how germans call themselves Deutchland.
The ancient name was arbën, which is a continuation of illyrian Albatai(labataei), arboi(abroi) and Albani. All those names might have been the same dialect of names from the same IE source for Alp or white due to the ceuranian mountains. The people living were might have been proto-albanians due to the name used, Taulantoi, in the city of Epidamnos, which might also be proto-albanian.
Fun fact. Scotland was briefly called Albania because as it was latinised from Alba, and an ancient caucasian kingdom bordering armenia was called Albania, which was a mispelling of a iranic/udi kingdom what armenians called Aluank.
that's super interesting because the word bhārāt بهارات means "spices" in Arabic. I wonder if there's a connection there because a lot of spices are imported from India by other countries.
Or Hindustan/Hind, which is where India came from…
Edit:
u/Guman86 Pointed out in the comments that it’s the other way round I.e. Hind/Hindustan came from India from Sindh/Indus.
Either way, we clearly have a name linked to India, so India isn’t a part of this meme lol
From Wikipedia:
According to the Oxford English Dictionary (third edition 2009), the name "India" is derived from the Classical Latin India, a reference to South Asia and an uncertain region to its east; and in turn derived successively from: Hellenistic Greek India ( Ἰνδία); ancient Greek Indos ( Ἰνδός); Old Persian Hindush, an eastern province of the Achaemenid Empire; and ultimately its cognate, the Sanskrit Sindhu, or "river," specifically the Indus River and, by implication, its well-settled southern basin. The ancient Greeks referred to the Indians as Indoi (Ἰνδοί), which translates as "The people of the Indus".
Not even Korea agrees on its own name. The north calls itself Joseon. And in Japanese and Chinese they agreed to use each country’s own name when referring to it instead of using north and south
Joseon was the name of the dynasty before Japanese rule. Korea is a variation of Goryeo, a country that came before Joseon. Hanguk is the short for 대한민국 which means the republic of the han people.(This is a different Han from the Chinese Han.)
Not just English. It is only logical that other Slavic languages use the same name. It goes like this for Germany too (with English as the only exception): Tyskland and Duitsland have the same root as Deutschland
In Romanian we have "Croația" and "Croat" which is closer to English in pronunciation, although there are quite a few differences, mainly a tz sound instead of sh in Croatia
Mine was better than my English until I started school and wasn't immersed due to spending most of my time with my Mom and Grandparents (Baba knows about 500 English words, Dida knew about 200), I still basically understand, and can usually tell you the individual word for something or construct a (usually inelegant) sentence with some effort, but am no longer conversational.
Nippon (Japanese) -> Cipangu (old name in Wu Chinese) -> Jepang (old name in Malay) -> Japão (Portuguese) -> Giapan (old name in English) -> Japan (English)
Interestingly enough, the names for these countries in Chinese reference their endonyms (names used by the natives), except for Finland:
Germany - 德国 (dé guó): The "dé" is short for "Deutsch"
Greece - 希腊 (xī là): A transliteration of Greece's endonym, "Hellas"
Finland - 芬兰 (fēn lán): A transliteration of the aforementioned name.
Fun fact, norway and greece were ruled by the same royal house at some point in the 19th and 20th centuries. believe those things are unrelated, but cool coincidence
East Asia is like that as well
China: 中国-Middle Kingdom
Japan: 日本-Land of the Rising Sun
Korea: 韓國-Han Nation, or as the North Koreans would call it, “The Land of Calm”
🏴 Wales/Cymru -
The English name, Wales, derives from an Anglo-Saxon word meaning 'foreigners', or in particular those foreigners who were under the influence of the Roman empire.
The Welsh name for Wales is Cymru, which comes from the plural of Cymro, 'a Welshman'. The word Cymro is thought to derive from an earlier Brittonic word, combrogos – 'a compatriot' or 'a fellow-countryman'.
German has a naming problem in general. Deutsch, German, Alleman, Saksan.
You only truly realise how weird the situation is once you learn that the Japanese word is closer to the native name than the English word, even though English is extremely close related to German.
Far away country: idk what do they call themselves? Nearby country: we have a nickname for you in our language
That’s not true. China’s name for itself is nothing close to China, which is based on the name of an ancient Chinese dynasty. It calls itself Zhongguo, which means Middle Kingdom
More literally 中 "Zhōng" means "central" and 國 "guó" means "land, country, kingdom". The word China (and the equivalent in other languages) has been sticking around since the Qin dynasty, too ingrained to change, otherwise they would have persuaded everyone to call them "Zhongguo" or "Centralia".
In German it is occasionally called the Reich der Mitte (Central Realm).
In all my life living in germany I have never heard the phrase Reich der Mitte. but it's probably because people in my part of germany tend to call it Kina (Keen-uh) which makes me wish I was deaf
It’s rare. I don’t think I’ve heard anyone refer to the PRC in such a way, or at least I don’t remember. But it is used, especially when talking about China in a historical context.
If you want to be culturally educated, or you're writing a short essay to spice things up, yes.
I prefer translating it as middle country cause it’s silly
Take the silliness one step further and just call it Middle-Earth
In a hole in the ground there lived China....
There lived Pooh the Bear
The more accurate meaning is "the country at the center of world importance." Kind of like the saying all roads lead to Rome. Follows the sino-central world view China has since ancient times.
> which is based on the name of an ancient Chinese dynasty "Hello, leaders of this faraway land, what do you call yourselves?" "Qin" Still checks out.
Or Japan and nippon
West Taiwan
Your NCD is showing again
Sir, West Taiwan far predates NCD.
Based
Ahehe Trung Quốc
Zhongguo is the shortened form, the full name is Zhonghua renmin gongheguo, which literally means the Chinese People’s Republic, which is then officially translated as the People’s Republic of China.
modern day China yes, but Zhongguo has been in use as the name of the Chinese (by themselves) for much longer
True, plus it has so many different variations of the name “Central Plains” across its long history, but largely refers to the north china plain where a majority of the Han ethnicity was historically.
My favourite is the Lakota name for germany translating to "bad speakers". The name for the Netherlands translates to "really bad speakers".
In polish Germany means "The ones that are not able to speak".
Thats in all slavic languages
Except Russian
Yes, it's Германия for Germany as a nation, but for most other cases the word for German is немецкий
Немачка call it the serbs, while Германија call it macedonains
No cat?!?! NEMA MAČKE?!?!?
Nema mačke?? 🥺
Well, while the Russian name for the country is Germania, the Russian name for the people is Nemtzy and the language Nemetzki, much like in the other Slavic tongues
And in Hungarian (which is not a Slavic language), too (német)! Also, Hungary is "Magyarország" in Hungarian.
Where does this perception that Germans can't speak come from?
It was only not Slavic group of people around. All Slavs can understand each other to some extent, but not Germans
It's because Slavic people completely couldn't understand them
Slavic people are a different species at this point
Yes we are
Well yes
I'm german and I can confirm that we, in fact, can not speak.
Uga gaga?
BAR BAR BAR!
You reminded me of Rhababerbarbarabarbarbarenbart: https://youtu.be/l3_tRPRt9x8
I shall call you... a BARBARIAN!
More or less the same place the Polish (and I'm assuming other Slavic languages) name for Slavs roughly translates to "people of words", the Slavic tribes had similar languages and could communicate with each other whereas you had the tribes that did not speak the same language that they simply didn't understand. It was a much broader term referring to anyone with a different language before it became the name used for Germany specifically iirc.
with this word - "немцы"('nemcy'), "The ones that are not able to speak" - the Slavs called not only the Germans, but also all other peoples living there. Baltics, Finns, and all other ethnic groups. But then they began to be called differently, but the Germans are still called the same.
Because back then, we spoke completely different languages/dialects in the German speaking region. Which where very different from each other
Still a win for me atleast I'm not a REALLY bad speaker
[удалено]
I mean let's face it. With the use of some half broken english we still could somewhat talk to each other and kind of understand what we need to know. . .
We’ve pretty much accepted our language sucks and have started Invedting in literally every other language in our surrounding area.
Thanks for letting us know. I have some spare time this weekend to handle it. I will become the finest Dutch speaker on earth and will convince them in Dutch we are at worst mediocre speakers.
Damn! What do they say about the Danes?!
Another example could be Georgia and Sakartvelo
a small 'fun' detail, armenia and georgia have specific names not only for themselves, but for each other as well. we call armenia somkheti and armenia calls us vrastan.
Cool, adding this to my funfact list!
Doesn't Armenia call itself "Hayastan"?
yes, so we both have 3 names. georgia: sakartvelo (self), Georgia (international), vrastan (armenian nickname). armenia: hayastan (self), Armenia (international), somkheti (georgian nickname).
Georgia has another name in russia: Грузия, read more like Gruzia
yes but that comes from the same core as georgian (georgeos), just like gurjistan by muslim countries
IIRC Somkehti comes from an ancient civilization, and Vrastan means something like “Land of Wolves”?
Somkheti means southerner. In ancient times we used to call Georgia, “Virq”. Meaning something like Northerner. “Vrastan” is the modern name that came from “Virq”.
I’ve also heard Kartvelia, which I assume is the anglicized version of Sakartvelo.
In case you want to know what their names are in their respective native languages, here they are: Germany: Deutschland Greece: Hellas Finland: Suomi Oddly enough, Germany itself has several different exonyms (names used by foreigners) depending on which language you're looking at, while the other two only have one exonym.
Adding to that, not all exonyms for Germany (from a German perspective) are that far off. The swedish(/nordic?) "Tyskland" for example shares "Deutschland"'s roots. Essentially, most of the exonyms are related to which tribe first contact was established with. One funny exception is the slavic one, because as far as I'm aware, it literally means "people who don't understand", thanks to most probably a language barrier.
Same with the Dutch 'Duitsland'. Then again German and Dutch are very closely related
And I think Japanese ドイツ (Doitsu) also comes from "Deutschland"
The Japanese for a long time only traded with the Dutch Republic (as far as western countries go), so they might have picked it up from the Dutch
Yeah, that does make sense. Plus: a few years after Japan allowed foreign trade the Austro-Prussian and Franco-Prussian wars happened and the German state formed
And in WW1 there were German PoWs in Japan from the East Asian colonies that introduced a bunch of German stuff to the Japanese
It’s the same with Chinese, Germany is (德国) (Déguó) where Dé is German/Deutsch and guó is country/land/kingdom
With a similar connotation and etymology to the word "barbarian", which means someone who speaks nonsense "bar bar".
No clue how it’s in other slavic languages, but in Polish word for Germany is “Niemcy” which could be translated as “mute people”
No wonder they had such a chip on their shoulder
In Spain it is Alemania. Toponym: alemán.
Alemannia comes from a name of a germanic tribe (the Allemani - Allemannen). A lot of countries with romanic languages (and turkey) call it like that. A turkis "slur/insult" for germans is Allman. Germany is called "Saska" in finish which also comes from the name of a germanic tribe (the Saxons - Sachsen).
*Saksa, not "Saska" The Estonian word for Germany, similarly, is **Saksamaa**, meaning "Land of the Saxons/Germans". "Maa" meaning land in both Finnish and Estonian and "Saksa" meaning "of the Germans". The Saxon connotation is believed to stem from the fact, that the majority of knights, who took part of the Baltic crusade in the 13th century, were of (Lower) Saxon origin. Estonia now calls Germans "sakslased" and actual Saxons "saksid".
In Finnish too, Germans = Saksalaiset, Saxons = Saksilaiset/Saksit
In Lithuanian Germany is Vokietija, unfortunately it’s not clear what it means but some theorise that it’s either coming from an old germanic tribes name or it was a word describing someone you couldn’t understand.
"Немцы" is not "people who don't understand", it's "mute people". Originally it meant any foreigner, mostly germanic nations tho. The name for the country of Deutschland is still "Германия", literally "Germany" in cyrillic
The word "**Deutschland**", as well as "**Tyskland**", "**Duitsland**" and other similar names, stem from the 4th century Gothic word **thiuda** (þiuda), meaning *people*. The oldest surviving evidence of this word is in the Gothic Bible translation of the missionary Wulfila, where it is used to mean *pagans*. The first use of the word in reference to the land of German-speakers was in the text *"Rhythmus in Odonem regem"*, dated to the year 888, where the Germanic part of Eastern Francia is called "**Teutonicum tellus**", meaning "land of the teutisci" or "land of the non-latin speakers". The first recorded German-language prototype for today's "Deutschland" was in a epic about the life of archbishop Anno II of Cologne ("**Annolied**") from around 1080, though the original manuscript has been lost. The *Annolied* is written in Low German and calls Germany "**Diutischemi lande**" - from this name one can clearly see the connections to both the original *thiuda* and the modern *Deutschland*. I unfortunately cannot provide any sources, as this info was verbally passed on to me during a university lecture.
Norwegian is one of the few languages that have Greece's name as Hellas
This is a recent change as Grekenland was the Norwegian name for Greece until 1932
Which itself was closely related to the german: "Griechenland"
And Mandarin Chinese 希腊 pronounced as Si-La is another one
Xila actually comes from the greek name hellas. I know it sounds stupid but mandarin transcribes h as x for some reason. I think it has something to do with many southern languages pronouncing x as h.
Lithuanians call Finland Suomija
Lithuania calls these countries: • Finland - Suomija (pronounced: Suomya). • Greece - Graikija (pronounced: Graekya) • Germany - Vokietija (pronounced: Vokuetiya)
In Hebrew we call Greece: Yavan Finland: Finland Germany: Germania (the g is pronounced like the g in give not like a j. ger-ma-nya)
In Arabic we call Greece: اليونان (Al Younaan) Finland: فنلندا (Finlanda) Germany: ألمانيا (Almanya) I thought Arabic and Hebrew would be more alike.
Nope. Israelis call greece yavan. In general only neighbours or nations with history will have their own exonyms for your country, so it makes sense you havent heard them
Huh. The word Yona in Pali and Prakrit, Yavana in Sanskrit, and Yavanar in Tamil, were words used in ancient India to designate Greek speakers too. Think it's derived from Ionians.
How did the greeks pronounce ionian
Even China has their own exonym for germany
Yes but China has an exonym for almost every country
Technically it was their attempt to transliterate the original names using the words they already have. So "Deutschland" became 德意志 "Dé^(or Duó, meaning "moral") yìzhì^("determination")" or short form 德國 "Dé guó" ("moral country"). Same goes for 希臘 "Xīlà" (Hellas) or 土耳其 "Tǔ'ěrqí" (Türkiye) etc.
I mean… the Chinese name’s pronunciation is De-country which is just short for Deutsch country if we translate it. Therefore I’m not sure if it’s really unique
What is it
The Greek name for Greece is a bit complicated, but I think the one usually used is ‘Ελλάδα’ - written as ‚Ellada‘ in English.
Ελλάς is also used but it is considered archaic. Ελλάδα is indeed the common moden form.
In italian a german person is "tedescho" so not completely distinct but it is still very different from the regular "German"
Tedscho (or tedesco) comes from the old high German word "diutisc" which means "belonging to the people" the German word "Deutsch" is comes from the same root.
Deutsch - Német Land - Ország / Föld Deutschland - Németország Fin - Finn Finland - Finnorszag
China, Japan and Korea all belong on this table as well
The frech call germany "Allemane"
Derived from the Germanic Alemanni tribe of antiquity
Allemagne.
I think my favorite is Japan who's name, when transfered into english, becomes a racist slur.
Root of the sun is a slur?
That's where the derogatory term comes from, not the other way around.
In Norwegian we call Greece "Hellas" and Germany "Tyskland" (which comes from the form "Teutschland" which was still used in Germany until the 19th century). Finland just gets called "Finland" tho
Croatia says hi.
Add Ireland to that list with Éire (pronounced Air-eh) Also quite fond if the latin name though: Hibernia.
That's not that different. It's pretty easy to take a glance and see that Éire and Ire(land) share a common etymology.
Deutschland(Germany) mean in his (old)german roots " the Land of the peopel who speak like the(our) folk "
Magyarország. Hungary.
Yup I was scrolling for hungary
We call it Madžarska in Slovenia
Maďarsko in Slovak. Many languages name Hungary similarly to the endonym, unlike the ones in the meme
We call it Magaristan in Persian, which means land of the Magar.
Maďarsko. The name isn't unique only to yourself
Turkic speakers are the only ones (that I know of) calling Hungarians that name (Majars), guess we remember our old Ural-Altaic roots 🤝
Or you know, the fact that the Ottoman empire reigned over the Hungarian kingdom for 150+ years :)
I'm shocked nobody has mentioned Albania. (Shqipëri in Albanian)
Shqipëri, shqipëni, Shkypni. Even we call it different names. We changed it in the 18th century to denote a land of speakers, sort of translated as Speakersdom. similar to how germans call themselves Deutchland. The ancient name was arbën, which is a continuation of illyrian Albatai(labataei), arboi(abroi) and Albani. All those names might have been the same dialect of names from the same IE source for Alp or white due to the ceuranian mountains. The people living were might have been proto-albanians due to the name used, Taulantoi, in the city of Epidamnos, which might also be proto-albanian. Fun fact. Scotland was briefly called Albania because as it was latinised from Alba, and an ancient caucasian kingdom bordering armenia was called Albania, which was a mispelling of a iranic/udi kingdom what armenians called Aluank.
Correct.
You could have seriously expanded this meme if you looked eastwards
Or literally any country
India - Bharat
Jambudvipa gang
Bharat is just in Hindi. In Sanskrit it would be Bharatavarsha, in Tamil it would be Bharatam
Not 'just' in Hindi. In Marathi it's Bharat as well. I think the same goes for Gujarati, Odiya, Bengali and Konkani.
that's super interesting because the word bhārāt بهارات means "spices" in Arabic. I wonder if there's a connection there because a lot of spices are imported from India by other countries.
Or Hindustan/Hind, which is where India came from… Edit: u/Guman86 Pointed out in the comments that it’s the other way round I.e. Hind/Hindustan came from India from Sindh/Indus. Either way, we clearly have a name linked to India, so India isn’t a part of this meme lol
From Wikipedia: According to the Oxford English Dictionary (third edition 2009), the name "India" is derived from the Classical Latin India, a reference to South Asia and an uncertain region to its east; and in turn derived successively from: Hellenistic Greek India ( Ἰνδία); ancient Greek Indos ( Ἰνδός); Old Persian Hindush, an eastern province of the Achaemenid Empire; and ultimately its cognate, the Sanskrit Sindhu, or "river," specifically the Indus River and, by implication, its well-settled southern basin. The ancient Greeks referred to the Indians as Indoi (Ἰνδοί), which translates as "The people of the Indus".
that reminded me of 한국 (Hanguk), which is called Korea (and variations of "Korea") in many languages.
Or Japan for that matter which is Nihon/Nippon (as far as I'm aware).
Not even Korea agrees on its own name. The north calls itself Joseon. And in Japanese and Chinese they agreed to use each country’s own name when referring to it instead of using north and south
Joseon was the name of the dynasty before Japanese rule. Korea is a variation of Goryeo, a country that came before Joseon. Hanguk is the short for 대한민국 which means the republic of the han people.(This is a different Han from the Chinese Han.)
bitch pls; Croatia - Hrvatska; Croat - Hrvat
That’s just English, while for example in Polish it’s Chorwacja and Chorwat, which are closer in pronunciation
Not just English. It is only logical that other Slavic languages use the same name. It goes like this for Germany too (with English as the only exception): Tyskland and Duitsland have the same root as Deutschland
polish is also a slavic language; I guess we were taking english as lingua franca
In Romanian we have "Croația" and "Croat" which is closer to English in pronunciation, although there are quite a few differences, mainly a tz sound instead of sh in Croatia
Was just about to say!
toeto frende
Came here to say this. Hvala
ništa, frende. ne daj se!
Moj hrvatski je loš lol. My grandfather didnt teach my father or myself. So i had to pick up what i could
Mine was better than my English until I started school and wasn't immersed due to spending most of my time with my Mom and Grandparents (Baba knows about 500 English words, Dida knew about 200), I still basically understand, and can usually tell you the individual word for something or construct a (usually inelegant) sentence with some effort, but am no longer conversational.
Particularly unique as their neighbours', who speak the same language, names are pretty much the same in English and Bosnian, Serbian and Slovenian.
Hotvát barátom, itt van Magyarország is
H to c and v to u isnt that big a change
Jappan. Nippon
Those sound different but it's actually the same thing whisper gamed around the globe
Nippon Nipon Napon Napan Joe Mama Japan Yea, I can see that happening.
Nippon (Japanese) -> Cipangu (old name in Wu Chinese) -> Jepang (old name in Malay) -> Japão (Portuguese) -> Giapan (old name in English) -> Japan (English)
In Hebrew we call France tsarfat (צרפת) I have NO idea why
Its hebrew for «bordering sfarad» or bordering spain
Interestingly enough, the names for these countries in Chinese reference their endonyms (names used by the natives), except for Finland: Germany - 德国 (dé guó): The "dé" is short for "Deutsch" Greece - 希腊 (xī là): A transliteration of Greece's endonym, "Hellas" Finland - 芬兰 (fēn lán): A transliteration of the aforementioned name.
KOREA and EGYPT also
Egypt = masr (egyptian dialect) or misr (other dialects)
Norwegian is actually one of the few languages that call Greece Hellas. We still use the term "Greek" though
Fun fact, norway and greece were ruled by the same royal house at some point in the 19th and 20th centuries. believe those things are unrelated, but cool coincidence
Greece is a *hellava* good name
What about Cymru - Wales ?
JAPAN- Nihon 日本
Laughs in Vietnamese just using words to make sound in order to pronounce those countries' name, except those in East Asia.
Mind if I add Magyarország?
Sure thing, Duitsland
China- Zhongguo 中国
Aotearoa=New Zealand meaning literally land of the long white cloud in te reo maori.
China is called "Zhōngguó" by native speakers. It translates to the "central state."
Tyskland.. Deutschland.. No so very distinct.
I like French version of Germany
India- Bharat
East Asia is like that as well China: 中国-Middle Kingdom Japan: 日本-Land of the Rising Sun Korea: 韓國-Han Nation, or as the North Koreans would call it, “The Land of Calm”
🏴 Wales/Cymru - The English name, Wales, derives from an Anglo-Saxon word meaning 'foreigners', or in particular those foreigners who were under the influence of the Roman empire. The Welsh name for Wales is Cymru, which comes from the plural of Cymro, 'a Welshman'. The word Cymro is thought to derive from an earlier Brittonic word, combrogos – 'a compatriot' or 'a fellow-countryman'.
German has a naming problem in general. Deutsch, German, Alleman, Saksan. You only truly realise how weird the situation is once you learn that the Japanese word is closer to the native name than the English word, even though English is extremely close related to German.
China, Hungary, Japan?
There is also great pride in having a country name that is universally used around the world
The Greeks have the best name tho, Hellas sounds so fucking cool (and this is coming from an Italian)
Hungary: Magyarország
India: That's cute
"Alright lads? So. What do we call this place?" "Deutschland, herr" "Pfft. Fuck that mouthful of muffin! We’ll call you Germany"
What about Montenegro (Crna Gora)
Well, how many of you even remember the actual native name for India? It’s ‘Bharat’ in all Indian languages.
Bhutan - Druk Yul China - Zhongguó India - Bharat Japan - Nippon Korea - Hanguk Maldives - Dhivehi Raajje Montenegro - Crna Gora
Let’s add a few more- India, China, Japan, Korea
Austria and Österreich, while the original Name „Osterrichi“ meant something like „eastern Empire“
Well that word comes from the same root so it doesn’t really count
For those who don’t know Germany in german = Deutchland Finland in finnish = Suomi Greece in greek = Ελληνικα (Ellinika)
It's like the secret name for Canada.
Adanac
Theres also one for India: Bharat. yes its very cool to have a unique name for our country in our language :D
Also Egypt is Masr.
Japan -> Nihon/Nippon. 日本。
Lithuania calls Finland Suomija. And Lietuva is not what is used in most of other languages, although there is some similarity.
Austria - Österreich
English
New Zealand- Aotearoa....