How did your country get its name ?

Good info Bootboy :D , thanks

Here's what I found about the origin of the word Israel:

The word Israel itself, far from being a Jewish appellation, probably comes from the combination of three different reigning deities: Isis, the Earth Mother Goddess revered throughout the ancient world; Ra, the Egyptian sungod; and El, the Semitic deity passed down in form as Saturn


Origin of the word Brazil:

the word "Brazil" is derived from the Portuguese and Spanish word "Brasil", the name of an East Indian tree with reddish-brown wood from which a red dye was extracted. The Portuguese found a New World tree related to the Old World brasil tree when they explored what is now called Brazil, and "as a result they named the New World country after the Old World tree".


What Vietnam means:

Viet Nam means the Viets of the South (Nam) or the south populated by the Viet the main ethnic group in Vietnam.
 
Hon does mean self. The character is used in that context in many cases.
What you have to remember about Chinese character based words in Korean and Japanese are that they are ALL basically shorthand... ideas that would otherwise be very long can be expressed in as few as two syllables.
The character for "origin" is different. In Korean it's read as "wun," while what is "hon" in Japanese is "bon." The Japanese read the Chinese characters (kanji) in many different ways... it's complicated. I don't know the phonetic way they'd read "wun" but one of the "meaning" ways they express it is "moto." So actually Ajinomoto means "the origin of taste" or soemthing like that. Ajinomoto is a famous food additive brand.

pimp_squeak said:
Russia was actually named after a tribe of scandinavians inhabiting the region known as the "rus", it's all documented in Ibn Fadlan's manuscript.

As well the meaning of Nippon was mistranslated, "Ni" does mean sun but "pon" means origin, hence land of the rising sun, it's the origin of the sun.
 
the_13th_redneck said:
Hon does mean self. The character is used in that context in many cases.
What you have to remember about Chinese character based words in Korean and Japanese are that they are ALL basically shorthand... ideas that would otherwise be very long can be expressed in as few as two syllables.
The character for "origin" is different. In Korean it's read as "wun," while what is "hon" in Japanese is "bon." The Japanese read the Chinese characters (kanji) in many different ways... it's complicated. I don't know the phonetic way they'd read "wun" but one of the "meaning" ways they express it is "moto." So actually Ajinomoto means "the origin of taste" or soemthing like that. Ajinomoto is a famous food additive brand.

pimp_squeak said:
Russia was actually named after a tribe of scandinavians inhabiting the region known as the "rus", it's all documented in Ibn Fadlan's manuscript.

As well the meaning of Nippon was mistranslated, "Ni" does mean sun but "pon" means origin, hence land of the rising sun, it's the origin of the sun.

My mistake, I seem to be on a role with these mistakes in this thread. I got that translation from the introduction of a book I read a while back about the Japanese treatment of American POWs during WW2. If you're interested in checking it out the title is Flyboys by James Bradley, it's a really good read
 
I'm not from Canada but...

The original name for Canada, dreamed up by a parliamentary committee in London, was "Cold North Dominion," but that waas too long, so they abbreviated it C.N.D. The King's Royal Governor presented the new name to the inhabitants, and they didn't say a word. Just looked at him.

"Well, what do you think?" asked the Royal Governor?

"C., eh?" said the first fellow, and just looked at the Governor.

"N., eh?" says the second guy.

"D., eh?" says a third one. Then silence.

"Hey," says the Governor. "I like that. It's a helluva lot easier to pronounce when you spell it that way."

So that's how Canada got its name.
 
gladius said:
I'm not from Canada but...

The original name for Canada, dreamed up by a parliamentary committee in London, was "Cold North Dominion," but that waas too long, so they abbreviated it C.N.D. The King's Royal Governor presented the new name to the inhabitants, and they didn't say a word. Just looked at him.

"Well, what do you think?" asked the Royal Governor?

"C., eh?" said the first fellow, and just looked at the Governor.

"N., eh?" says the second guy.

"D., eh?" says a third one. Then silence.

"Hey," says the Governor. "I like that. It's a helluva lot easier to pronounce when you spell it that way."

So that's how Canada got its name.

Coooooool.
 
chewie_nz said:
Aotearoa = land of the long white cloud

i think is much better than new zealand (Zealand being small island near denmark for some reason?)


Zealand is a region of the Netherlands.
 
gladius, this is what pimp_squeak said:

pimp_squeak said:
Canada come from the native phrase "our land", Ka Na Ta

Ka Na Ta , is that the Red Indian language ?


Aotearoa = land of the long white cloud

i think is much better than new zealand (Zealand being small island near denmark for some reason?)

Aotearoa is difficult to pronounce, New Zealand is better.Simply, Zealand would've sounded much cooler 8)
 
The name of my country was devised by Indian students studying at Cambridge in 1932.

P stood for Punjab
A for the afghan areas of NWF
K for Kashmir
S for Sindh

And 'PAK' means 'PURE' in english!

So Muslim League pronounced the word PAKiStan meaning "Land of Pure"
 
Aotearoa = land of the long white cloud

i think is much better than new zealand (Zealand being small island near denmark for some reason?)

Aotearoa is difficult to pronounce, New Zealand is better.Simply, Zealand would've sounded much cooler 8)[/quote]


it's pronouced;

ow (as in "ow i hurt myself)
tear
row
ah

ow-tear-row-ah
 
I did a little research on wikipedia and this is what i found:


  • Denmark: This name has something to do with "Danevirke" (Dane's work) which is a earthen defense structure.
This is an old thread I know, but it’s not entirely accurate.

Denmark is called Danmark in Danish.

The prefix "Dan-" refers to Danir or King Dan
In Old Norse language the people in genitive majority was called "danir" which could mean something like "flat rural residents."

The suffix "Mark" was in Old High German and Anglo-Saxon language used in the sense of "borderland". So Danmark means "flat rural residents borderlands" Denmark’s borderland to the to the south is Germany.

Danmark (Denamearc), is already mentioned around the year 890 by the Norwegian Ottar in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle Orosius.
 
Zealand is a region of the Netherlands.

Indeed and New Zealand was originally named Staten Landt by the Dutch navigator Abel Tasman who first charted the country, New Zealand is an anglicised version of the name given to us by Dutch map makers who were working with Tasmans charts.
 
I think Pakistan is the only country whose name is made up from an anachronym. 'P'unjab, 'A'fghania,'K'hyber pakhtunkhia, balochis'TAN'.
 
US was already done so here is France.

A big clue comes from modern-day German. In German France is called Frankland its original name after the fall of the Roman Empire. (It was previously known as Gaul). Frankland means "Land of the Franks".

The Franks were a Germanic tribe from the lower Rhine which by the 3rd Century AD had begun occupying large areas of Gaul by both immigration and raiding westward. But rather than simply conqueror these former Roman provinces the Franks assimilated themselves into them. This is why much of French culture has a decided Latin flavor to it rather than a Germanic one. By the 9th century AD the Frankish Empire had occupied much of modern day France and it was at this time that the term Frank was stopped being to denote a ethnic tribe but rather a nationality. As is so often with many languages, Evolution to ancient languages changed the word "Frank" to "French".
 
Now that the thread's officially resurrected...

The English (derived from Latin Germania) and the German (Deutschland)name refers to a tribe called Teutons (literally Teuton's land) whereas the Italian and French for example refer to the tribe of the Alemanni.

Actually, the terms 'deutsch' and 'Deutschland' have nothing to do with the 'Teutons'. They are derived from the Old High German word 'diutisc', which roughly means 'of the people' or 'speaking the language of the people' and was used to describe a number of Germanic tribes speaking a common language, in contrast to 'walhisk' used for Celtics and (Gallo-)Romans.
The words for 'German' in many languages are derived from this 'diutisc': Danish and Norwegian 'tysk' as well as the Swedish 'tyska', Spanish 'tudesco', Italian 'tedesco', Dutch 'duits' (and the term 'Dutch' itself)...

And mmarsh: it's 'Frankreich'. ;)
 
The name "Turkiye" has been used for about a thousand years. Other civilizations called the places that Turks live Turkiye (Turkhia). In the 4th century A.D, Byzantine called the whole Middle Asia "Turkhia" means "Land of the Turks".

After the 1071 Manzikert War, the Turks conquered the Anatolia. And from that time Anatolia is called Turkiye ( Turcia ). Marco Polo named Anatolia as Turcia Minor, and he named Middle Asia, Turcia Major .
 
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