How did your country get its name ?

I don't know if Norway was discussed before, but this is relatively easy: it means "the Northern way/route". The Old Norse name for Norway was "Noregr", which is a contraction from "nor vegr", meaning exactly "the North way/route", and the medieval Latin was already also "Northvegia". In Norwegian they say Norge, (in Bokmaal, pronounced "nohr gay"), or Noreg, (in Nynorsk, pronounced "nohr egg").
 
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I have also looked up, out of curiosity, the name of New Zealand, because my best friend lives over there right now, and, the old Maori name, which is also used by current day kiwis in NZ English, is "Aotearoa", (meaning "the land of the long white cloud"). When Dutch explorer Abel Tasman first sighted NZ in 1642, he called it "Staten Landt", thinking it was part of South America ! In 1645, some Dutch cartographers, (mapmakers), renamed it "Nova Zeelandia" after the Dutch province of Zeeland, and later British explorer James Cook named it in English, New Zealand.
 
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