Not something I thought of a lot when I was back in US since USA is… a pretty bureaucratic name by all means. But I just realized that some countries have really fascinating names in their local language
Like how China names itself Central/Middle country in a very grandiose way (as in, we are the center of the world), or Japan being “land of the rising sun”
Norway is quite literal: The way north.
It used to describe the coastline full of seaside trading towns before someone got the idea to make it a country.
The literalness also shows up in all the names for places in the country. They are 90% old spellings of “The place where people live”, “the field for cows to feed on”, “the settlement at the north of the fjord”, “upper farm”, “valley settlement”, and like 1837 places called “a place you can live”.
Polska (Poland) comes from a word meaning “field”. Modern polish still has this word (pole)
Brasil, the name comes from Pau Brasil, a tree that has a deep red color, used to make dye and for its quite beautiful red wood. The word Brasil comes from brasa (ember), essentially means “tree that’s red like an ember”.
I was greatly surprised when I learned that the country is named after the tree and not the other way around
You already said China so I guess I’ll go Hong Kong.
Hong Kong (香港) means fragrant harbour. The origin of this name is unknown, but there are theories of it coming from a type of wood we produced, a nice river, the wife of a pirate, or some residents just pronounced it with an accent to the British soldiers.
Finland (Suomi) basically means a swamp (suo).
If you look at the etymology, there are other explanations of the origins, but a modern person would associate the name with a swamp. I guess it makes sense with all the lakes.
Austria is from Osterreich, Eastern Kingdom or something similar.
Switzerland means land of the people from Schwyz, which is one of the 3 founding “Cantons / States” of Switzerland. When going to war the old confederacy would wear white cross with red background (the flag of Schwyz) to distinguish themselves in battle. So in wider Europe they where known as Switzerland, specially because the Swiss Mercs were elite warriors and the most powerfull nobles would want to have the Swiss as their Guard (the Vatican still uses them today).
The real name of Switzerland though is Confederatio Helvetica. Which means the Helvetic Confederation. The Helvetic are a Celtic tribe that used to live in today’s Switzerland before the Romans took over and later the Alemans rolled in.
I put in a solid effort to come up with a Helvetica pun, but it just wasn’t there.
The Helvetica Confederation does not include the Serif region
There it is
France /François- land of the franks. The germanic tribe of the franconians that took over france as the western roman empire collapsed
“Scotland” is very literal. It’s the land of the Scots
In Scottish Gaelic - never the language of the whole area of the modern day country and a very small minority nowadays, but nonetheless a language that is uniquely Scottish and very influential on our history - it’s Alba. This one is kind of interesting, because it originally meant the entire island of Great Britain. “Scotland” in Scottish Gaelic therefore sort of means “Scotland, England, and Wales”
Unlike popular belief, Chile is not named after the spicy vegetable. Story goes there wasa bird chirping and the Spanish thought it sounded like “Chile”.
The Netherlands literally means the Low countries. Pretty literally there.
In German, we also call the Netherlands “the low countries” (“die Niederlande”). 🙃
It’s the low countries because it’s the land around the river delta’s, not because of the height of the land. It’s originally meant as downriver.
Canada, or ‘Canada’ in French, was derived from “Kanata” the Iroquois word for Village. Not sure there ever was a local world for the country known as Canada though? Would love to be enlightened if so.
I’m not sure what you mean by local as each indigenous nation presumably had their own way of referring to the land.
‘Turtle Island’ is the common translation for the ways that many Algonquian- and Iroquoian-speaking refer to North America.
Where I live (Lekwungen territory) means “place of the smoked herring”.
Germany: Deutschland. “Deutsch” comes from the word “people, tribe”. The oldest roots go back to the 8th century and the kingdom of Charlemagne, where “deodisk” (“the language of the common people”) was used to distinguish the Old German from “walhisk” (the medieval latin that the ruling class spoke).
This is a Deutschland. It’s a Land that deutschs.
SPRICH DEUTSCH DU HÜTTENSOHN!
Aotearoa - new Zealand
To most it means “Land of the long white cloud” and as with most Maori things, there’s a story that goes along with it if you want to read.
Portugal comes from “Portus Cale”. It was in the general area of the city of Porto. The word “Postus” and “Porto” mean port, as in a port for ships.
Nederland: The low land
