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”
France comes from the ‘franks’ which was both a kingdom and its population, the franks or francs, in French. The word is is supposed to mean ‘free man’ (one of the meanings, at least)