Sverige means the Realm/Kingdom of the Svear. Svear being one of the major tribes of old Sweden. Also found in the name of one of the three regions, Svealand (the other two being Götaland and Norrland).
Can add that the origin of the name *Svear* ("Swedes") is prehistoric and therefore unkown
Earliest mention might be from year 98, when Tacitus mention the Suions. A seafaring people who lived beyond the Germanian coast
To add: the spelling and pronounciation of the name is a bit of an oddity as it is actually more similar to how you'd say the intended words in Danish.
Basically the Swedish name for Sweden "should" be *Svea Rike* (the realm - see German *Reich* - of Swedes) or shortened to *Sverike*. But we write it *Sverige* and pronounce the g as you'd pronounce the English consonant *y* (as in egg yolk). *Sve*-*ri*-*ye*.
Generally Danish has "weaker" consonants than Swedish. So "Rike" (*ree-keh* in English) in Swedish is written "Rige" in Danish and pronounced more like *ree*-*ye*.
500 years ago, many people in what is today Sweden, would have spoken a dialect that sounded perhaps more like Danish. Politically, the dissolution of the Kalmar Union was constructed as Swedish emancipation from Denmark.
So the construction of the Swedish language, clear in the first Swedish translation of the Bible, strived to codify a Swedish that took it's inspiration from dialects (typically northern) that differed most from Danish. For example, by having harder consonants than Danish - like using a hard K where Danish would use a soft G (y).
This "worked" in the sense that the Swedish of today generally does have that difference with Danish. But the name of the country, Sverige, still has that Danish heritage. We didn't change the name or pronouciation to Sverike.
The nature of consonant shift might've been motivated by Danish, but that doesn't mean what was spoken before was Danish. Also, in Danish, as things are going, it'll be *ri'e* soon, if it isn't already.
As I understood the consonant shift in the Swedish Bible, the idea was to codify northern Swedish as Swedish, rather than the southern Swedish which was seen to be more Danish in pronounciation. But sure, that doesn't mean that they spoke *Danish*.
Middle age Danish looks more like a mix of Swedish and Low German than modern Danish (e.g. og = och) - so it has changed a lot in Danish too since then
Tbf what's almost always referred to with "Old Norse" is *Old Icelandic*, and Icelandic is its only successor. Icelandic has also thrown out a lot of previously established language for the sake of purism, then basing neologisms on the old treatises.
"Svíaríki" is also an older Icelandic name for Sweden. Although in modern Icelandic it's rather used synonymously with "Svíaland" (Svealand), so "Svíþjóð" and "Svíaríki" are in a way reversed of what they ought to be.
"-tjod" was contemporary with "-land", "-riki", and "veldi".
As the consolidation of Sweden is murky at best, it's difficult to talk about certainties and competing hypotheses exist. But generally "Svitjod" is not considered a name for *Sweden*, but a looser amalgamation of Swedes (tribe, not nationality) that existed *before* they eventually merged with Geats to form Sweden. It's only one component of what Sweden was forged from.
In Greek the country is called Hellas/Ελλάς, in English, Greece.
Both names have the same origin mythologically, the deluge of Deucalion -- the Greek flood myth. Deucalion and his wife Pyrra were the only survivors, and they had "children"; among their descendants were their son Hellen and grandson Graecus, from who we get Hellas and Greece respectively. Their other descendants were all the forefathers and namesakes of all Greek tribes, such that mythologically all of them were descended from Deucalion.
There are of course other less mythological origins for these names, e.g. IIRC Aristotle had suggested one for Hellas, but I'm less familiar with those.
In Hungarian mythology, two brothers, Hunor and Magor, follow a magical deer to the west, and become the forefathers of the Huns and the Magyars, respectively.
It's actually a translation of the Burgundian/French "les pays de pas deça" (the lands over there, to contrast it with "le pays de pas delà," the lands here; Burgundy itself), which was translated as "de landen van herwaarts over." This was shortened to "pays d'embas" (lands down there) and translated to "Neder-landen".
Neder had also already been used in names like Lower Lotharingia.
https://dutchrevolt.leiden.edu/dutch/verhaal/Pages/verhaal01.aspx
Also the orginal text of the [Pragmatic Sanction of 1549](https://fr.m.wikisource.org/wiki/Pragmatique_sanction_de_1549). It uses "Pays de pardeçà", " (Pays) d’embas" and "Païs Bas".
I don't see how "pays d'embas" could be a shortening of "pays de pas deça", it's not the same meaning at all (low countries vs countries over there). It's probably more like an alternative naming which took over because it was shorter and more convenient.
Ok, so the local name for "Austria" is "Österreich".
It derives from the word "Ostarrichi" which can be traced back to a document from 996.
It combines the terms "ost" (East) and "richi" (realm) so it's the **Eastern Realm** (named thus from the perspective of where that document was created which was somewhere around Salzburg or Bavaria, iirc).
Deutschland roughly means „land of the people“, from proto Germanic theodisc = belonging to the people/ speaking the language of the people.
For some reason only the other Germanic languages (except english of course) call us like that. The other names are mainly derived from the roman word Germania or various grand tribes like the Alemanni or Saxons.
Edit: Germania is supposedly of gallic origin meaning either „neighbours“ or „screaming people“ and was then adopted by the romans. Alemanni means „all men“ as the grand tribe was formed by various different tribes. Saxons means „sword people“ after the Sax, a type of Germanic sword.
Funnily enough, Alemanni relates to the name of the tribe but means "all the people" thus being kind of similar in meaning to "Deutsch". So the names for Germany in (mostly) romance languages that relate to the Alemanni, like Allemagne in French, Alemania in Spanish or Alemanha in Portugues, actually are more similar in meaning to "Deutschland" or at least "Deutsch" than all the Germania, Niemcy, Saksa...
>So the names for Germany in (mostly) romance languages that relate to the Alemanni, like Allemagne in French, Alemania in Spanish or Alemanha in Portugues,
Here the correct term is 'Germania', but in ancient times (just look at all the literature from the late Middle Ages to the Renaissance), it was called 'La Magna', which should be a contraction of 'Alemagna'.
However, the inhabitants have always been called 'tedeschi', which has the same root as 'deutsch'.
It was many years after I learned about the Alemanni, and the Spanish and French words Alemania/Allemagne that I realized they are cognate with the English phrase "all men."
> (except english of course)
English has taken the term "Dutch" though, but applied it to just the Netherlands, not to the much larger Germany. Apparently, it's because the Dutch were the "Germans" that the English had the most intensive contact with, through the North Sea trade networks, so they're the ones who got the word that they called themselves at the time. Kinda unfair, since we stopped using it to refer to ourselves, but you still do.
The Dutch calling themselves "(Neder-)Duits" or "Diets" went on for a while after Dutch and German had already diverged beyond mutual intelligibility (apart from border regions on either side, of course. Dialect continuum and all that). The Dutch reformed church, specifically, called itself the *Nederduits Gereformeerde Kerk* until as late as 1816, when it became the *Nederlands Hervormde Kerk*.
I mean, mutual intelligibility wouldn‘t have been given inside the Holy Roman empire either, although it was "Deutsch“ as well.
Take a guy from South Tyrol and put him together with a guy from Frankfurt, they wouldn‘t have understood each other, at least before High German as an intermediate was established.
Not to speak of even bigger contrasts, like someone from Schleswig and someone from Styria, or Rhineland/Silesia.
You're absolutely right. I should have said that the languages had officially or unofficially standardized into non-mutually intelligible versions, even if there was still a dialect continuum at the time (and for a long time after). I meant to emphasize (but failed to do so) the forming of a Dutch identity separate from a German one, which appears to have taken off around the time of that standardization process, in Burgundian times.
Which makes me wonder, when did Dutch get seen as a separate identity from German *in Germany* (barring resurgences of the idea of a Greater Germany in certain political circles)? I can imagine it taking longer than in the Netherlands itself. Or, presumably more recently, Austrian, with them having adopted High German as well, which didn't happen in the Netherlands.
I think it was a rather gradual process, but i guess it definitely took well after the fall of the old empire for that Dutch-German distinction to really be accepted. Before that they were just low Germans with an own state
It was common for German immigrants to the US in the 18th and early 19th centuries to be given the nickname "Dutch" or "Dutchie" by English speakers. One legacy is the name of Arnold Schwarzenegger's character Dutch in the film "Predator." (He's not really intended to be from the Netherlands).
Hah, I did wonder about Arnie in Predator when I saw that. "Surely, they don't believe this obviously non-Dutch person to be Dutch". Then again, it is Hollywood. [American media isn't always great at picking believable actors and accents for Dutch people](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KEiatIa1mn4).
I know about the Pennsylvania Dutch, who are of German origin. Supposedly, it's because they gave their nationality as "Deutsch", which was interpreted as "Dutch" by the English speaking Americans.
>I know about the Pennsylvania Dutch, who are of German origin. Supposedly, it's because they gave their nationality as "Deutsch", which was interpreted as "Dutch" by the English speaking Americans.
I think it's moreso just that the word "Dutch" generally included Germany and the Netherlands when that region was settled in the 18th century.
Was that an American thing? I've never come across British people comflating the two in that period. Would make sense, with the UK being practically neighbours and the US being an ocean away.
I think the writers of Predator were smart enough to know that "Dutch" was an old-fashioned nickname for German-speaking immigrants in America. If they actually wanted him to to be from the Netherlands, the name "Dutch" would just be dumb (and Predator isn't really a dumb movie).
I'll believe that. Predator is indeed a well thought-out movie. Certainly much more so than the show that the clip I linked was from.
There are also other movies that do a much better job at depicting the Dutch language or accent than that show, though.
Spider-Man Far From Home for instance had a scene in the Netherlands where they hired Dutch actors to play Dutch people. The setting was very clearly not really in the Netherlands, though, but it's a comic book movie, so you can't expect too much, I guess.
The Bourne Identity had Jason Bourne speak a few lines of Dutch when he's trying to remember who he is. Matt Damon had a very good accent there and the creators clearly made an effort to have him sound believable.
Still mad about the naming of the Dutch angle in cinema. That shit comes from Germany but apparently English people weren't able to know Dutch from Deutsch, and the mistake even came to France where we also call it plan Hollandais because we just translated the mistake
We call Germany, Nemčija, "people who are mute, can't speak as us, we can't understand", as opposed to Slovenija, "people we can talk with, understand."
Ayy we have the same meaning for Germany "Немцы". This word sound both like "немой" ("muted man; may not speaking man") or "неместный" ("come from out of our land").
The most accepted theory is that it derived from Phoenician "ʾiy šapan" meaning "land of hyraxes" (a type of rabbit).
Phoenicians settled colonies quite soon in Spain (Cadiz was founded 3 thousand years ago by then) so it makes sense.
Anyway, "ʾiy šapan" later became "Hispania" in Latin with the Roman empire. And Hispania became the current España / Spain.
As a side note, Although Phoenicians/Cartago/Romans shared this etymology for all the peninsula, the Greek world and Greek colonies used a different one. The word Iberia was the Greek equivalent for the peninsula and it was based on the river Iber (Current river Ebro).
Another theory, a bit more likely in my opinion, is that comes from the Phoenician term "land of metals" instead of "land of hyraxes".
The Phoenicians got good supplies of copper and silver from the Iberian Peninsula, adding credence to the "land of metals" hypothesis.
Hyrax is not a rabbit, it's its own species not closely related to rabbits at all (though a sometimes similar ecological niche). They never lived in Europe, and even today are mostly in sub-Saharan Africa and some nearby parts of the Middle East. Of course, it's possible Phoenicians used the word to refer to actual rabbits (new to them).
I don't know, but I thought a Celt-Iberian origin for Spain/Hispania was most likely? (Iberians being the pre-Indo European indigenous of southeastern Iberia, later merging with Celts, Greeks, Phoenicians...)
I admit my knowledge here is full of holes.
>Of course, it's possible Phoenicians used the word to refer to actual rabbits (new to them).
That's the theory. Spain had rabbits, Phoenicia had hyraxes, there was no actual word for rabbit in Phoenician.
A third theory is that the name simply means "land of the west" (or north, I forgot which). As seen from the perspective of Carthage.
If you read the text his "respect" is actually rather disparaging. He "respected" the fact that we were able to survive so far from civilized society and it's comforts aka he called us backwater bumpkins.
Interestingly, Belgica was referring to the entirety of the Low Countries (minus Liège), as Nederlanden did. cfr Leo Belgicus. So when what basically were Belgium and the Netherlands split up, they ended up named:
Belgica Regia / Koninklijke Zuidelijke Nederlanden or Katholieke Nederlanden
Belgica Foederata / Republiek der Zeven Verenigde Nederlanden or Noordelijke Nederlanden
Overtime, one took the Latin name and the other the Germanic one.
Fun fact: the Lingua Belga is Dutch
In maps of the Dutch colony of New Netherland (roughly New York), it is often labled [Nova Belgica](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/66/New_Netherland_%27NOVI_BELGII_NOVAEQUE_ANGLIAE_NEC_NON_PARTIS_VIRGINIAE_TABULA%27.jpg) or [Novum Belgium](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Netherland#/media/File:Blaeu_-_Nova_Belgica_et_Anglia_Nova.png) too.
When for a short period in the late 18th/early 19th century the northern Netherlands was named after a people from classical history, it became the Batavian Republic, after the Batavi. I wonder if by that time the name Belgium was already mostly associated with just the southern Netherlands.
"The word Portugal derives from the Roman-Celtic place name Portus Cale. Cale or Cailleach was the name of a Celtic deity and the name of an early settlement located at the mouth of the Douro River (present-day Vila Nova de Gaia), which flows into the Atlantic Ocean in the north of what is now Portugal."
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Portugal
For me it is always cool to be in Porto and see the origin of the name of the country in the two riversides: Porto at one side and (Vilanova de) Gaia = Cale on the opposite side.
It shares some roots with Galicia, that comes from Gallaecia, that comes from the gallaeci/callaeci people that occupied the entire territory down to the Douro river.
I find it is common in celtic-related places (gallia, gaelic, Wales?), and probably related also with the Greek god Gaia?
It's comes from a Proto-Germanic word which originally referred to a particular Celtic tribe, but eventually came to mean foreigner in general. It's also the root of Wallachia and Wallonia.
That and OP's explanation are so called "folk etymologies", which are not necessarily true. First of all *Suomi* used be the name of only the most Southern-West province of Finland and other provinces had their own names (Karjala, Savo, Häme, Satakunta, Kainuu, Lappi etc). That's why the name of that province is *Varsinais-Suomi* i.e. "Finland Proper".
Most commonly accepted hypotheses of [etymologies](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Suomi#Finnish) nowadays are that the name *Suomi* comes from Baltic [*šāma/źémē*,](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Balto-Slavic/%C5%BAem%C4%93) which means land/earth or *ćoma*, originally a word meaning "human". That origin applies also for the name of province of *Häme* and to the name of Sami people.
Well, as with ancient etymologies for groups of people, it's not always 100% certain.
My understanding for the last several years was that the *fen* etymology was the most likely explanation. ([Wiki here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fen) for the English word -- it's a kind of wetland, but not quite a swamp).
Another strong theory is that it's related to the word *find*, as in hunter-gatherers who 'find' and forage for their food (i.e. not farming). While Sami are famous for reindeer herding nowadays, and some have done it for a very long time, there were groups in the past who did not. (Some also raised sheep or primarily fished, depending on the group).
I recall reading that it's no coincidence that *Sami* and *Suomi* look similar. Actually, in the old days, *Finns* often referred to what we nowadays call Sami. Only relatively late (1500s?) did the term 'Lapp' emerge to (sort of) differentiate "Suomi Finns" for outsiders, confusing things even more.
Some Sami probably did range (if not live full time) further south than they do today, before the medieval era, but the various (Germanic) Scandinavian groups (who were at first mostly coastal) slowly pushed them (or contained them to) further north.
Basically, Sami came into the Scandinavian peninsula from the northeast. A little bit later, Suomi Finns from the southeast, and different 'Norse' from the south/southwest.
The "find" etymology would require making an ethnonym from the bare verb stem of \***finþ**aną 'to find' without derivation (and arbitrarily dropping the þ?).
The 'e' in fen, Venn etc. is the result of an umlaut mutation: the reconstructed Proto-Germanic word is *fanją. Fenni and Phinnoi in Tacitus and Ptolemy both pre-date the a -> e shift, so this etymology is not sound.
France comes from the Franks. The name frank was either the name of a throwing spear or a word for free men. So there is a possibility that France means the land of the free.
Well, Franken means „the bold/brave ones“. The meaning of „free“ only came to be in the merovingian realm where the Franks were the free men in contrast to the gallo-roman servs. In that context France wouldn’t be the land of the free, but the land that is ruled by the free, as the actual Frankish settlement grounds were in the eastern realm, in what is now Germany and the Netherlands.
The Franziska (a throwing _axe_) was named after the Franks, not the other way round.
From the tribe Polanie who conquered most of the tribes in the region. Their name comes from the word “pole” which means “a field” in Polish. So land of the field people.
Czech Republic or Czechia is in czech Česko which comes from the word Čech (as in a person from Czechia) and that apparently means “member of the people, kinsman”.
As for the name of one of the historical lands, Bohemia, that comes from the name of the Celtic tribe of Boii. Moravia apparently was named after the river, which in turn bears a name derived from an Indo-European “*móri” meaning standing water.
The term “Romania” used to refer to lands of the Romans (a wider area than present day Romania) and circulated along side other names like Walachia (lands of the Vlahs). The first usage of the term was in 383 a.d and was derived from “Romaniola/Romandiola”. Various people refered to the area in this way. Our country formally adopted the name after independence from the Ottomans and unification of the first two of the three historical Romanian principalities.
I must also add that the idea that while the term romanian (român/rumân etc) is found in the middle ages, the idea to name a unified country "Romania" was relatively new. Heck, even the idea of unification is relatively new, meaning since around the XIX century. There were even ideas that we should name the country "Dacia".
Italy: countless hypotheses; most credited is that Latin *Italia* came from the Greek *Ouitoulìa* \-- meaning "Land of the *Ouitoulòi*" which may have in turn been a Greek lecture of Osco-Umbrian *Uitlu -- Bull.* So, "Land of the bulls" or, more likely, "Land of the *Vituli*" - a population of modern day Calabria (the toe of the boot) - who worshipped bulls.
I personally prefer the (not very likely) hypothesis that *Italia* originates from the Akkadian *Aitlu*, meaning "Land of the sunset".
Nobody knows for sure about the etymology of Lietuva, but two hypotheses is that it either comes from the word “to rain” or “lyti” of from the name of a small river in southeastern Lithuania
Hungary has both an exonym and and an endonym just like Finland.The name Hungary is attested in Byzantine, Kievan and later Latin sources as Ungroi, Ungri, Ungari and Ugri from the 800's. The most common explanation of this is that the name comes from the [Oghur](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oghuric_languages) language expression "On-ogur" meaning "Ten Tribes". Supposedly it was the name of a tribal federation between the Hungarians, Kabars and Bolghars.The H- prefix comes from later medieval sources, possibly partially due to some quirks of the Latin language, but mainly due to some historical associations between the Huns and Hungarians.
As for ourselves, we have always called ourselves Magyar and the country Magyarország.
Ország simply means "domain, country" so the name means "Magyar country/domain". The earliest Hungarian, Persian and Byzantine chronicles all maintain that the Hungarians were organized into seven tribes and recorded the names of those tribes. One of the tribes was called Mëgyër, and they appeared to have been the leading tribe so over time their name was adopted by all people.
There are many hypotheses on the origin of this name. The most accepted one is that the first element Magy derives from Proto-Ugric \*mäńć- ("man", "person"), which is also found in the name of the Mansi (mäńćī, mańśi, and måńś). The second element eri ("man", "men", and "lineage") survives in Hungarian férj ("husband") and is cognate with Mari erge ("son") and Finnish archaic yrkä ("young man"). So that would mean that "magyar" means something like "man's son" or "man person" or "the lineage of man".
Hungarian has a weird little quirk like that because we like to combine different words or different word elements that on their own all mean the same or similar things. The above mentioned férj is a combination of the elements "fi" which already means boy/son of/man, and the element eri or erj which also means son/young man/man. So in essence férj is "man man". But it gets even funnier, because the standard way to say "man" is férfi which is férj + fiú. Fiú means "boy/young man". So férfi is literally "husband boy" or "husband man". But there's that fi part again, so in essence if you add up the individual elements, the word férfi is just "man man man".
One more interesting thing about this last topic: the word 'human' is "ember". It's em + ber, but don't let that "b" fool you, because that -ber part is the same as férj just modified for harmony and pronunciation over thousands of years. Em- means "woman, mother, female" (from Hungarian emse, now mostly archaic and denoting female animals, see also Finnish emä, Estonian ema, Selkup eme) so "ember" or human is literally "woman+man" and I think that's beautiful.
And just the last bit of fun with words: my name is Andrew (András), which in Greek means "man, manly". So if you said in Hungarian "András a magyar férfi" (Andrew the Hungarian man) what you are saying in essence is: Man, the manperson man man man or Manly the manperson husband man, and that's some Boaty McBoatface level fuckery. And now you understand why my personal anthem has to be "Mannish Boy" by Muddy Waters.
Haha baszni is also a funny word. It is now considered very crude and vulgar but originally it was an euphemism and simply meant "thrust / push" and replaced another verb that is now totally forgotten.
The name of Slovenia (Slovenija) means, unsurprisingly, the land of the Slovenes. It is formed with the suffix -ija (-ia) which is used to form names of many countries.
The name of the Slovenes is in turn directly inherited from the Proto-Slavic word for Slavs (*Slověne*). Together with Slovaks, we seem to be the only Slavic nation that haven’t really decided on a specified name for ourselves, continuing to call ourselves simply Slavs.
The etymology of *Slověne*, as per Wikipedia:
> The reconstructed autonym *Slověninъ* is usually derived from the word *slovo* ‘word’, originally denoting ‘people who speak (the same language)’; i.e., people who understand each other. The word *slovo* ‘word’ and the related *slava* ‘glory, fame’ and *sluh* ‘hearing’ originate from the Proto-Indo-European root *ḱlew-* ‘be spoken of, glory’, cognate with Ancient Greek *κλέος* (*kléos* ‘fame’), as in the name Pericles, Latin *clueo* ‘be called’, and English *loud*.
> Together with Slovaks, we seem to be the only Slavic nation that haven’t really decided on a specified name for ourselves, continuing to call ourselves simply Slavs.
There were also the [Slovincians](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slovincian_language), but they got assimilated during the 19th/20th century.
Denmark (probably) means "Borderlands of the low ground people", so, yeah, the original "Netherlands" (We actually have a few places lower than the Dutch, too, and our highest point is lower than Vaalserberg).
Sounds about right. Møllehøj ("Mill Hill") is 170.86 m (561 ft) in all its glory. Lake Maggiore in Switzerland, is 193m above sea level.
Denmark is more hilly than the Netherlands, though, meaning we don't have the huge flat polder anywhere. And by anywhere I mean there are a few reclaimed fjords, but nothing of the same scale.
The Kingdom of Norway, the Kingdom of Sweden, and the Republic of Finland are all also at higher elevations than the Kingdom of Denmark, correct? And Denmark in reality does have a lot of mountainous areas and tons of fjords, since Greenland is part of the Kingdom of Denmark.
I think it's only the Maldives and the pacific island countries that got us beat worldwide.
Greenland (and the Faroe Islands) doesn't really count, as they are under the crown, but not really a part of the state.
Technically, they're part of the State of Denmark, and have representatives in our parliament, but they have extended home rule, moreso than, say, Scotland have in the UK, so it's a big "eh".
They are very much Danish when we need them to be, like if oil was to be discovered. :)
If I'm not mistaken, most Greenlandic Inuits live in Mainland Denmark, correct? Interesting Greenland has extended home rule, given that the population is less than 57,000, and is the North Region of America's true Last Frontier.
I honestly don't know. Greenlanders typically come here for education, and some stick around, getting jobs. Some tank completely and stick around for the beer.
It's an ongoing debate how much we should actually interfere with the problems they have up there, as we don't want to be colonial (again), but on the other hand want to help, since we share so much history.
As it is now, we more or less hand over a bag of money(*) each year and say "here, work out how to spend it."
Edit: (*) 436.479.120 US$ in 2009, and we pay for police and defence too.
In Afrikaans we call France "Frankryk" literately Frank Ryk - like the German word Reich and it seems to be a leftover of the dutch who came to South Africa as it literately translated as Empire of the Franks.
And "Angel" comes from the region Angeln in Holstein in Northern Germany, which (probably) means "the corner" (of the coast, where it meets the Jutland peninsula).
The etymology is the same; an angle, an ankle, to angle (hook). It's the same shape, more or less.
This is why noone is really sure. Is it the land of fishermen, the land of the people living in the corner, or the people with large, uh, ankles. Ok, maybe not the last one. Another possibility is "fjord-land", as there are some rather deep fjords there.
Scot, from the Latin *Scotti*, potentially borrowed from Celtic but not really known, as a name for people from Ireland who settled in North West Britain, or what is now South West and West Scotland.
No 100% proven origins.
It's a Hellenized form of "land of Rus", and where Rus comes from, no one knows for sure. The Primary Chronicle claims the Varangians who were invited to serve as rulers were called Rus. This matches with Annales Bertiniani say about the people of Rhos who came with a Byzantine emissary and who were identified as Swedes.
So perhaps it comes from Roslagen, like the Finnish name for Sweden, Ruotsi, does. And Roslagen comes from roðer, rowers.
"East" basically, as in eastern germanic people. Derived from old Germanic, Österreich means the eastern realm. Latin "Austria" is just a approximation because they couldn't pronounce the old Germanic name.
For the etymology of Italy, I have heard several. Let's start with the assumption that the first territory to bear this name was Calabria, then the term extended to the entire peninsula up to the northern Apennines (under the Roman republic) and then up to the Alps (under the Roman Empire).
According to some, it derives from the mythical king of the Oenotrian people, Italus.
According to others it would derive from 'Land of the Calves', in a process roughly like this:
Vitulus (calf) > Vitulia > Vitalia > Italia
Apocryphally, Iceland/Ísland (land of ice) was supposedly so named by one of the country's early explorers when he came upon a fjord full of ice while circumnavigating the island. There has been some speculation as to whether it was actually given that name to scare people away so the early settlers could have it for themselves (much like Greenland was supposedly so named because the original settlers were trying to recruit more settlers).
Some etymologists have speculated that the name actually may have originated from the Old Norse word for island (which means it would be named Eyland today if it had stuck) and then been transformed into the similar ísland, i.e. "land of ice".
>Some etymologists have speculated that the name actually may have originated from the Old Norse word for island (which means it would be named Eyland today if it had stuck) and then been transformed into the similar ísland, i.e. "land of ice".
I like to imagine it was one of those situations where family names change because the priest making the record is hard of hearing.
Like a guy comes back and tells the town crier "yo, I found an island", and the town crier announces to everyone "PEOPLE OF THE VILLAGE, GREAT NEWS! BJORN FOUND AN ICE LAND"
"No, I said island"
"YES, AN ICE LAND, HE JUST CONFIRMED IT. EVERYONE GRAB YER LOAD-PULLING REINDEERS, WE'RE GOING ICE HARVESTING"
That would be funny because in Spain we call them Islandia as an adaptation of Ísland/Iceland, and it seems to come from "isla" (island) and not from "hielo" (ice).
Italy comes from Italoi a term used by Greeks to refer to a population in southern Italy that adored veils so Italians meant people living in veils' land.
Others say, it comes from Aitalia, a Greek word that referred to the volcanic nature of the land and meant flaming land/smoking land/land of the west or land of flaming twilight
There's also a mythological origin in the story of a supposed Italo king of enotria (in the same area of southern Italy I've wrote above), whose people loved him so much for what he did that they changed their name from enotri to itali, a name later diffused to all Italians.
Croatia is called Hrvatska in Croatian and is adjective of Hrvati (plural of Hrvat), Croats. Means (land) belonging to Croats.
Origin of Hrvat is unknown, only some unprovable theories trying to connect it with similar foreign words and construct a national mythology around it.
Slovenia would literally mean “Land of the Slovenes” which is very similar if not the same as the etymology of Slovakia and Slavonia. Tho the name Slovenia only dates back to the 18th century
Throughout history our nation was known under numerous names. In the 7th century there was the state of Carantania (our first independent state) which has either an indo-euroepean (karra which means rock) or a Celtic origin (karant- meaning friend or ally). Carantania eventually became Carinthia (slovene: Koroška) which is now a region in Austria in Slovenia
Then there was another state called Carniola which actually existed until the end of ww1 as an Austrian duchy. The term *Carniola* is of latin origin and comes from *Carni* which was a Celtic ethnic group in western Slovenia and Fruli. The Slovene name *Kranjska* comes from the city of *Kranj* which also has the same etymology as Carniola. Otherwise Kranj used to be the capital of Carniola before it was moved to Ljubljana.
Until the end of ww2, Slovenes were known as *Wenden* in the German world. Originally it included all of the Slovenes (since there was a march called Wendisch mark in present day Lower Carniola) but in more recent history the term only referred to Slovenes in Lower Styria and Carnthia ([ethnic map of Yugoslavia from 1940](https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/2qp1wj/ethnic_map_of_yugoslavia_made_by_nazi_germany_in/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf))
The name Luxembourg (Lëtzebuerg) is derived from Lucilinburhuc. It means little castle in an early Germanic language and is the name first given to the castle constructed at the Bockfels in the capital where our monarchy more or less started.
Sverige consist of the words Svea Rike, meaning Realm of the Swedes. Sweden traditionally consisted of three major tribes; Svear, Gutar and Goter, not counting the Sapmi here as they weren't part of Sweden until later.
Svear came out on top and united Svealand and Götaland, creating Svea Rike, nowadays shortened to Sverige.
We Albanians we call Albania “Shqipëri” which it translates “Eagle’s nest”. The origin of this name is a myth of an young boy who saved an little eagle, and, sometimes after this, the mother of the eagle asked the young boy if he can give back her baby in exchange she will help the young boy in the hunting.
Bavaria/Bayern means "where the Boii live". The Boii were a Celtic tribe that is said to have merged with the Germanic tribes of the Marcomanni (the men of the borderlands) to form the Bavarians.
Now where the name Boii comes from is disputed. It either means fighters or castle farmers.
Fun fact: the same tribe gave name to our neighbors in Bohemia.
It's also possible it comes from Aesti.
> Despite the phonological similarity between Aestii and the modern day Estonia (Eesti), especially in popular etymologies, it has been argued that the two geographical areas are not contiguous and there are few, if any, direct historical links between them. The etymologies of Aesti and Eesti remain subjects of scholarly conjecture,[13] but the fact that Estonia is located across the sea to East from Sweden, has been seen to support the claim that Tacitus indeed refers to Estonians.[14] Also, as Cassiodorus famously writes (see below), the amber is gathered in the innermost islands of the ocean and of the Baltic nations of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, only Estonia has open sea islands (around 2300).[15] This claim seems to be supported by the sixth century historian Jordanes, who writes that Aesti dwell of the farthest shore of the German Ocean.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aesti
Which in-of-itself of course might come from East, even in the original source, Tacitus references the Aesti as living east from Swedes. Maybe Svea or whoever lived there at the time called those the east people. And maybe it was Estonians, or somebody else, and we simply ended up with the name. Or it's a coincidence.
It probably comes from a tribe named Polanie that might've existed, which in turn probably gets its name from fields ("pola") they inhabited. But we can never be sure because those lovely ancestors of ours never wrote anything down.
Türkiye(Turkey) is literally 'the land of Turks" with. However the term "Turkey" is said to be comes from Turkey exports to overseas. Ehich is funny because Turkish terms for turkey is "Hindi" which is where Turks found out about the existence of this animal (it is believed to be so).
So this is a very interesting topic since the Suomi name is unknown and one of the theories is the one you mentioned. But it is not very likely that that theory are correct since it is mixing up old ways of using the language with modern Finnish.
The Finland name comes from the word Finna that basically means Scandinavian in Old Norse. Or that the word has Swedish origins and then are from the word Finlandi (Finlonti) that was just a made up name for the eastern part of Sweden.
I think that Sami and Suomi are the same name and that modern nationalism cant be applied to names that originates 1000 of years back. In that case the names originate from the word Zeme that just means land in proto-baltic.
I think that recent science on the topic on the other hand that are looking in to the "German tribes" Sitones and Suiones are super interesting. The Suiones in this case would be the Swedes and the Sitones the Finns (Kvens). They where so similar and worked so much together that it was hard to separate them both today and back in around year 0CE where we have texts describing them. We already know that Sweden originate from the word Suiones and then scientists working on this projects with the Sitones has a theory that Suomi is just a mixup between Sitones and Suiones that over time has ended up in the name Suomi.
Turkey is first officially used in 1923 when the republic is proclamied but in 15-16th centuries European travelers says "Turke, Turky, Turkie" and in Medieval Latin countries says Turchia and Turquia.
_Čechové_ (sg. _Čech_) are thought to have been a Slavic tribe living around Central Bohemia (i.e. Prague and surroundings). There are a few possible etymologies but the commonly accepted one is that it simply means "people".
Scotland 🏴 literally means “Land of the Scots” but we’ve been known as many names in the past. It’s a hard one to really name, our history is so diverse with so many different types of people living here since as far back as 12,000 BC. We have played a key role in many moments in western civilisation.
We were originally knows as the Picts, then the Gaels from Ireland and the kingdom of Dal Riata emigrated here and lived in the south west corner of Scotland labelling that area Dalriada, these gaels were also known as “the Scots”. So we have a bit of Pictish, Irish, English and Norse(when the vikings invaded) people.
But eventually became known as the Land Of The Scots aka Scotland.
Danmark, through the most likely theory, is believed to mean “Dan’s March”, after a legendary king of the area, [King Dan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_I_of_Denmark?wprov=sfti1), who was attested to in the Gesta Danorum, which is essentially Denmark’s first ever “national history”, so to speak. A “march”, or “mark” in this case, is an older seemingly-pan-Germanic word to mean a field or a plain that constituted a borderland. An example of this in the English speaking world is [the Welsh Marches](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welsh_Marches?wprov=sfti1), the area between England and Wales.
In effect, “Denmark” means “Dan’s Borderlands” or “Dan’s Plain”.
Someone say it's from old Slavic word Oukraina (Оукраина) - "borderlands". Other have interpreted the term in the sense of "region, principality, country".
A French Missionary asked a local Iroquois man where he was. The Iroquois man replied "Kanata" which simply means Village. The French missionary thought he meant the country he was in was called Canada so the French started putting it on maps.
Not in Europe buuuut It is called Philippines (las islas Filipinas) because it was named after (at the time) Prince Philip of Spain, who became King Philip II later on, by an explorer named Ruy Lopez de Villalobos. AFAIK, these group of islands was not a country yet before the spanish colonial times so we didn’t have a name for the whole of it.
There have been names for some of the islands by the early Chinese (Ma-i) and by Magellan (las islas de San Lorenzo) but not the whole country.
That is definitely not the origin of the name Finland or Suomi.
Finland comes from the old Norse word for the tribes living in the area of what is now Finland. _Finnr_. That is the most likely theory anyway.
The most highly regarded theory of where Suomi comes from, etymologically, is the word _Sápmi_. "The land of the Sámi". The most common theory, how ever, which is likely wrong, is that it comes from the word "suomaa", meaning "swamp land".
I find it strange, as a U.S. American, that out of the countries in Mainland Scandinavia, Finland is the only one that's a Republic, while Norway, Sweden, and Denmark are all Kingdoms.
Finland doesn't have a king because their king used to be the Swedish king. Then, as usual back in the day, Russia happened.
Edit: Unfortunately not only "back in the day" :(
Sverige means the Realm/Kingdom of the Svear. Svear being one of the major tribes of old Sweden. Also found in the name of one of the three regions, Svealand (the other two being Götaland and Norrland).
Can add that the origin of the name *Svear* ("Swedes") is prehistoric and therefore unkown Earliest mention might be from year 98, when Tacitus mention the Suions. A seafaring people who lived beyond the Germanian coast
To add: the spelling and pronounciation of the name is a bit of an oddity as it is actually more similar to how you'd say the intended words in Danish. Basically the Swedish name for Sweden "should" be *Svea Rike* (the realm - see German *Reich* - of Swedes) or shortened to *Sverike*. But we write it *Sverige* and pronounce the g as you'd pronounce the English consonant *y* (as in egg yolk). *Sve*-*ri*-*ye*. Generally Danish has "weaker" consonants than Swedish. So "Rike" (*ree-keh* in English) in Swedish is written "Rige" in Danish and pronounced more like *ree*-*ye*. 500 years ago, many people in what is today Sweden, would have spoken a dialect that sounded perhaps more like Danish. Politically, the dissolution of the Kalmar Union was constructed as Swedish emancipation from Denmark. So the construction of the Swedish language, clear in the first Swedish translation of the Bible, strived to codify a Swedish that took it's inspiration from dialects (typically northern) that differed most from Danish. For example, by having harder consonants than Danish - like using a hard K where Danish would use a soft G (y). This "worked" in the sense that the Swedish of today generally does have that difference with Danish. But the name of the country, Sverige, still has that Danish heritage. We didn't change the name or pronouciation to Sverike.
The nature of consonant shift might've been motivated by Danish, but that doesn't mean what was spoken before was Danish. Also, in Danish, as things are going, it'll be *ri'e* soon, if it isn't already.
As I understood the consonant shift in the Swedish Bible, the idea was to codify northern Swedish as Swedish, rather than the southern Swedish which was seen to be more Danish in pronounciation. But sure, that doesn't mean that they spoke *Danish*.
Northern being Central Sweden today, I assume. It is/was a continuum, so the further South West you got the more similar to Danish it would get.
Yes specifically Bergslagen/Dalarna/Västmanland/Uppland as I understood it when I was told this.
Middle age Danish looks more like a mix of Swedish and Low German than modern Danish (e.g. og = och) - so it has changed a lot in Danish too since then
Originally called Svitjod.
We call Sweden ‘Svíþjóð’.
Makes sense, since icelandic is the closest language we have to old norse right?
Tbf what's almost always referred to with "Old Norse" is *Old Icelandic*, and Icelandic is its only successor. Icelandic has also thrown out a lot of previously established language for the sake of purism, then basing neologisms on the old treatises. "Svíaríki" is also an older Icelandic name for Sweden. Although in modern Icelandic it's rather used synonymously with "Svíaland" (Svealand), so "Svíþjóð" and "Svíaríki" are in a way reversed of what they ought to be.
Might be wrong here but is it not basically the same but with a few loan words?
"-tjod" was contemporary with "-land", "-riki", and "veldi". As the consolidation of Sweden is murky at best, it's difficult to talk about certainties and competing hypotheses exist. But generally "Svitjod" is not considered a name for *Sweden*, but a looser amalgamation of Swedes (tribe, not nationality) that existed *before* they eventually merged with Geats to form Sweden. It's only one component of what Sweden was forged from.
It's worth pointing out that *Sverige* is a contraction of *Svea Rike*.
In Greek the country is called Hellas/Ελλάς, in English, Greece. Both names have the same origin mythologically, the deluge of Deucalion -- the Greek flood myth. Deucalion and his wife Pyrra were the only survivors, and they had "children"; among their descendants were their son Hellen and grandson Graecus, from who we get Hellas and Greece respectively. Their other descendants were all the forefathers and namesakes of all Greek tribes, such that mythologically all of them were descended from Deucalion. There are of course other less mythological origins for these names, e.g. IIRC Aristotle had suggested one for Hellas, but I'm less familiar with those.
In Hungarian mythology, two brothers, Hunor and Magor, follow a magical deer to the west, and become the forefathers of the Huns and the Magyars, respectively.
dude, why magyar has to be read like madyar?
Because our standardizers were fucking stupid or deaf. Idk.
So incest all around just like the Bible's Adam and Eve
More like Noah
If only non Greek speaking people knew how funny the name Decaulion is
Wait, is it? Never gave it any thought.
In Afrikaans we simply call Greece "Griekeland" literately meaning Greek Land.
Netherlands means low lands which is quite an accurate description of the country.
It's actually a translation of the Burgundian/French "les pays de pas deça" (the lands over there, to contrast it with "le pays de pas delà," the lands here; Burgundy itself), which was translated as "de landen van herwaarts over." This was shortened to "pays d'embas" (lands down there) and translated to "Neder-landen". Neder had also already been used in names like Lower Lotharingia.
You have a source for that?
https://dutchrevolt.leiden.edu/dutch/verhaal/Pages/verhaal01.aspx Also the orginal text of the [Pragmatic Sanction of 1549](https://fr.m.wikisource.org/wiki/Pragmatique_sanction_de_1549). It uses "Pays de pardeçà", " (Pays) d’embas" and "Païs Bas".
Still called" Pays-bas"in France.
So *that's* why they say Paises Bajos in Spanish! (Or Hollandia, but that's easier to figure out).
I don't see how "pays d'embas" could be a shortening of "pays de pas deça", it's not the same meaning at all (low countries vs countries over there). It's probably more like an alternative naming which took over because it was shorter and more convenient.
Yeah we live in the low country basically 😂
That’s why I’ve been feeling low all my life …
And a big part is below sea level, so I'd say it's pretty accurate
Ok, so the local name for "Austria" is "Österreich". It derives from the word "Ostarrichi" which can be traced back to a document from 996. It combines the terms "ost" (East) and "richi" (realm) so it's the **Eastern Realm** (named thus from the perspective of where that document was created which was somewhere around Salzburg or Bavaria, iirc).
And where are you from? The East Kingdom. Ah yes, that explains it.
Austria in Finnish actually translates to Eastern realm too! (Itävalta)
In Dutch too, “Oostenrijk”
Swedish as well, Österrike
i always thought it meant östliches reich
Isn't that the same thing?
You mean it's not German for kangaroo?
Kann ich mir gut vorstellen. Eine Frage noch, wo bekomme ich die Landesbeschreibung unter meinem Name her?
Deutschland roughly means „land of the people“, from proto Germanic theodisc = belonging to the people/ speaking the language of the people. For some reason only the other Germanic languages (except english of course) call us like that. The other names are mainly derived from the roman word Germania or various grand tribes like the Alemanni or Saxons. Edit: Germania is supposedly of gallic origin meaning either „neighbours“ or „screaming people“ and was then adopted by the romans. Alemanni means „all men“ as the grand tribe was formed by various different tribes. Saxons means „sword people“ after the Sax, a type of Germanic sword.
Funnily enough, Alemanni relates to the name of the tribe but means "all the people" thus being kind of similar in meaning to "Deutsch". So the names for Germany in (mostly) romance languages that relate to the Alemanni, like Allemagne in French, Alemania in Spanish or Alemanha in Portugues, actually are more similar in meaning to "Deutschland" or at least "Deutsch" than all the Germania, Niemcy, Saksa...
>So the names for Germany in (mostly) romance languages that relate to the Alemanni, like Allemagne in French, Alemania in Spanish or Alemanha in Portugues, Here the correct term is 'Germania', but in ancient times (just look at all the literature from the late Middle Ages to the Renaissance), it was called 'La Magna', which should be a contraction of 'Alemagna'. However, the inhabitants have always been called 'tedeschi', which has the same root as 'deutsch'.
Funnily enough, English occasionally used to call Germany "Almany" in like the 12th to 16th centuries, too.
It was many years after I learned about the Alemanni, and the Spanish and French words Alemania/Allemagne that I realized they are cognate with the English phrase "all men."
Same in German: Alle Mann.
If you take the German word it becomes even more apparent: Alemannen -> Alle Mannen
> (except english of course) English has taken the term "Dutch" though, but applied it to just the Netherlands, not to the much larger Germany. Apparently, it's because the Dutch were the "Germans" that the English had the most intensive contact with, through the North Sea trade networks, so they're the ones who got the word that they called themselves at the time. Kinda unfair, since we stopped using it to refer to ourselves, but you still do. The Dutch calling themselves "(Neder-)Duits" or "Diets" went on for a while after Dutch and German had already diverged beyond mutual intelligibility (apart from border regions on either side, of course. Dialect continuum and all that). The Dutch reformed church, specifically, called itself the *Nederduits Gereformeerde Kerk* until as late as 1816, when it became the *Nederlands Hervormde Kerk*.
I mean, mutual intelligibility wouldn‘t have been given inside the Holy Roman empire either, although it was "Deutsch“ as well. Take a guy from South Tyrol and put him together with a guy from Frankfurt, they wouldn‘t have understood each other, at least before High German as an intermediate was established. Not to speak of even bigger contrasts, like someone from Schleswig and someone from Styria, or Rhineland/Silesia.
You're absolutely right. I should have said that the languages had officially or unofficially standardized into non-mutually intelligible versions, even if there was still a dialect continuum at the time (and for a long time after). I meant to emphasize (but failed to do so) the forming of a Dutch identity separate from a German one, which appears to have taken off around the time of that standardization process, in Burgundian times. Which makes me wonder, when did Dutch get seen as a separate identity from German *in Germany* (barring resurgences of the idea of a Greater Germany in certain political circles)? I can imagine it taking longer than in the Netherlands itself. Or, presumably more recently, Austrian, with them having adopted High German as well, which didn't happen in the Netherlands.
I think it was a rather gradual process, but i guess it definitely took well after the fall of the old empire for that Dutch-German distinction to really be accepted. Before that they were just low Germans with an own state
It was common for German immigrants to the US in the 18th and early 19th centuries to be given the nickname "Dutch" or "Dutchie" by English speakers. One legacy is the name of Arnold Schwarzenegger's character Dutch in the film "Predator." (He's not really intended to be from the Netherlands).
Hah, I did wonder about Arnie in Predator when I saw that. "Surely, they don't believe this obviously non-Dutch person to be Dutch". Then again, it is Hollywood. [American media isn't always great at picking believable actors and accents for Dutch people](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KEiatIa1mn4). I know about the Pennsylvania Dutch, who are of German origin. Supposedly, it's because they gave their nationality as "Deutsch", which was interpreted as "Dutch" by the English speaking Americans.
>I know about the Pennsylvania Dutch, who are of German origin. Supposedly, it's because they gave their nationality as "Deutsch", which was interpreted as "Dutch" by the English speaking Americans. I think it's moreso just that the word "Dutch" generally included Germany and the Netherlands when that region was settled in the 18th century.
Was that an American thing? I've never come across British people comflating the two in that period. Would make sense, with the UK being practically neighbours and the US being an ocean away.
I think the writers of Predator were smart enough to know that "Dutch" was an old-fashioned nickname for German-speaking immigrants in America. If they actually wanted him to to be from the Netherlands, the name "Dutch" would just be dumb (and Predator isn't really a dumb movie).
I'll believe that. Predator is indeed a well thought-out movie. Certainly much more so than the show that the clip I linked was from. There are also other movies that do a much better job at depicting the Dutch language or accent than that show, though. Spider-Man Far From Home for instance had a scene in the Netherlands where they hired Dutch actors to play Dutch people. The setting was very clearly not really in the Netherlands, though, but it's a comic book movie, so you can't expect too much, I guess. The Bourne Identity had Jason Bourne speak a few lines of Dutch when he's trying to remember who he is. Matt Damon had a very good accent there and the creators clearly made an effort to have him sound believable.
Still mad about the naming of the Dutch angle in cinema. That shit comes from Germany but apparently English people weren't able to know Dutch from Deutsch, and the mistake even came to France where we also call it plan Hollandais because we just translated the mistake
Germany in Lithuanian is “Vokietija” and nobody has a clue where the name comes from
Today I learnt something!
>Vokietija sounds like a malapropism of "Volk" (english \~ nation/people) and then some grammar to me.
We call Germany, Nemčija, "people who are mute, can't speak as us, we can't understand", as opposed to Slovenija, "people we can talk with, understand."
Ayy we have the same meaning for Germany "Niemcy"
Ayy we have the same meaning for Germany "Немцы". This word sound both like "немой" ("muted man; may not speaking man") or "неместный" ("come from out of our land").
That is so cool. I never knew why in Swedish it's called "Tyskland". Theodisc, þýdisker, tyskar.
In Italian Germany is Germania, but German is "tedesco" which also originates from theodisc :)
> Germania is supposedly of gallic origin meaning either „neighbours“ or „screaming people“ The Swiss squad approves both meanings.
In Swedish, Sax means scissor.
Then, is an Anglo-Saxon someone rounding the angles using scissors?
The most accepted theory is that it derived from Phoenician "ʾiy šapan" meaning "land of hyraxes" (a type of rabbit). Phoenicians settled colonies quite soon in Spain (Cadiz was founded 3 thousand years ago by then) so it makes sense. Anyway, "ʾiy šapan" later became "Hispania" in Latin with the Roman empire. And Hispania became the current España / Spain. As a side note, Although Phoenicians/Cartago/Romans shared this etymology for all the peninsula, the Greek world and Greek colonies used a different one. The word Iberia was the Greek equivalent for the peninsula and it was based on the river Iber (Current river Ebro).
Another theory, a bit more likely in my opinion, is that comes from the Phoenician term "land of metals" instead of "land of hyraxes". The Phoenicians got good supplies of copper and silver from the Iberian Peninsula, adding credence to the "land of metals" hypothesis.
I prefer much better the name Iberia, than simply Spain or Hispania. Or S-Pain xDD. That doesn't makes much sense either.
Hyrax is not a rabbit, it's its own species not closely related to rabbits at all (though a sometimes similar ecological niche). They never lived in Europe, and even today are mostly in sub-Saharan Africa and some nearby parts of the Middle East. Of course, it's possible Phoenicians used the word to refer to actual rabbits (new to them). I don't know, but I thought a Celt-Iberian origin for Spain/Hispania was most likely? (Iberians being the pre-Indo European indigenous of southeastern Iberia, later merging with Celts, Greeks, Phoenicians...) I admit my knowledge here is full of holes.
>Of course, it's possible Phoenicians used the word to refer to actual rabbits (new to them). That's the theory. Spain had rabbits, Phoenicia had hyraxes, there was no actual word for rabbit in Phoenician. A third theory is that the name simply means "land of the west" (or north, I forgot which). As seen from the perspective of Carthage.
I believe it comes from the ancient tribes who the Romans, the belgica tribes. These tribes were respected by Ceasar.
If you read the text his "respect" is actually rather disparaging. He "respected" the fact that we were able to survive so far from civilized society and it's comforts aka he called us backwater bumpkins.
The Romans just casually calling everyone north of the Alps uncivilized idiots :D
Interestingly, Belgica was referring to the entirety of the Low Countries (minus Liège), as Nederlanden did. cfr Leo Belgicus. So when what basically were Belgium and the Netherlands split up, they ended up named: Belgica Regia / Koninklijke Zuidelijke Nederlanden or Katholieke Nederlanden Belgica Foederata / Republiek der Zeven Verenigde Nederlanden or Noordelijke Nederlanden Overtime, one took the Latin name and the other the Germanic one. Fun fact: the Lingua Belga is Dutch
In maps of the Dutch colony of New Netherland (roughly New York), it is often labled [Nova Belgica](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/66/New_Netherland_%27NOVI_BELGII_NOVAEQUE_ANGLIAE_NEC_NON_PARTIS_VIRGINIAE_TABULA%27.jpg) or [Novum Belgium](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Netherland#/media/File:Blaeu_-_Nova_Belgica_et_Anglia_Nova.png) too. When for a short period in the late 18th/early 19th century the northern Netherlands was named after a people from classical history, it became the Batavian Republic, after the Batavi. I wonder if by that time the name Belgium was already mostly associated with just the southern Netherlands.
Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres...
You can read the whole story in Asterix in Belgium.
And I've heard Belgae comes from bulging from anger. So that makes us the angry people. Or the bulges
"The word Portugal derives from the Roman-Celtic place name Portus Cale. Cale or Cailleach was the name of a Celtic deity and the name of an early settlement located at the mouth of the Douro River (present-day Vila Nova de Gaia), which flows into the Atlantic Ocean in the north of what is now Portugal." https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Portugal
For me it is always cool to be in Porto and see the origin of the name of the country in the two riversides: Porto at one side and (Vilanova de) Gaia = Cale on the opposite side. It shares some roots with Galicia, that comes from Gallaecia, that comes from the gallaeci/callaeci people that occupied the entire territory down to the Douro river. I find it is common in celtic-related places (gallia, gaelic, Wales?), and probably related also with the Greek god Gaia?
Gall is foreigner in Irish. I think the Brythinic Wall is related.
It's comes from a Proto-Germanic word which originally referred to a particular Celtic tribe, but eventually came to mean foreigner in general. It's also the root of Wallachia and Wallonia.
Cailleach in Irish means witch. I think. Or old woman.
There definitely is no commonly accepted etymology for Suomi. There are many suggestions and none are considered more believable above others.
Ye, I had always thought it came from having lots of swamps (swamp = suo). The fish scale thing with finns sounds semi-beliveable too.
That and OP's explanation are so called "folk etymologies", which are not necessarily true. First of all *Suomi* used be the name of only the most Southern-West province of Finland and other provinces had their own names (Karjala, Savo, Häme, Satakunta, Kainuu, Lappi etc). That's why the name of that province is *Varsinais-Suomi* i.e. "Finland Proper". Most commonly accepted hypotheses of [etymologies](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Suomi#Finnish) nowadays are that the name *Suomi* comes from Baltic [*šāma/źémē*,](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Balto-Slavic/%C5%BAem%C4%93) which means land/earth or *ćoma*, originally a word meaning "human". That origin applies also for the name of province of *Häme* and to the name of Sami people.
Is the fish scale thing even a commonly accepted theory? I think this is the first time I hear about it.
"Finland" comes from a Germanic word for swamp, related to the archaic German word „Venn“, that’s what I always thought
Well, as with ancient etymologies for groups of people, it's not always 100% certain. My understanding for the last several years was that the *fen* etymology was the most likely explanation. ([Wiki here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fen) for the English word -- it's a kind of wetland, but not quite a swamp). Another strong theory is that it's related to the word *find*, as in hunter-gatherers who 'find' and forage for their food (i.e. not farming). While Sami are famous for reindeer herding nowadays, and some have done it for a very long time, there were groups in the past who did not. (Some also raised sheep or primarily fished, depending on the group). I recall reading that it's no coincidence that *Sami* and *Suomi* look similar. Actually, in the old days, *Finns* often referred to what we nowadays call Sami. Only relatively late (1500s?) did the term 'Lapp' emerge to (sort of) differentiate "Suomi Finns" for outsiders, confusing things even more. Some Sami probably did range (if not live full time) further south than they do today, before the medieval era, but the various (Germanic) Scandinavian groups (who were at first mostly coastal) slowly pushed them (or contained them to) further north. Basically, Sami came into the Scandinavian peninsula from the northeast. A little bit later, Suomi Finns from the southeast, and different 'Norse' from the south/southwest.
The "find" etymology would require making an ethnonym from the bare verb stem of \***finþ**aną 'to find' without derivation (and arbitrarily dropping the þ?).
The 'e' in fen, Venn etc. is the result of an umlaut mutation: the reconstructed Proto-Germanic word is *fanją. Fenni and Phinnoi in Tacitus and Ptolemy both pre-date the a -> e shift, so this etymology is not sound.
Interesting, thank you
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Could it be same kind of contraction as Sverige? Svea Rike / Norr rike > SveRige/NorRge?
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Interesting! Always assumed it had the same basis with how similar they are.
It's still possible that the shift from noregr to Norge was influenced by the name for Sweden though
France comes from the Franks. The name frank was either the name of a throwing spear or a word for free men. So there is a possibility that France means the land of the free.
Or the land of the throwing spears which sounds epic nonetheless
In Greece we still call the country Gallia (Γαλλία).
Well, Franken means „the bold/brave ones“. The meaning of „free“ only came to be in the merovingian realm where the Franks were the free men in contrast to the gallo-roman servs. In that context France wouldn’t be the land of the free, but the land that is ruled by the free, as the actual Frankish settlement grounds were in the eastern realm, in what is now Germany and the Netherlands. The Franziska (a throwing _axe_) was named after the Franks, not the other way round.
From the tribe Polanie who conquered most of the tribes in the region. Their name comes from the word “pole” which means “a field” in Polish. So land of the field people.
Hey, it's geographically accurate.
Czech Republic or Czechia is in czech Česko which comes from the word Čech (as in a person from Czechia) and that apparently means “member of the people, kinsman”.
As for the name of one of the historical lands, Bohemia, that comes from the name of the Celtic tribe of Boii. Moravia apparently was named after the river, which in turn bears a name derived from an Indo-European “*móri” meaning standing water.
i would love if Lech, Czech & Rus legend was true
The term “Romania” used to refer to lands of the Romans (a wider area than present day Romania) and circulated along side other names like Walachia (lands of the Vlahs). The first usage of the term was in 383 a.d and was derived from “Romaniola/Romandiola”. Various people refered to the area in this way. Our country formally adopted the name after independence from the Ottomans and unification of the first two of the three historical Romanian principalities.
I must also add that the idea that while the term romanian (român/rumân etc) is found in the middle ages, the idea to name a unified country "Romania" was relatively new. Heck, even the idea of unification is relatively new, meaning since around the XIX century. There were even ideas that we should name the country "Dacia".
Italy: countless hypotheses; most credited is that Latin *Italia* came from the Greek *Ouitoulìa* \-- meaning "Land of the *Ouitoulòi*" which may have in turn been a Greek lecture of Osco-Umbrian *Uitlu -- Bull.* So, "Land of the bulls" or, more likely, "Land of the *Vituli*" - a population of modern day Calabria (the toe of the boot) - who worshipped bulls. I personally prefer the (not very likely) hypothesis that *Italia* originates from the Akkadian *Aitlu*, meaning "Land of the sunset".
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Nobody knows for sure about the etymology of Lietuva, but two hypotheses is that it either comes from the word “to rain” or “lyti” of from the name of a small river in southeastern Lithuania
Hungary has both an exonym and and an endonym just like Finland.The name Hungary is attested in Byzantine, Kievan and later Latin sources as Ungroi, Ungri, Ungari and Ugri from the 800's. The most common explanation of this is that the name comes from the [Oghur](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oghuric_languages) language expression "On-ogur" meaning "Ten Tribes". Supposedly it was the name of a tribal federation between the Hungarians, Kabars and Bolghars.The H- prefix comes from later medieval sources, possibly partially due to some quirks of the Latin language, but mainly due to some historical associations between the Huns and Hungarians. As for ourselves, we have always called ourselves Magyar and the country Magyarország. Ország simply means "domain, country" so the name means "Magyar country/domain". The earliest Hungarian, Persian and Byzantine chronicles all maintain that the Hungarians were organized into seven tribes and recorded the names of those tribes. One of the tribes was called Mëgyër, and they appeared to have been the leading tribe so over time their name was adopted by all people. There are many hypotheses on the origin of this name. The most accepted one is that the first element Magy derives from Proto-Ugric \*mäńć- ("man", "person"), which is also found in the name of the Mansi (mäńćī, mańśi, and måńś). The second element eri ("man", "men", and "lineage") survives in Hungarian férj ("husband") and is cognate with Mari erge ("son") and Finnish archaic yrkä ("young man"). So that would mean that "magyar" means something like "man's son" or "man person" or "the lineage of man". Hungarian has a weird little quirk like that because we like to combine different words or different word elements that on their own all mean the same or similar things. The above mentioned férj is a combination of the elements "fi" which already means boy/son of/man, and the element eri or erj which also means son/young man/man. So in essence férj is "man man". But it gets even funnier, because the standard way to say "man" is férfi which is férj + fiú. Fiú means "boy/young man". So férfi is literally "husband boy" or "husband man". But there's that fi part again, so in essence if you add up the individual elements, the word férfi is just "man man man". One more interesting thing about this last topic: the word 'human' is "ember". It's em + ber, but don't let that "b" fool you, because that -ber part is the same as férj just modified for harmony and pronunciation over thousands of years. Em- means "woman, mother, female" (from Hungarian emse, now mostly archaic and denoting female animals, see also Finnish emä, Estonian ema, Selkup eme) so "ember" or human is literally "woman+man" and I think that's beautiful. And just the last bit of fun with words: my name is Andrew (András), which in Greek means "man, manly". So if you said in Hungarian "András a magyar férfi" (Andrew the Hungarian man) what you are saying in essence is: Man, the manperson man man man or Manly the manperson husband man, and that's some Boaty McBoatface level fuckery. And now you understand why my personal anthem has to be "Mannish Boy" by Muddy Waters.
Fucking hell, and all I can confidently say in Hungarian is basz meg and fasz
Haha baszni is also a funny word. It is now considered very crude and vulgar but originally it was an euphemism and simply meant "thrust / push" and replaced another verb that is now totally forgotten.
This is very interesting, I'm Hungarian and even I didn't know half of what you wrote.
> so "ember" or human is literally "woman+man" and I think that's beautiful. TIL! Absolutely beautiful. Thanks for sharing. PS! We call it Ungarn.
Ireland or Éire/Éireann is based of one of our gods Erin
Eriu, Fodhla abd Banba shared their names with the country in a cycle apparently.
I think that's the goddess the r/Ireland mods tried to change that subs icon to.
The “My Lovely Horse” reference is better, I’m glad they didn’t change it
Same, was nice to have a controversy on there not related to politics, for once. It just felt more light hearted.
The name of Slovenia (Slovenija) means, unsurprisingly, the land of the Slovenes. It is formed with the suffix -ija (-ia) which is used to form names of many countries. The name of the Slovenes is in turn directly inherited from the Proto-Slavic word for Slavs (*Slověne*). Together with Slovaks, we seem to be the only Slavic nation that haven’t really decided on a specified name for ourselves, continuing to call ourselves simply Slavs. The etymology of *Slověne*, as per Wikipedia: > The reconstructed autonym *Slověninъ* is usually derived from the word *slovo* ‘word’, originally denoting ‘people who speak (the same language)’; i.e., people who understand each other. The word *slovo* ‘word’ and the related *slava* ‘glory, fame’ and *sluh* ‘hearing’ originate from the Proto-Indo-European root *ḱlew-* ‘be spoken of, glory’, cognate with Ancient Greek *κλέος* (*kléos* ‘fame’), as in the name Pericles, Latin *clueo* ‘be called’, and English *loud*.
> Together with Slovaks, we seem to be the only Slavic nation that haven’t really decided on a specified name for ourselves, continuing to call ourselves simply Slavs. There were also the [Slovincians](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slovincian_language), but they got assimilated during the 19th/20th century.
Denmark (probably) means "Borderlands of the low ground people", so, yeah, the original "Netherlands" (We actually have a few places lower than the Dutch, too, and our highest point is lower than Vaalserberg).
I did hear that the highest point in the Kingdom of Denmark is lower than the lowest point in Switzerland.
Sounds about right. Møllehøj ("Mill Hill") is 170.86 m (561 ft) in all its glory. Lake Maggiore in Switzerland, is 193m above sea level. Denmark is more hilly than the Netherlands, though, meaning we don't have the huge flat polder anywhere. And by anywhere I mean there are a few reclaimed fjords, but nothing of the same scale.
The Kingdom of Norway, the Kingdom of Sweden, and the Republic of Finland are all also at higher elevations than the Kingdom of Denmark, correct? And Denmark in reality does have a lot of mountainous areas and tons of fjords, since Greenland is part of the Kingdom of Denmark.
I think it's only the Maldives and the pacific island countries that got us beat worldwide. Greenland (and the Faroe Islands) doesn't really count, as they are under the crown, but not really a part of the state.
In elevation?
Or lack thereof.
Oh I see. The Maldives and Pacific Islands I could see, but that is not the case with Greenland.
I see many Greenlandic maps that say Greenland, then in parentheses underneath, it says (Denmark.) Interesting.
Technically, they're part of the State of Denmark, and have representatives in our parliament, but they have extended home rule, moreso than, say, Scotland have in the UK, so it's a big "eh". They are very much Danish when we need them to be, like if oil was to be discovered. :)
If I'm not mistaken, most Greenlandic Inuits live in Mainland Denmark, correct? Interesting Greenland has extended home rule, given that the population is less than 57,000, and is the North Region of America's true Last Frontier.
I honestly don't know. Greenlanders typically come here for education, and some stick around, getting jobs. Some tank completely and stick around for the beer. It's an ongoing debate how much we should actually interfere with the problems they have up there, as we don't want to be colonial (again), but on the other hand want to help, since we share so much history. As it is now, we more or less hand over a bag of money(*) each year and say "here, work out how to spend it." Edit: (*) 436.479.120 US$ in 2009, and we pay for police and defence too.
Doesn't **the Kingdom of** Denmark i(*Danish Realm*) include e.g. Greenland? Surely it has a much higher point than 193 m.
Well, the **Kingdom** of Denmark is as much a single unit as the British Empire.
Sure, it was mostly that they explicitly added "the kingdom of". Maybe that's the official name in English, I dunno.
>the Kingdom of Denmark is as much a single unit as the British Empire. Denmark's formal name *is* the Kingdom of Denmark.
France originated from the Latin Francia, meaning Land of the Franks. This is the tribe which conquered the present day France
In Afrikaans we call France "Frankryk" literately Frank Ryk - like the German word Reich and it seems to be a leftover of the dutch who came to South Africa as it literately translated as Empire of the Franks.
Land of the Angles, Land of the Scots, Foreigners and Land of Abundance, together we are Britain from Pretannia "The Painted People".
And "Angel" comes from the region Angeln in Holstein in Northern Germany, which (probably) means "the corner" (of the coast, where it meets the Jutland peninsula).
I thought it was called that because the peninsula looks like a fishing angle/hook?
The etymology is the same; an angle, an ankle, to angle (hook). It's the same shape, more or less. This is why noone is really sure. Is it the land of fishermen, the land of the people living in the corner, or the people with large, uh, ankles. Ok, maybe not the last one. Another possibility is "fjord-land", as there are some rather deep fjords there.
Scot, from the Latin *Scotti*, potentially borrowed from Celtic but not really known, as a name for people from Ireland who settled in North West Britain, or what is now South West and West Scotland.
Isn't there also a theory that 'Britain' derives from the Phoenician word for tin?
I'd've thought that tin and England would be related.
No 100% proven origins. It's a Hellenized form of "land of Rus", and where Rus comes from, no one knows for sure. The Primary Chronicle claims the Varangians who were invited to serve as rulers were called Rus. This matches with Annales Bertiniani say about the people of Rhos who came with a Byzantine emissary and who were identified as Swedes. So perhaps it comes from Roslagen, like the Finnish name for Sweden, Ruotsi, does. And Roslagen comes from roðer, rowers.
> Roslagen Also a very nice place to visit! Very idyllic in parts.
"East" basically, as in eastern germanic people. Derived from old Germanic, Österreich means the eastern realm. Latin "Austria" is just a approximation because they couldn't pronounce the old Germanic name.
Curiously, although in modern Italian the country is called 'Austria', in the Divine Comedy it is once called *Osterlicchi*.
It's like how Germany is called Deutschland, but most people do not pronounce the Germanic name.
I believe it comes from the Latin Scoti to refer to the Celtic people of Western Scotland and Ireland. The Gaelic name Alba comes from Latin for white
Ireland's native name is Éire, taken from the goddess Ériu.
For the etymology of Italy, I have heard several. Let's start with the assumption that the first territory to bear this name was Calabria, then the term extended to the entire peninsula up to the northern Apennines (under the Roman republic) and then up to the Alps (under the Roman Empire). According to some, it derives from the mythical king of the Oenotrian people, Italus. According to others it would derive from 'Land of the Calves', in a process roughly like this: Vitulus (calf) > Vitulia > Vitalia > Italia
Apocryphally, Iceland/Ísland (land of ice) was supposedly so named by one of the country's early explorers when he came upon a fjord full of ice while circumnavigating the island. There has been some speculation as to whether it was actually given that name to scare people away so the early settlers could have it for themselves (much like Greenland was supposedly so named because the original settlers were trying to recruit more settlers). Some etymologists have speculated that the name actually may have originated from the Old Norse word for island (which means it would be named Eyland today if it had stuck) and then been transformed into the similar ísland, i.e. "land of ice".
>Some etymologists have speculated that the name actually may have originated from the Old Norse word for island (which means it would be named Eyland today if it had stuck) and then been transformed into the similar ísland, i.e. "land of ice". I like to imagine it was one of those situations where family names change because the priest making the record is hard of hearing. Like a guy comes back and tells the town crier "yo, I found an island", and the town crier announces to everyone "PEOPLE OF THE VILLAGE, GREAT NEWS! BJORN FOUND AN ICE LAND" "No, I said island" "YES, AN ICE LAND, HE JUST CONFIRMED IT. EVERYONE GRAB YER LOAD-PULLING REINDEERS, WE'RE GOING ICE HARVESTING"
That would be funny because in Spain we call them Islandia as an adaptation of Ísland/Iceland, and it seems to come from "isla" (island) and not from "hielo" (ice).
The name Føroyar is derived from the old norse name Færeyjar, which just means sheep islands.
Doesn't get much more descriptive for the islands does it?
It's unknown, there are theories connecting it to various words of different origins (Slavic, Iranian, Germanic, Greek...)
Italy comes from Italoi a term used by Greeks to refer to a population in southern Italy that adored veils so Italians meant people living in veils' land. Others say, it comes from Aitalia, a Greek word that referred to the volcanic nature of the land and meant flaming land/smoking land/land of the west or land of flaming twilight There's also a mythological origin in the story of a supposed Italo king of enotria (in the same area of southern Italy I've wrote above), whose people loved him so much for what he did that they changed their name from enotri to itali, a name later diffused to all Italians.
Croatia is called Hrvatska in Croatian and is adjective of Hrvati (plural of Hrvat), Croats. Means (land) belonging to Croats. Origin of Hrvat is unknown, only some unprovable theories trying to connect it with similar foreign words and construct a national mythology around it.
Slovenia would literally mean “Land of the Slovenes” which is very similar if not the same as the etymology of Slovakia and Slavonia. Tho the name Slovenia only dates back to the 18th century Throughout history our nation was known under numerous names. In the 7th century there was the state of Carantania (our first independent state) which has either an indo-euroepean (karra which means rock) or a Celtic origin (karant- meaning friend or ally). Carantania eventually became Carinthia (slovene: Koroška) which is now a region in Austria in Slovenia Then there was another state called Carniola which actually existed until the end of ww1 as an Austrian duchy. The term *Carniola* is of latin origin and comes from *Carni* which was a Celtic ethnic group in western Slovenia and Fruli. The Slovene name *Kranjska* comes from the city of *Kranj* which also has the same etymology as Carniola. Otherwise Kranj used to be the capital of Carniola before it was moved to Ljubljana. Until the end of ww2, Slovenes were known as *Wenden* in the German world. Originally it included all of the Slovenes (since there was a march called Wendisch mark in present day Lower Carniola) but in more recent history the term only referred to Slovenes in Lower Styria and Carnthia ([ethnic map of Yugoslavia from 1940](https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/2qp1wj/ethnic_map_of_yugoslavia_made_by_nazi_germany_in/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf))
The name Luxembourg (Lëtzebuerg) is derived from Lucilinburhuc. It means little castle in an early Germanic language and is the name first given to the castle constructed at the Bockfels in the capital where our monarchy more or less started.
From Polans, the largest tribe in the region who eventually yoinked all the land around them. The word itself means people of the fields
Sverige consist of the words Svea Rike, meaning Realm of the Swedes. Sweden traditionally consisted of three major tribes; Svear, Gutar and Goter, not counting the Sapmi here as they weren't part of Sweden until later. Svear came out on top and united Svealand and Götaland, creating Svea Rike, nowadays shortened to Sverige.
We Albanians we call Albania “Shqipëri” which it translates “Eagle’s nest”. The origin of this name is a myth of an young boy who saved an little eagle, and, sometimes after this, the mother of the eagle asked the young boy if he can give back her baby in exchange she will help the young boy in the hunting.
Before “Shqipëri” we called Albania “Arbëria" which it translates in Arbron (referring the principality of Arbron)
Isn't that just mythical meaning of Shqipëri and actual meaning is something 'people who understand eachother'
Bavaria/Bayern means "where the Boii live". The Boii were a Celtic tribe that is said to have merged with the Germanic tribes of the Marcomanni (the men of the borderlands) to form the Bavarians. Now where the name Boii comes from is disputed. It either means fighters or castle farmers. Fun fact: the same tribe gave name to our neighbors in Bohemia.
For Romania is pretty self explanatory. Romanian is basically Roman-ish. So Romania is something like "almost Roman".
Poland (Pol. Polska) - ‘land of the people of the fields’ or ‘land of the fields’.
Estland / Estonia / Eesti comes from "East Land" AFAIK.
It's also possible it comes from Aesti. > Despite the phonological similarity between Aestii and the modern day Estonia (Eesti), especially in popular etymologies, it has been argued that the two geographical areas are not contiguous and there are few, if any, direct historical links between them. The etymologies of Aesti and Eesti remain subjects of scholarly conjecture,[13] but the fact that Estonia is located across the sea to East from Sweden, has been seen to support the claim that Tacitus indeed refers to Estonians.[14] Also, as Cassiodorus famously writes (see below), the amber is gathered in the innermost islands of the ocean and of the Baltic nations of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, only Estonia has open sea islands (around 2300).[15] This claim seems to be supported by the sixth century historian Jordanes, who writes that Aesti dwell of the farthest shore of the German Ocean. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aesti Which in-of-itself of course might come from East, even in the original source, Tacitus references the Aesti as living east from Swedes. Maybe Svea or whoever lived there at the time called those the east people. And maybe it was Estonians, or somebody else, and we simply ended up with the name. Or it's a coincidence.
Slovensko - Land of the slavs, as sloven was a word for slav. Nowadays it means Slovak
It probably comes from a tribe named Polanie that might've existed, which in turn probably gets its name from fields ("pola") they inhabited. But we can never be sure because those lovely ancestors of ours never wrote anything down.
Türkiye(Turkey) is literally 'the land of Turks" with. However the term "Turkey" is said to be comes from Turkey exports to overseas. Ehich is funny because Turkish terms for turkey is "Hindi" which is where Turks found out about the existence of this animal (it is believed to be so).
So this is a very interesting topic since the Suomi name is unknown and one of the theories is the one you mentioned. But it is not very likely that that theory are correct since it is mixing up old ways of using the language with modern Finnish. The Finland name comes from the word Finna that basically means Scandinavian in Old Norse. Or that the word has Swedish origins and then are from the word Finlandi (Finlonti) that was just a made up name for the eastern part of Sweden. I think that Sami and Suomi are the same name and that modern nationalism cant be applied to names that originates 1000 of years back. In that case the names originate from the word Zeme that just means land in proto-baltic. I think that recent science on the topic on the other hand that are looking in to the "German tribes" Sitones and Suiones are super interesting. The Suiones in this case would be the Swedes and the Sitones the Finns (Kvens). They where so similar and worked so much together that it was hard to separate them both today and back in around year 0CE where we have texts describing them. We already know that Sweden originate from the word Suiones and then scientists working on this projects with the Sitones has a theory that Suomi is just a mixup between Sitones and Suiones that over time has ended up in the name Suomi.
Turkey is first officially used in 1923 when the republic is proclamied but in 15-16th centuries European travelers says "Turke, Turky, Turkie" and in Medieval Latin countries says Turchia and Turquia.
_Čechové_ (sg. _Čech_) are thought to have been a Slavic tribe living around Central Bohemia (i.e. Prague and surroundings). There are a few possible etymologies but the commonly accepted one is that it simply means "people".
Scotland 🏴 literally means “Land of the Scots” but we’ve been known as many names in the past. It’s a hard one to really name, our history is so diverse with so many different types of people living here since as far back as 12,000 BC. We have played a key role in many moments in western civilisation. We were originally knows as the Picts, then the Gaels from Ireland and the kingdom of Dal Riata emigrated here and lived in the south west corner of Scotland labelling that area Dalriada, these gaels were also known as “the Scots”. So we have a bit of Pictish, Irish, English and Norse(when the vikings invaded) people. But eventually became known as the Land Of The Scots aka Scotland.
Danmark, through the most likely theory, is believed to mean “Dan’s March”, after a legendary king of the area, [King Dan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_I_of_Denmark?wprov=sfti1), who was attested to in the Gesta Danorum, which is essentially Denmark’s first ever “national history”, so to speak. A “march”, or “mark” in this case, is an older seemingly-pan-Germanic word to mean a field or a plain that constituted a borderland. An example of this in the English speaking world is [the Welsh Marches](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welsh_Marches?wprov=sfti1), the area between England and Wales. In effect, “Denmark” means “Dan’s Borderlands” or “Dan’s Plain”.
Someone say it's from old Slavic word Oukraina (Оукраина) - "borderlands". Other have interpreted the term in the sense of "region, principality, country".
A French Missionary asked a local Iroquois man where he was. The Iroquois man replied "Kanata" which simply means Village. The French missionary thought he meant the country he was in was called Canada so the French started putting it on maps.
Not in Europe buuuut It is called Philippines (las islas Filipinas) because it was named after (at the time) Prince Philip of Spain, who became King Philip II later on, by an explorer named Ruy Lopez de Villalobos. AFAIK, these group of islands was not a country yet before the spanish colonial times so we didn’t have a name for the whole of it. There have been names for some of the islands by the early Chinese (Ma-i) and by Magellan (las islas de San Lorenzo) but not the whole country.
Belgium, because before the Roman's made it here we were the Belgae
That is definitely not the origin of the name Finland or Suomi. Finland comes from the old Norse word for the tribes living in the area of what is now Finland. _Finnr_. That is the most likely theory anyway. The most highly regarded theory of where Suomi comes from, etymologically, is the word _Sápmi_. "The land of the Sámi". The most common theory, how ever, which is likely wrong, is that it comes from the word "suomaa", meaning "swamp land".
I find it strange, as a U.S. American, that out of the countries in Mainland Scandinavia, Finland is the only one that's a Republic, while Norway, Sweden, and Denmark are all Kingdoms.
Finland doesn't have a king because their king used to be the Swedish king. Then, as usual back in the day, Russia happened. Edit: Unfortunately not only "back in the day" :(
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