I don’t like that countries all over the world call other countries whatever fits their own language. In English we call these nations “Ireland” “Russia” “Palestine”. But these places are “Eire” “Rossiya” “Chungkuo” or “Falesteen”. Which other countries are good names before it gets translated. I do have small acceptions for places where they call it like DPRK or something where the name is just the same but translated but Rossiya makes more sense than Russia.
Turkey/Türkiye is an interesting case to watch. Recently their government demanded that everyone start using the second spelling. Honestly i couldn’t care less about this, people have been “translating” names of people and places into other languages since the dawn of time. Germany for instance is called Deutschland in German, Allemagne in French and Niemcy in Polish. Which one is “correct”? All of them, you use the one that corresponds to the language that you are speaking. For better or worse, we won’t be calling China by its Chinese name Zhōngguó anytime soon. And i don’t think the Turkiye change will stick either because in English the old version just feels more natural to say.
China is coming iitc from the Qin dynasty. There is also russian version “Khitai” from the Kara Khitai, that is Khitan empire (aka Great Liao).
I knew it was Китай in Russian but had no clue why, thanks
Deutschland -> Germany
Bonus : in french it’s Allemagne zero respect lol
Extra Bonus: in Serbo-Croatian it’s Njemačka
And it’s Alemania in Spanish. I always thought that was weird
It’s to do with borrowings and who came into contact with what tribe. For example, the people living in France and Spain came into contact with the Alemannic tribes, hence Allemagne/Alemania. This name comes from an older form meaning ‘all people’ (compare German: alle Männer (all men)).
Whereas in Italian, another romance language, the word is ‘tedesco’, derived from þeudisk (whence ‘Deutsch’ and ‘Dutch’ derive). There is also an old word in French ‘thiois’ which is cognate.
For extra annoyance, the Italian word for Germany is Germania, so the adjective and noun have no relation at all.
When I was like 6 I thought Tedeschia was germany’s name 😅
Another bonus: in Danish it’s Tyskland
India is called Bharat or Hindustan in Hindi though Republic of India is still the official name in English.
Few fun ones in polish:
-
First obligatory Germany. In german it’s Deutschland, in english is Gemany and in polish is Niemcy - literally “those who don’t speak” “mute ones”.
-
Italy - in polish Włochy - that’s a long string of language borrowing coming from german “Walh” for southern europeans and that’s coming from the celtic tribe known in latin as Volcae - iirc the original word means “hawk” or “hero”. There was also more celtic tribes in Europe with that name. Compare to the same source names for Wales and Wallachia. Also “Włochy” in polish is same pronounciation and spelling as augmentative of “włosy” - hair. In slang meaning “pubic hair”. So yeah, there are jokes about pubic hair and generally hygiene of Italians, though the Italian people have very good opinion in Poland at the same time.
-
Węgry - might sound intimidating to pronounce, but the source of it is exact same latin words as for english Hungary, just twisted throug polish pronounciation over the ages, and coming from the turkic word “Onggur”, literally “ten arrows”. It’s exonym of course, Hungarians call themselves “Magyar” but mostly everyone ignore it :(
I keep being amused how similair Polish and Russian are, despite everything
I love being a pubic hair
I love just existing on someone’s pubic zone without me needing to earn my living participating in an exploitative system, just existing.
Just hope that your not the pube of an avid podcast listener otherwise you may get Manscaped💀
😓capitalism breeds innovation I guess
Glad you like it, next time when you see some polonus gets butthurt about joke about Poles, remember we had the ones about other nations too :)
-
New Zealand is Aotearoa in the native language. And increasingly in common parlance
That’s great to hear, I’ll have to sneak that into my conversation
Dutch language is just Nederlands in Dutch. Dutch sounds like Duits which means German in Dutch. We should all just call it Netherlands lol. Same goes for nationality. In English we say ‘I’m Dutch’, while in The Netherlands you just say you are Nederlands.
Not much of a difference, but it is annoying, at least for me: in Spanish the country Algeria is Argelia, the spelling is very similar, and thus very confusing to me, in terms of writing or pronouncing it. Also Latvia in Spanish is Letonia
Omg Argelia is wack af I don’t like that at all. Letonia seems weird but not waay off
Fun fact about Russia/Rossija dichotomy: it creates a bit of confusion, both outside and inside of Russia. You see, there’s Rossijanin, as in “citizen of the Russian Federation”, and there’s Russkiy, as in “of slavic Russian ethnicity”. In Soviet era it wasn’t much of an issue, because the citizens were Soviet, but in modern times? Hoo boy. This distinction also serves to fuel the idea that “USSR was just Russian chauvinism opressing poor poor smol nations who totally wanted to be independent and liberal democratic”
Holandija for Netherlands or Nizozemska in Croatian and of course different Turkey spelling. And then we have Nemačka or NJemačka for Germany.
Honorable mention, not a country: we call Vienna Beč.
Beč?? That’s so much different
🇩🇰 Danmark --> Denmark
I’ve also read Danemark before in old academic journals and papers
croatia=hrvatska japan=nihon austria=osterreich
