The names of countries are rather like the names of people; we hear them, we learn them, occasionally think you don’t look like an Emma/Hungary/Chad, and then question them no longer. But a closer look at some of the names of countries, at least in the English language, reveals a rather particular mentality.
The Age of Explorers
In light of the fact that many non-Western civilisations had already existed for hundreds of years before they were known to the Occidental world, it seems a tad absurd that such great expanses of land should be named after a single individual who wasn’t even born there. Colombia for instance, was named after its “discoverer”, Christopher Columbus, while the United States of America was named after Amerigo Vespucci. The name The Philippines is derived from the Spanish for “The Islands of Philip”, while Bolivia was named after the renowned statesman and soldier, Simon Bolivar, who was born in the reassuringly nearby Venezuela. Venezuela, meanwhile, is said to have been named after the city of Venice, given the apparent resemblance between the aquatic city and the settlement built over the Lake Macaibo that the Spanish encountered.
Meanwhile, on the far side of the world, although the Chinese never named other territories after their own noblemen, a similar sort of egocentrism was going on. The name China derives from the Mandarin ‘Jong Guo,’ meaning Middle Land, or the Centre of the World. The Romans, however, would conclude later that it was actually their own Empire, or the Mediterranean Sea, which was the Earth’s Mecca.
Some territories didn’t even get a proper noun, and were named after their material value to the colonialists. Argentina, for example, named after the Latin for silver; Brazil, named after the red-tinged Brasil wood, or, most shamelessly, the Ivory Coast. Tobago, of Trinidad and Tobago, is a corruption of tobacco, while Cameroon literally means “prawns” in Portuguese. Rather disappointingly, Turkey is not named after any abundance of gobbling poultry found in the area, but after the Turkish people themselves, said to mean “strength” in Persian.
Names after Races
When left to your own devices, it is understandable that you might self-promote your race when naming your nation, but some countries have earned their names based solely on the alarm of physical differences noted by explorers. The name Russia, for example, is said to be derived from an Indo-European root for red, in reference to the hair colour of the Viking descendants found there. Macedonia, meanwhile is derived from the Greek makedones, meaning “the tall ones”, from which we also get the prefix macro. The names of some countries are derived from roots we would just consider plain racist now: Sudan, for example, or Bilad-al-sudan in Arabic, “country of the blacks” and Guinea, supposed to have derived from the local phrase Tuareg aginaw, meaning black people. According to Yñigo Ortiz de Retez, these people bore a striking resemblance to those he found in Papua New Guinea, with the added characteristic of frizzy hair, or papuah, in Malay. Ethiopia, meanwhile, is derived from the Greek Aithiops, an amalgamation of aithein, to burn, and ops, face, or literally ‘burnt face’. Ironically, the country’s previous name of Abyssinia was a lot more diplomatic, deriving from the Arabic Habasah, or “mixed”, in reference to the different races living there.
Thailand, on the other hand, politicised its name by changing it from Siam, derived from the Sanskrit syama, or dark, also in reference to the skin colour of its inhabitants, to Thailand, meaning “Land of the Free”; an appropriate name, given Thailand is the only Southeast Asian country not to have be colonised. Effortlessly poetic even, if we consider England, Land of the Angles, or Scotland, Land of the Scots, or Ireland, yes, you guessed it. Iceland actually means Island in Old Norse; while Greenland equally does exactly what it says on the tin, as its discoverer thought "it would induce settlers to go there, if the land had a good name". A propaganda tool, in short. Stan, from the Persian for country, functions in much the same way: Afghanistan, land of the Afghans; Kazakhstan, land of the nomads, or even Pakistan, an acronym of Punjab, Afghanistan and Kashmir, first proposed by Muslim students at Cambridge University, and a convenient play on the Iranian word pak, or pure.
Some countries have names, which are, with all due respect, a lot more banal. Ecuador, for example, so called because it lies, along with numerous other countries, on the line of the Equator. Ukraine, meanwhile, might not be as easy to locate, meaning, as it does, “at the edge” in Russian. The prize for geographical ambiguity, however, goes to Canada, for the legend that the Portuguese once marked Cá nada over it on a map, literally “nothing here”. Rather disappointingly, it is most likely to have come from the Iroquoian word “kana:ta”, meaning town.
Mountains and Rivers
Perhaps the most comprehensive of country names are those reflective of their physical geography, usually in the form of rivers or mountain ranges. Zambia, for example, which is named after the Zambezi River or Chad, after Lake Chad, which literally means large expanse of water. Kenya is probably an adaptation of kere nyaga, or “white mountain”, named after the snow-capped Mt. Kenya, while Croatia is derived from the Russian word khrebet, meaning “mountain chain”.
Hail to the Beast
In a singular streamlined swoop, Guatemala encompasses two important physical features as a derivation of the native word Uhatzmalha, meaning “mountain where water gushes”. However, there is another theory which states that it comes from Quauhtemellan, meaning “land of the eagle”. Coincidentally, Albania was also called “Land of the Eagles”, or Shqipëri, by its inhabitants, although the name Albania is thought to derive from the Indo-European word alb, meaning “hill”, from where the Alps also get their name. Another animal historically held in high reverence is the lion, reflected in Singapore, from the Sanskrit for “lion city”, though as to whether there lions have ever existed on the island is very much open to debate.
Sierra Leone, or Sierra of the Lions, however, has the edge here, in the running for Coolest Country Name, thought to have been named by the Portuguese after the roar of thunder heard from the hills. Yet one small country quietly takes the biscuit here, with a subtle little nudge in the ribs of the explorers who self-promotionally named great territories after themselves: Liberia, land of the liberated slaves.
Sources:
- The Online Etymology Dictionary
- Encyclopedia Britannica
Eloise Stevens - Eloise Stevens is a student of French and Portuguese at Oxford University, greatly interested in the culture, music and literature of ...
