They say that everybody comes from somewhere, but I was wondering how did these somewheres get their names? It looks like countries names are just like our first names that are handed to us without input and inherited, arbitrary, and lately \u2014 especially \u2014 absurd. Sometimes we get names we don\u2019t want and efforts to change them don\u2019t stick, Same with countries. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
My extensive research on this subject uncovered the fact that the majority of country names fall into just four categories:
a directional description of the country
a feature of the land
a tribal name
an important person (most likely a man)
The way countries get their names is almost never democratic, and very few are rooted in national qualities we like to associate with them, like liberty, strength or justice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I found an interesting book \u2014 the Oxford Concise Dictionary of World Place-Names<\/em>, by John Everett-Heath. If you\u2019re interested in this subject, you should take a look at this book. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Name origins are often (usually) murky and the book warns that \u201cmyths and legends may be entertaining, but rarely of value.\u201d Recently (if you can call maybe the last hundred or so years recent) countries have started to reclaim much older identities \u2014 for example, in 1947 the Gold Coast gained independence from the British and was renamed Ghana.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A few countries have names that describe their people\u2019s attributes \u2014 Upper Volta, in western Africa, was re-named Burkina faso in 1984, and means \u201cland of honest men\u201d or \u201cland of incorruptible people.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n About a quarter of the world\u2019s country names come from some aspect of the land. An example \u2014 Algeria is named after its capital city, Algiers, meaning \u201cthe islands.\u201d That name once described the city\u2019s bay, which at one time had tiny islands in it, but today they\u2019ve become connected to the mainland or been destroyed in the development of the harbor. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Some names about land features come from explorers or outsiders that saw the land through the eyes of \u201cforeigners.\u201d Our countries\u2019 names give us a sense of pride and our leaders use them as emotional triggers in speeches and create slogans around country names (e.g., \u201cmake America great again.\u201d) They say that everybody comes from somewhere, but I was wondering how did these somewheres get their names? It looks like countries names are just like our first names that are handed to us without input and inherited, arbitrary, and … Continue reading
About a third of the world\u2019s countries got their current names from some older group of people. France is named for the Franks, Italy is named for the Vitali tribe, Switzerland for the Schwyz people, and Vietnam means Viet people of the south, to name a few.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There is some disagreement about which explorer named Costa Rica (\u201cthe rich coast,\u201d) but some think it was Christopher Columbus, who saw indigenous people wearing gold and didn\u2019t realize it was imported.
Singapore means \u201clion city,\u201d and the lion head is a national symbol. But there aren\u2019t any known lions in Singapore. According to legend the Sumatran prince Sang Nila Utama was hunting in Singapore and came across an animal he thought was a lion, \u201csinga\u201d in Malay, and gave the name Singa Pura to the island he was on.
The United States of America is named for the Italian explorer America Vespucci, who argued that \u2014despite what everyone else thought at the time \u2014 the American continent was not part of the Iniies. In 1507, German cartographer Martin Waldseem\u00fcller, who literally put America on the map, named the area for \u201cthe discoverer Amerigo\u2026.as if it were the American land, or America.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So I guess what\u2019s in a name is important and everyone should be proud of their country, but someone said that a man\u2019s feet should be planted in his country, but his eyes should survey the world. Today \u2014 that sounds like good advice.
\u2014 30 \u2014<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"