Funny part is so many folks get Greece wrong it actually tells you what major geopolitical influence they have.
Greece comes from the Romans calling them “Graeci” or “Like Graia” because the first greeks they had significant contact with were Graian colonists in Cumae.
But everyone from Turkey to India calls them something along the lines of “Yunan”, because that’s how the Persians started refering to them, because the major greek city state they first had significant contact with was Ionia.
So very similar to Germany then. Every language refers to the country by the name of the tribe that was closest to them when Germany wasn’t a thing yet.
Except for slavic tribes, when referred to them as “the mute ones”.
This is the kind of treasure I love to find in map-post comments—thank you.
Agreed, this is dank knowledge
It’s probably already well known, but “Zongguo” is like “Middle Earth” or “center of the world”, depending on how mean the transcriber is.
Literally Middle Kingdom or middle country
Good to know.
Surprisingly it’s not the only one. Dubai is honestly the center of (what remains of) the hub-and-spoke air travel network because it’s the closest point to every other landmass on Earth. Middle Earth was supposed to be Tolkien’s locale for a hypothetical creation myth of modern (well, then-modern) Britain. Alkebulan (the native name for Africa) is the cradle of humanity and the only continent where everyone there agreed what said continent was called for all of recorded/known history. I’d say being in a geopolitically central location, even if that’s really just dumb luck, is something cultures have taken pride in for a very long time.
I’m pretty sure Alkebulan was actually a name given to Africa by Islamic settlers. There are thousands of indigenous names for Africa. In the words of the African man who told me about it, “we had thousands of names for Africa because we didn’t know we were supposed to only have one. Each person had their own name for it.”
That seems to be the actual case, yes.
The idea that each person had their own name for Africa is interesting to learn, thank you!
Montenegro is just a translation of Crna Gora, both are literally Black Mountain
Also I think Croatia and Hrvatska are related, it’s just by the time it arrived to English it became so deformed
I’d say the Croatian endonym is close enough to the English exonym. Meanwhile the map’s missing Albania (Shqipëri) and some edge cases: Wales (Cymru), Scotland (Alba), New Zealand (Aotearoa).
Korea is called Korea because of Goryeo, which was one of the historical unifying states that brought together the Later Three Kingdoms…
It’s a little hard to explain because the kingdoms would often “unify” (aka conquer) the other kingdoms, eventually fall, and the later kingdoms would often adopt those previous names. Would be here all day trying to explain it.
But yeah, Goguryeo, one of the Kingdoms, romanized their name to “Koryo” which was later also used by Goryeo. Goryeo was named as an adaptation of Goguryeo so… yeah. Confusing.
Was there someplace called Silla or similar?
Yes, Silla was a kingdom, and then it became the main ruling kingdom for a while, and then it fragmented again, but one of the fragments was still called Silla… :)
Nippon is the Chinese word for Japan (derived from the Chinese characters which became Japanese Kanji). Nihon is the Japanese word for Japan (which is the way modern Japanese pronounce said characters). Though there are Japanese who still prefer to say Nippon.
The word Japan itself came from Marco Polo, who heard the Chinese read the characters for Nippon literally (Zi-pang, sun origin - which is where the slogan Land of the Rising Sun came from) with a heavy accent. Japan was so widely used by the time it was discovered to be incorrect that it just stuck and even the Japanese government doesn’t care enough to issue a formal correction.
Nippon is the Chinese word for Japan
Isn’t the Chinese word for Japan “Rìběn” （日本）?
You can read about the Chinese name for Japan here
So if I understand correctly, the Chinese pronunciation used to be closer to the Japanese pronunciation of those written characters, but over time the Mandarin pronunciation diverged while the written word stayed the same?
… Turkey named corn after what Egypt calls itself?
And spice after India
