Not something I thought of a lot when I was back in US since USA is… a pretty bureaucratic name by all means. But I just realized that some countries have really fascinating names in their local language
Like how China names itself Central/Middle country in a very grandiose way (as in, we are the center of the world), or Japan being “land of the rising sun”
You already said China so I guess I’ll go Hong Kong.
Hong Kong (香港) means fragrant harbour. The origin of this name is unknown, but there are theories of it coming from a type of wood we produced, a nice river, the wife of a pirate, or some residents just pronounced it with an accent to the British soldiers.
Canada, or ‘Canada’ in French, was derived from “Kanata” the Iroquois word for Village. Not sure there ever was a local world for the country known as Canada though? Would love to be enlightened if so.
I’m not sure what you mean by local as each indigenous nation presumably had their own way of referring to the land.
‘Turtle Island’ is the common translation for the ways that many Algonquian- and Iroquoian-speaking refer to North America.
Where I live (Lekwungen territory) means “place of the smoked herring”.
Cool to know about turtle island. I was merely expressing my ignorance for any other names for the “country” as OP asked. I do understand there would be different names for each local ancestral lands and territories.
Brasil, the name comes from Pau Brasil, a tree that has a deep red color, used to make dye and for its quite beautiful red wood. The word Brasil comes from brasa (ember), essentially means “tree that’s red like an ember”.
Austria is from Osterreich, Eastern Kingdom or something similar.
Portugal comes from “Portus Cale”. It was in the general area of the city of Porto. The word “Postus” and “Porto” mean port, as in a port for ships.
Polska (Poland) comes from a word meaning “field”. Modern polish still has this word (pole)
Ukraine: Україна [ookraïna] means literally “our land”
Norway is quite literal: The way north.
It used to describe the coastline full of seaside trading towns before someone got the idea to make it a country.
The literalness also shows up in all the names for places in the country. They are 90% old spellings of “The place where people live”, “the field for cows to feed on”, “the settlement at the north of the fjord”, “upper farm”, “valley settlement”, and like 1837 places called “a place you can live”.
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Here’s the answer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_country-name_etymologies
I wouldn’t say it’s a definitive answer. While there’s no expert consensus on the etymology of Mexico, it’s often argued to mean the “place in the navel of the moon” in Nahuatl:
metztli (moon), xictli (navel or center) y co (place)
There’s no reference to that on the list even though it’s mentioned in another article:
Canada: from the St. Lawrence Iroquoian word kanata, meaning “village”. The word was told to French explorer Jacques Cartier, who believed it referred to a much larger area than it actually did.
That there were some areas ruled by monarchs and now they’re one bigger area ruled by a single monarch.
United States of America: We’re made up of a bunch of states in North America that, ideally, are united. Although we’ve hardly lived up to that sentiment since the original 13 colonies fought for independence in the American Revolutionary War.
Technically, we didn’t call them “states” until the Declaration of Independence was drafted in 1776 (they were “colonies” before then), so I guess that was the first and last time we were ever truly united.
Well, we’re a bunch of states and we’re… united? And the continent is America (the north one). So USA.
More or less. No wait, screw them red states. Can we be the Divided States now?
Well, “America” originates from Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci so, while United States is pretty blah, America has origins that go back 500 years.
Deutschland means literally German Country xD
Apparently, “deutsch” originated from Medieval Latin “theodiscus”, which meant “belonging to the own people”.
German source: https://www.dwds.de/wb/Deutschland
