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Over the years, I have learned that many countries actually call themselves something entirely different than what English speakers have labeled their countries. Some are minor changes, while others are vastly different. Here are some examples:
Japan = Nihon/Nippon
Spain = España
Germany = Deutschland
Poland = Polska
and even to a lesser degree:
Mexico (with an X sound) = México (x with an H sound)
Brazil = Brasil
Norway = Norge
Is there any reason for such a change? I have always felt that we English speakers must think very highly of ourselves to call a country something other than what they call themselves. In my mind, I have a funny image of an Ambassador coming to Japan and saying "You call yourselves Nippon? Oh my, that's silly, from now on we shall call you Japan." I know I personally wouldn't enjoy being bullied into a name change. What's the real scoop behind this name changing? Obviously some must be corruptions from the English speaking tongue, but some are drastic alterations.
The English word "Japan" comes from the Chinese "chipeng".
It gets worse. The people we call "German" call themselves "Deutsch", but the Italians call them "Tedesci", the Russians call them "Nemets", and the French call them "Allemande".
While there's at least some resemblance between most of the examples you gave, what we call "Albania" is known to its inhabitants as "Shqipëri", and the people of "Finland" know their country as "Suomi".
The Chinese people call "China" Zhong Guo (in Mandarin Chinese). I've heard that English gets the word "China" from the name of the Qin (Chin) Dynasty. English isn't alone in giving different names for other countries. A few examples of names used in Mandarin for other countries: "Fa Guo" (France), "Ying Guo" (England), "Mei Guo" (America/USA), "Jia Na Da" (Canada). The first three were created taking an approximation of the sound of the first syllable of the native word, then adding "Guo" which means country.
"Mei Guo" as the Chinese name for America is meant to be somewhat phonetic, but as luck would have it the same characters can also be read as "Beautiful Country".
The Japanese equivalent "Beikoku", on the other hand, means "Rice Land".
(We're not completely innocent of this ourselves. "Ivory Coast", now known as "Côte d'Ivoire", shares its name with two brands of soap.)
When the Soviet Union existed, as a kid interested in geography and current events, it was confusing to me when people caused it "Russia." I realized later that it was certainly the most dominant of the 15 republics, but nobody could explain that to me back then. Even today, people call the old USSR "Russia," so some people probably can't figure out how it could dissolve and yet still be a country.
Similarly, I guess, is when people call the Netherlands "Holland" and the UK, "England."
This happens in just about every language. For example, in Spanish, England is Inglaterra, Germany (Deutschland) is Alemania, the U.S.A. is EE.UU. (Estados Unidos), etc. Then you have countries where several languages are spoken and the same country has different names within itself (for example Switzerland is called Suisse in French, Schweiz in German and Suizzera in Italian). So it shouldn't really surprise us that this occurs in English, because the same phenomenon occurs in other languages.
Not only countries but even cities have different names in different languages; at least the major cities do. For some unfathomable reason, in Hungarian the name for the city of Vienna is Bécs (pronounced baycs). Then again, the poor Magyars (who call their country Magyarország after the principal tribe that settled there at the end of the 10th century) have everyone else calling them after the dastardly Huns (Hungary, Hongrie, Ungarn..), who under Attila swept through the same region 550 years earlier.
In Belgium, this fad for giving different names in French and in Dutch (and in German and sometimes English) to their vcities causes many people to miss their trains or highway exits.
The French-speaking town of Mons is known in Dutch as Bergen (literal translation of mountains), and if you catch a train in the Flemish part of the country, the destination will be posted and announced only in Dutch. Liège (FR) is Luik in Dutch and Lüttich in German. Ghent is spelled Gent in (post-spelling reform) Dutch and Gand in French. Bruges is Brugge (pronounced with a guttural g) in Dutch, and pronounced in the French style – Bruges – in English, even though the city is Dutch-speaking not French. Then there is Antwerp-Antwerpen-Anvers, Kortrijk–Courtrai. A real mess. As is the country right now in which these towns are located.
jacosta said:
Is there any reason for such a change? I have always felt that we English speakers must think very highly of ourselves to call a country something other than what they call themselves. In my mind, I have a funny image of an Ambassador coming to Japan and saying "You call yourselves Nippon? Oh my, that's silly, from now on we shall call you Japan." I know I personally wouldn't enjoy being bullied into a name change. What's the real scoop behind this name changing? Obviously some must be corruptions from the English speaking tongue, but some are drastic alterations.
Why is this pretentious? This sounds like a bit of American liberal guilting. Every language has its own words for peoples, languages, place names. How far would you have us go? In French, we say "les Rocheuses". Should we say "les Rockies"? Or "les Rocky Mountain"? To try to impose a country's own name for itself is to ignore the history of the relations between countries and peoples. As said above, the French word for Germany is "l'Allemagne", from the Allemanni (sp) people, who happened to be the Germanic tribe closest to what is now France.
/Hated NBC trying to shove "Torino" down the throats of Americans.
gacdg said:
die Schweiz in German
Sorry, as a German student, I can't help but correct this. In German, you will never ever see "Schweiz" without a definite article in front of it, unlike just about any other country.
You would say "Die Schweiz ist groß." but you not say "Schweiz ist groß." however you would say "Deutschland/Frankreich/Japan ist groß." and not "Die Deutschland/Frankreich/Japan ist groß."
Twisted Logic said:
gacdg said:
die Schweiz in German
Sorry, as a German student, I can't help but correct this. In German, you will never ever see "Schweiz" without a definite article in front of it, unlike just about any other country.
You would say "Die Schweiz ist groß." but you not say "Schweiz ist groß." however you would say "Deutschland/Frankreich/Japan ist groß." and not "Die Deutschland/Frankreich/Japan ist groß."
Point taken. And to complicate things you have to change the article according to the case, so after saying "Die Schweiz ist groß." you might ask "Wo in der Schweiz wohnst du?"
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