These Literal Translations of Country Names Will Blow Your Mind!

To those of us who are privileged to live in relatively peaceful countries, the concept of place names feels timeless. However, the newest country on Earth took its place as recently as July 2011. The 20^th century was packed with changing place names and borders, and of course every country in the world started somewhere—and their names have evolved over the years. And so, it is a fascinating revelation when you actually look into where these names come from, and how they compare with your image of what various countries are like. The cool people at Credit Card Compare have created a beautiful new map that includes the etymological roots of every nation’s name in prime position above the names themselves!

Europe

Europe’s history is one of warring empires, foolhardy explorers, power-hungry royals, and centuries of roaming tribes and peoples.

Bulgaria, for example, is named after the Bulgar people, who themselves were collectively named after the Turkic word for ‘mixed’—the Bulgars being a mix of Turkic and Slav tribes.

Not too far to the west, ‘Croatia’ may come from the Persian word for ‘nomad’ or, just as romantically, the Serbo-Croat word ‘hrbat’, meaning ‘mountain ridge’. Curiously, Croatia’s place name later became a synonym for the necktie (as worn by Croatian mercenaries in France), also known as the ‘cravat’.

Africa

They say we all came from Africa, originally. A troubled late-history has resulted in many name changes and the suppression of older histories in favor of celebrating European and American culture.

Liberia in Africa can trace its name through the Latin word for freedom—the country was founded as a settlement for freed slaves in 1822, becoming independent in 1847. Malawi, on the other hand, can trace its name back to purely African roots: in the Bantu language, the Maravi people took their collective name from the word for ‘flames’. We might romantically think of Malawi, then, as the ‘Land of Flames’.

Asia

Uzbekistan takes some of the trends we’ve already seen, and puts a spin on them: the name means ‘Land of the Free’, but this time the Turkic elements ‘uz’ and ‘bek’—meaning ‘self-master’—combine with the Persian word for country (-stan).

Japan’s etymology will be more familiar to most. The Chinese word ‘Cipangu’ became ‘Japan’ in the west, and ‘Nippon’ to the Japanese themselves, and the latter can be taken to mean ‘where the sun rises’—or, you got it, ‘The Land of the Rising Sun’.

North America

There aren’t so many countries to name in North America, but those there are tend to recall the European roots of the colonizing outsiders that still hold power today.

The US itself is likely named for Amerigo Vespucci, who may have reached the continent in the 16^th century. Amusingly, The States’ polite neighbors up north, Canada, can take their name to mean ‘The Village’—it may well derive from the Huron-Iroquois word ‘kanata’.

Barbados seems to have been named for its bearded population, as Spanish-speakers might have suspected!

South America

South American place names also bear the imprint of their colonizers, but nature gets a name-check, too.

Paraguay is named after the eponymous river, which in turn seems to recall the Payaguá tribe’s words meaning ‘born along the river’. The country, then, seems to be called after its river-dwelling inhabitants.

Australia/Oceania

Latin isn’t the only ancient language to figure in our place names—‘Micronesia’ literally means ‘small island’ in Greek. Australia itself has Latin roots. Although known in its pre-Captain James Cook days as a mysterious ‘unknown southern land’ (terra australis incognita), it remains just as mysterious a culture to outsiders today!

Where did your ancestors come from? And what do the country names tell you about your own people?

These images were first published here.