>1. Check the rules: Please take a moment to review our rules, Reddiquette, and Reddit’s Content Policy.
>2. Clear question in the title: Make sure your question is clear and placed in the title. You can add details in the body of your post, but please keep it under 600 characters.
>3. Closed-Ended Questions Only: Questions should be closed-ended, meaning they can be answered with a clear, factual response. Avoid questions that ask for opinions instead of facts.
>4. Be Polite and Civil: Personal attacks, harassment, or inflammatory behavior will be removed. Repeated offenses may result in a ban. Any homophobic, transphobic, racist, sexist, or bigoted remarks will result in an immediate ban.
>1. Medical or pharmaceutical questions
>2. Legal or legality-related questions
>3. Technical/meta questions (help with Reddit)
This list is not exhaustive, so we recommend reviewing the full rules for more details on content limits.
✓ Mark your answers!
>If your question has been answered, please reply with Answered!! to the response that best fit your question. This helps the community stay organized and focused on providing useful answers.
This is called an exonym, as to why it largely depends, but often like germany or china it’s older names that remain in use long after they are locally dropped.
China is named after the Qin dynasty (pronounced Chin), while Germany is named typically after one of its iron age tribes like the Allemani or the Germani described by ancient roman historiographers.
China comes from Chin a Sanskrit name. Then the Portuguese added the a and that’s how we got the name. Or it was named after the Qin empire.
Germany has different names depending on the country that interacted with the different German kingdoms at different times in history.
Or it could be a combination of different things.
The US is called mei guo in Chinese because it is a close pronunciation of the word America. They also have an official name that translates to the United States of America, but it is just called meiguo. Meiguo is short and easier.
Also, a lot of it can be pronunciation based on the language you speak. Sometimes countries are called what they are called because your native language does not have the same sounds so you approximate.
China comes into English from Portugese in the 15th century. It’s derived from the Qin dynasty.
As for your more general question, because of language barriers and/or you as the “discoverer” of a new land wanna put your name on something (see America).
Edit. America was attributed later by someone else. The colonization was more successful, but if those early viking settlements had been more successful we might have called it Vinland instead.
Because we are not them? Historically this meant more because of lack ofcommunication across long distances. People just called another place whatever word in their language made sense to them.
For example, in the English speaking world we called it Germany from the Roman name Germania.
In French it’s called Alemagne for the Alemanni people that lived there.
In Polish it is Niemcy, from the Proto-Slavic word meaninc speechless, incomprehensible to Slavic speakers.
To the actual Germans it’s Deutschland, which means land of the people.
Comments
📣 Reminder for our users
>1. Check the rules: Please take a moment to review our rules, Reddiquette, and Reddit’s Content Policy.
>2. Clear question in the title: Make sure your question is clear and placed in the title. You can add details in the body of your post, but please keep it under 600 characters.
>3. Closed-Ended Questions Only: Questions should be closed-ended, meaning they can be answered with a clear, factual response. Avoid questions that ask for opinions instead of facts.
>4. Be Polite and Civil: Personal attacks, harassment, or inflammatory behavior will be removed. Repeated offenses may result in a ban. Any homophobic, transphobic, racist, sexist, or bigoted remarks will result in an immediate ban.
🚫 Commonly Asked Prohibited Question Subjects:
>1. Medical or pharmaceutical questions
>2. Legal or legality-related questions
>3. Technical/meta questions (help with Reddit)
This list is not exhaustive, so we recommend reviewing the full rules for more details on content limits.
✓ Mark your answers!
>If your question has been answered, please reply with
Answered!!to the response that best fit your question. This helps the community stay organized and focused on providing useful answers.I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.
Culture.
This is called an exonym, as to why it largely depends, but often like germany or china it’s older names that remain in use long after they are locally dropped.
China is named after the Qin dynasty (pronounced Chin), while Germany is named typically after one of its iron age tribes like the Allemani or the Germani described by ancient roman historiographers.
A lot of it is a broken “game of telephone”.
China comes from Chin a Sanskrit name. Then the Portuguese added the a and that’s how we got the name. Or it was named after the Qin empire.
Germany has different names depending on the country that interacted with the different German kingdoms at different times in history.
Or it could be a combination of different things.
The US is called mei guo in Chinese because it is a close pronunciation of the word America. They also have an official name that translates to the United States of America, but it is just called meiguo. Meiguo is short and easier.
Also, a lot of it can be pronunciation based on the language you speak. Sometimes countries are called what they are called because your native language does not have the same sounds so you approximate.
China comes into English from Portugese in the 15th century. It’s derived from the Qin dynasty.
As for your more general question, because of language barriers and/or you as the “discoverer” of a new land wanna put your name on something (see America).
Edit. America was attributed later by someone else. The colonization was more successful, but if those early viking settlements had been more successful we might have called it Vinland instead.
Because we are not them? Historically this meant more because of lack ofcommunication across long distances. People just called another place whatever word in their language made sense to them.
For example, in the English speaking world we called it Germany from the Roman name Germania.
In French it’s called Alemagne for the Alemanni people that lived there.
In Polish it is Niemcy, from the Proto-Slavic word meaninc speechless, incomprehensible to Slavic speakers.
To the actual Germans it’s Deutschland, which means land of the people.
Now I’m curios too. Would love to hear the explanation for the names India and Hindustan.
And people from the Netherlands are “Dutch” , which is a corrupted form of “𝕯𝖊𝖚𝖙𝖘𝖈𝖍𝖊” from Germany.
‘We” don’t. The USA does.
Italy vs Italia
Hungary vs Hungaria
Sweden vs Sverige
It goes on. I’ve never understood this