Country names
One of topics I’m interested the most is looking for the word origin, the scientific word is “etymology”. It’s amazing how starting to look for a word, then wondering, searching in a dictionary, finding out that it comes from a foreign language, trying to learn some words from that language in order to understand the structure of the word, and then buying a dictionary and/or a manual for the “new” language, which leads to begin learning it…
I learned a lot about several languages using this track method, I’m not an expert, nor a linguist or whatever, besides I don’t totally master any language: I’m even still learning Arabic which is my native language and the language that I use everyday! However, in most of cases, I could communicate with other people around the world: knowing some basic words of their language or of their neighbors language makes communication easier!
Looking after curiosities, I found a very interesting Wikipedia page that lists etymologies of country names. It’s astonishing to know that there was a reason to call every country by its actual name:
That could be after a direction: Norway (north), Australia (south), Austria (east), Morocco (west), …
extremity: Madagascar (end of the Earth), Chile (limit of the world), …
landscape: Lebanon (”white” for mountains), Azerbaijan (Land of Fire), Lithuania (littoral), Groenland…
nature of soil: England (land of the angles), Netherlands, Namibia (nothing), Iceland, Denmark (flat land), …
metal or a wealth: Argentina (silver), Aruba (gold), Cyprus (copper), Côte d’Ivoire (ivory), …
pride: Uzbekistan (Land of the Self masters), Thailand (Land of the free), Albania (Shqipërië: Land of the eagle), Liberia,…
an explorer: Colombia, America, Juan de Nova, Mauritius,…
a liberator: Bolivia, El Salvador, Nicaragua, …
an ethnicity or a tribute: Congo, Hungary, Swaziland, Yugoslavia, …
a river: Paraguay, Congo, Uruguay, Zambia, …
Check out the page, and you will learn facts that even the habitants of the country don’t probably know!
December 24th, 2005 at 9:36 pm
Tunisia, Tounes = the “friendly” place
:)
December 24th, 2005 at 10:21 pm
Another theory is that tounes is a berber word that means small cape.
http://swobodin.fedora-tn.org/?p=80.
December 24th, 2005 at 11:48 pm
Are you sure Swobodin? I thought it was Arabs who named Tounes, which replaced Ifriqiyya, the berber name…
December 25th, 2005 at 1:31 am
Brazil - its meaning comes from the tree called “pau-brasil”…and “brasil” was a portuguese word that means “brasa” ..in english it means “burning coal”.
The tree was so red that it looked like a real burning coal.
The old native indians used that tree to take its ink to make up their faces and to colour their textiles.
pau-wood
brasil-burning coal
Unfortunatelly the portuguese colonization, the uncontrolled population growing and the society development had extinguished that tree…
Finally…we got with only its name!
December 26th, 2005 at 12:59 pm
@Tarek
). Brazil’s wealth is in fact one of the more threatened in the planet, not only trees, but also fauna, rivers, etc.
Nothing is sure, it’s just a theory, which seems logical however. We can’t deny it
@Adélia
Thanks for the information (obrigado pela informação
December 26th, 2005 at 3:45 pm
Tunisia = land of the drinking cats (not water, but usually beer)
December 26th, 2005 at 3:51 pm
lol
I agree with the word “beer”, but what do cats have to do here?