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    Countries with Completely Different Native Names


    Countries with Completely Different Native Names

    Posted by Senior-Foot-5316

    View 27 Comments

    27 Comments

    2. Danxs11 on

      I think that Hrvatska and Nippon are kinda straightforward. Both Croatia and Japan are just mispronunciations of the original names.

    3. fasterthanraito on

      Japan does actually come from Nippon through the telephone game of translating through Chinese and then Malaysian

      Nippon -> Nihon -> Riben-> Zipangu -> Japan

    5. Impactor07 on

      India has many more names actually.

      Hindustan, Bharatvarsh, Aryavarta, etc.(Hindustan is commonly used as well)

    6. miclugo on

      Crna Gora needs a footnote: it translates to “black mountain”, as does Montenegro.

      And Morocco is surprising – it kind of sounds like Maghrib. But “Morocco” is actually cognate with the name of the city of Marrakesh – compare Algiers/Algeria and Tunis/Tunisia, although it’s not as obvious as those two with the current English names. But “Maghreb” is a totally different word, Arabic for “west”, while the origin of “Marrakesh” is unclear but from Berber.

    8. treets11 on

      “Completely different” …compared to what?

      For a Chinese speaker ALL native names are completely different. Same applies for most languages in the world.

    10. sometimes_point on

      taps the sign … “if you’re including Croatia you should include Austria”

      also Albania is straight up missing.

      very subjective and also extremely overposted

    15. Capital_Action_2334 on

      Typical arrogant USain defaultism: “Countries with Completely Different Native Names”

      Different from WHAT??? The English language.

    17. Incorrigible_Gaymer on

      If Croatia is there, Austria should be too. “Österreich” is about as far from “Austria”, as “Hrvatska” from “Croatia”.

    19. Not_JN on

      For Egypt, the name Misr is in Arabic, but in the language of ancient Egyptians it’s name was Kemet.

    20. PeasantLich on

      Finnish has some pretty unique names for its neighbors as well. Sweden is called “Ruotsi”, Estonia is called “Viro” and Russia is called “Venäjä”. Also Germany is called “Saksa”.

    24. Proxy-Pie on

      Egypt is an interesting case. Misr is the semetic name of Egypt, now used by them after they got Arabized. Whereas the English name derives from one of Memphis’ names in Ancient Egyptian, corrupted through various languages.