Example:
USA 美国 - 美 mean “beautiful” and 国 is “country”
So when my mom told me we were going to move to 美国, I, having never heard of anything about this country ever before, already had a positive impression of this “beautiful country”.
France 法国 - 法 is one of the characters in 法律, law, so my first impression was, that these people probably have very strict rules and are law abiders
Britain/UK 英国 - 英 is one of the characters in 英雄, hero, so I just imagine British people like to help the innocent (this was before I learned about British colonialism lol, but I guess the 英 character still sort of partly relevent, as in they view themselves as “hero”, aka: they interfere with other’s countries bussiness a lot)
Germany 德国 - 德 is one of the characters in 道德, morality, so I had a subconcious belief they were very moral people. I didn’t even know about the holocaust yet. 💀
Mexico 墨西哥 - 墨 is ink, 哥 is brother, so I though these are dark-skinned people that value brotherhood, masculinity.
South Korea 韩国 - 韩 sounds like 寒, so I just assumed it was a very cold country (isn’t it tho?) Oh BTW, I was in South Korea… in the airport waiting for a transfer flight, never actually entered the country for real, that was 15 years go, the closest I’ve ever been to South Korea. Wanna go there someday, see the snow (cuz its a 寒国 “cold country” remember xD)
Japan 日本 - 日 is the sun, so I thought it gets like very sunny or something
These are the few on the top of my head. You can mention any below and I can tell you what my “subconcious feel” about the name is.
Czech Republic?
Edit: And also Czechslovakia, and Slovakia, maybe. I’d love to hear whether there is connection between the names.
This is also a huge problem when deciding how to write foreign names into Chinese: imagine the difference in public perspective when reading a news article about some country leader named “Prime Minister Sleepy Swamp Pit” vs “Prime Minister Strong Universe Zephyr” or whatever.
Interesting, Japan does a similar thing I think and the US is 米国 meaning rice country. Which sort of makes sense since the US has always had a huge agricultural / grain surplus. I wonder if the japanese think / know we’re fat because of the name.
Also england/ UK is the same 英国 as above so maybe they learned about them from the Chinese whereas they independently learned about the US and gave it a different name.
I think and the US is 米国 meaning rice country.
Lmfao, pretty sure that’s also the Chinese Nationalists’ internet term for it
Is there an equivalent name for “the americas”? Its more like a region or whatever.
The continent of America is called 美洲, as in “the beautiful continent”
Most of those do make sense from a 19th century or older viewpoint, so I suspect that it’s not just a coincidence that those words were linked to those countries. If it was only one or a few with an ulterior meaning, then I could believe it to be a coincidence, but it’s most of them. I more believe that there were chinese word artists at work who looked for words with both a fitting meaning and the right sound.
When it comes to nature, the USA is a really beautiful country. France gave the world the Code Napoléon, which is one of the most influential evolutions in law systems. Britain’s success in it’s colonies and in the industrial revolution was very often based on the endeavours of individuals, ie heroes. Northern Germans are sticklers for following rules, politeness etc (which was back then viewed very positively by others, but has since become a bit tainted because an attitude of the law is the law will often lead to inhumanity). Mexico: not a clue. Korea: I just have vague guesses. Japan, when seen from northern China, is where the sun rises.
Interesting. In Japanese, we have the concept of ateji, where we just put Chinese characters for the sound so we just know not to take the meanings so literally. But we do tend to pick nice or neutral-sounding characters. i.e. we wouldn’t use characters like 死 or 糞 for the sound lol. This is the same for peoples’ names.
India is ‘stamp limit’?
Maybe Xuanzang was annoyed by how expensive it was to send letters home.
What about Brazil? What impression did you have?
I’ve always found it mildly xenophobic that basically 0 nations refer to any other nation by what that nation refers to itself as.
Xenophobic is a bit much. These names were mostly probably formed out of ignorance, and once a name is established it’s hard to change.
Yeah, how is that xenophobic?
I guess foggy there means it’s “mildly” xenophobic when you don’t bother to get someone’s name right.
A lot of names got changed during immigration due to wilful xenophobia last century, for example. Xenakis to Johnson, etc.
Structural linguistic problems like not having notation for foreign pronunciation isn’t necessarily xenophobic, but failure to address the problem might be.
Hi everyone, I’m from the great nation known as the Central Nation (中国, China) of Asia, known officially as, the Central Hua-People’s Republic (中 华人民 共和国, PRC)
🤣
Actually that kinds sound a bit “Ancient” and cooler.
Or do I use the Pinyin pronunciation instead of translating?
Hi everyone, I’m from Zhōnghuá Rénmín Gònghéguó. (Good luck pronouncing that with the tones correct 😉)
Interesting thought
I don’t think the other nations are too bothered by it in most cases.
The country that comes to mind first is Germany. They call it Deutschland. I never looked into why we as English speakers call it “Germany”. I just do it because everyone else does.
I haven’t heard of Germans getting upset about it. If they were legitimately offended, I’d start calling it Deutschland, no problem.
The real issues come in when there’s a historical context. Like, if the name contains a slur for the people in that nation. Or if you mix up the names of neighbouring Balkan countries.
IIRC Germany > Germania > Allemania > Alemanic tribes, people who lived in Germany. France calls them “Allemagne” as well, you can see where that came from.
Germany used to be a collection of tribes and depending on which of these tribes the countries around them had contact with that’s the name that stuck in that language.
- Germans call themselves Deutsche (from diutisc meaning “the people” in Old German)
- In French they are called Allemagne after the Alamanni tribe
- In Italian it’s Germania, same as the English Germany, from the ancient latin Germania with unknown origins
- In Finnish it’s Saksa, after the Saxon tribes
- Most slavic countries use some variant of Niemcy, which means “speechless”, because slavic and germanic languages have hardly anything in common and are thus unintelligible to each other.
Yeah, many Western European maps still refer to it as Alemania, which in beer contexts is quite a hoot :)
It’s been changing a bit with British English in a few places. I remember when the Netherlands was more commonly referred to as Holland, which is no longer that common at all anymore.
Netherlands isn’t exact with the native name being Nederlands and is instead more of a “sound-a-like” translation as if we had it spelled in it’s native way you know the lamen would instead just call it the Nedderlands.
Nederland and Netherlands both mean low country? Low as in Lower Rhine. It has an origin in the Roman name “Germania Inferior”.
Nether means low in English and Nederlands is mostly below sea level, but I wonder why it’s plural?
The late medieval Burgundians will have been the first to call it the low countries (les pays-bas). They acquired these territories (various duchies and counties in Belgium + Netherlands + bits around it) over time, not as one piece of land. All those different territories had different laws and traditions, different crown laws (HRE or kingdom of France), different local charters, … It wasn’t one country, so plural makes sense.
It used to be the Kingdom of the United Netherlands. I mean, it still is, but now that refers to everything including Curaçao, Saint Martin, etc
From what I read, a lot of these character choices (with the exception of Japan/Korea, they might have chosen those themselves) were made with the dual considerations of being similar sounding to the country name and the hanzi’s meaning being flattering to the people of the country. And there are plenty of country names that are entirely phonetic (e.g. 意大利 for Italy or 澳大利亚 for Australia, Mexico, etc.).
Japan definitely chose it themselves. Before, the country was known as 倭国, with 倭 meaning something like harmonic but also submissive. Obviously one Tennō wasn’t too happy about that and began signing letters to the Chinese court as “from the ruler of the land where the sun rises (日本) to the ruler of the land where the sun sets.” So Japan became the “Land of the rising sun” (well literally it’s the “sun’s origin”).
Paging Dr Chomsky.
This is fascinating! Thank you for posting
The Netherlands (荷蘭), obviously is something with flowers. Google translate tells me 蘭 means “orchid”. Also the sound “Hèlán” is fairly close to how the natives pronounce “Nederland”.
‘Holland’ as some use for ‘the Netherlands’ is a bit of a pars pro toto as Holland is a province of the Netherlands. Is just the most well known part, and more easier pronounce with one/two syllables (depending on how well you’re articulating).
Thanks for the etymology btw I was curious about it when I read the op.
What about Canada?
They just picked some characters that sound like ‘Canada’. It probably means something nonsensical like Greedy Purple Turtle
Unfortunately, it means even less than Greedy Purple Turtle.
加 - add 拿 - grasp 大 - big
All Canadians (at least of a certain age) have learned the etymology of the word Canada from this heritage minute that used to be played all the time on TV: https://youtu.be/nfKr-D5VDBU
God, Canada is fucking awesome. I’ve never even been, but everything I’ve heard and seen about it just makes it seem insane.
I know most of the jokes on South Park are fictional, but my God if seeing this didn’t remind me of the canadians’ “Box of Faith” from that one episode.
Ah well hopefully someone who knows the meaning can come share.
Kind of ironic that we named the western countries with nice words and got invaded instead
美國 can be very 美, politics aside
Time Square and the surrounding area is cool, although it make me anxious as fuck since I’m an introvert and because 嗰時咁細個喺外國，英語當時亦唔係幾好, so I kinda have to stay very close to 父母 to feel safe, but its just amazing how so many people can fit in such a tiny island (Manhattan, that is)
唐人街 in 曼克頓 is a reminder that I’m not alone is this place, last I checked, there are 5 Million of us here, it’s always a good reality check when faced with the constant news of political problems and the government constantly threatening to deport people.
My mom always said “唔洗怕，如果係排華唔會淨係趕你一個人” (You won’t be the only one to be deported, we’d all be together) lmao
I remember 啱啱來到美國嗰時 we’d use the subway a lot, but when we cross from Booklyn, where we lived, to Manhattan, the subway goes above ground to cross the water separating the two 區 on a bridge. That was the coolest scenes, just crossing the bridge, looking outside of the window of the subway. This place is so big.
I remember in 廣州, 住喺嗰啲樓，the apartment unit was 好窄好邋遢
嗰時喺布碌崙租嘅個間單位 (its a townhouse in suburban area, not a apartment building)，雖然亦係覺得好窄，但係覺得好似比較新，現代，like… it’s just 睇落去好好多，睇落去順眼 know what I mean?
There are just so many cool places like there’s 好多公園 and 好多樹 where 廣州到冇咁多 greenery，空氣冇咁好
It really is a beautiful country, but then you have these politicians trying to ruin it… and also um… 你知啦… foreign policy… 👀
