What’s In A (Country’s) Name? Names of nations have a history of their own By Emily Liz Helgersen “What’s in a name?” the title female character of William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet asks. “That which we call a rose/By any other name would smell as sweet.” Indeed, like Juliet, most of us do not consider names – of people, places or inanimate objects – particularly relevant. But names often possess a history and meaning and can tell us a great deal about the entities they describe. Therefore I have decided to do a bit of research and write an article on the names of countries – what these names mean, what they say about the place in question, and what their future may hold. (Note: some places mentioned are not nations in a political sense but will be identified as such for the purpose of this essay.) One surprising fact is that not all nations have similar names in different languages. Some of course do. That of my country, Canada, is virtually the same everywhere. In our two official tongues – English and French – “Canada” is spelled identically, the only difference being that in pronunciation the stress falls on the last syllable in French. It’s also fairly easy to recognize in the German “Kanada.” On the other hand, it is not readily apparent that “Sverige,” “Suecia” and “Sweden” describe a single country in Swedish, Spanish and English respectively. In addition, some nations known under one name by outsiders may go by an entirely different one at home. While Hungary, for example, appears as “Hongrie” in French, “Ungheria” in Italian, and “Ungarn” in German, Hungarians themselves call their land “Magyarország” after the Magyars, a West Siberian tribe that invaded Hungary in the tenth century AD. To complicate matters further, present-day Hungary was known in Roman times as Pannonia, which happens to be the name of a bookstore near my home in Toronto which sells Hungarian-language literature. Similarly, the Finns call their nation not Finland but “Suomi,” which some scholars believe hails from the Finnish “suo,” or “swamp.” _____________________ It is not readily apparent that “Sverige,” “Suecia” and “Sweden” describe a single country. _____________________ It is perhaps worth discussing how countries get their names in the first place. At times they are named after a particular individual who may have played a direct or indirect role in that nation’s history. The Philippines, for instance, was given its appellation by Spanish explorer Ruy López de Villalobos in 1542 in honour of King Philip II of Spain. In recent years some Filipino nationalists have suggested that because the Spanish king represented colonization and exploitation (the Philippines was under Spanish rule for 300 years) the country should be renamed “Lapulapu Land” after the native chieftain Lapulapu who repelled and killed explorer - or some might say invader - Ferdinand Magellan in 1521. Another former colony of Spain, Colombia, took its name from Christopher Columbus. Ironically, Columbus himself never set foot in what is now Colombian territory, but he did sail to Venezuela, which after gaining independence in 1819 was part of a federation known as Gran Colombia, “Greater Colombia.” Some countries take their name from a natural or manmade feature they possess. The word “Poland” refers to a tribe called the Polanie, or “people of the plain” (“pol” meaning “plain”), which pretty much describes that country’s landscape. “Italia” comes from “Vitelia,” a derivative of the Latin word “vitellus,” or “calf,” the root, via Old French, of our “veal.” Thus Italy was the land of cattle. It may be no coincidence that before the advent of the Euro one of Italy’s coins bore a picture of a cow and calf on one side. On the American continent Venezuela, “Little Venice,” was designated as such because the native Indians’ stilt villages on water reminded Spanish explorers of the Italian city. Names and those who bequeath them can be deceiving, however. The Viking Erik the Red, for example, gave Greenland its appellation in an attempt to attract Scandinavians from the mainland to the colony, even though most of it was covered by polar ice cap rather than verdant fields. On the other hand, the Vikings called another island Iceland despite its relatively mild – for its latitude – climate. _____________________ Italy was the land of cattle. _____________________ Other nations derive their names from groups of people, even if they were not the first inhabitants of the land in question. “England,” for instance, means “land of the Angles,” the Germanic tribe that, together with the Saxons and the Jutes, conquered the island in the fifth century AD and gave her their language. Across the Channel, another Germanic people, the Franks (“free ones”), invaded what was then Gaul and made it France. While unlike the Angles the Franks did not manage to impose their speech on the existing population, they provided a number of loan words to the French language, like “blanc” for white in lieu of the Latin “albus.” Curiously, neighbouring Belgium does take its name from its original inhabitants, a Celtic tribe called the Belgae mentioned by Julius Caesar – even though their language ceased to be spoken long ago. A few countries obtained their names from an event in their history, usually their discovery. The Caribbean island Dominica - Latin for “Lord’s Day” - was designated so by Christopher Columbus, who spotted it on Sunday, November 3, 1493. A little over nine years later, French sailors in the same sea called another island St. Lucia after they reportedly sighted it on December 13, St. Lucy’s Day (see my article on St. Lucy’s Day in last issue’s feature section). Finally, one might guess that Easter Island was named because it was first seen by Europeans on an Easter Sunday – in this case on April 5, 1722 by Dutch captain Jacob Roggeveen. Nothing in this world is constant, so it should surprise no one that the names of nations also change. Frequently this change is occasioned by political factors. A renowned example is Rhodesia, named after the British Cecil Rhodes, founder of the De Beers diamond company. Following independence from Britain, however, the people of Rhodesia decided they wanted a more African identity, so they chose to re-brand their country Zimbabwe - though “Rhodesia” still lives on in the breed of dog known as the Rhodesian ridgeback. Likewise the term Yugoslavia, “land of the South Slavs,” given to that country after World War I found itself headed for obsolescence after the republics that formed it broke away into separate nations, such as Slovenia, Croatia and Macedonia. Even the republics of Serbia and Montenegro, which remained within the federation for some time afterward, eventually discarded the name Yugoslavia in 2003 (Montenegro and Serbia have since parted ways politically). So when Juliet asks “What’s in a name?” one might respond “More than you would expect.” Emily Liz Helgersen is a secretary and musician based in Canada. When she’s not busy with her job, social activities and hobbies, she likes to write about religion, music, culture or anything else that happens to strike her fancy. In this picture here she’s trying to look composed despite the fact her brother is pinching her arm. You can contact her at ehelgersen@hotmail.com This website: Copyright © 2007 Dream World Media, LLC. / Urban Mozaik Magazine. All rights reserved. This website/publication, in whole or in part, may not be reproduced without written permission from the publisher or the previous publisher of original republished materials.