What is America? Is it this country? Or is
it this continent? Or is it this guy? Toponomyis the science that studies
the names of places,and it divides country names into four categories: 1. The
directly descriptive names. These are the countries that take the name from the
people that used to live there, or a feature of its ethnic group. France took
their name from the Franks tribe. Ghana got its name from an empire that used to
be there in the 13th century, and in case of Papua New Guinea. Papua means frizzyhiring and Guinea comes from the Tuareg word "Aguinaw" that means black people.
Korea is called DaeHan in Korean, and it means big Han, from the Han tribes that
established there in the second century BC. Vietnam took their name from the back
Viet tribe, that lived in the south east of China. Italy from the Vitali tribe, and
Switzerland by the Schwyz people. The second group is the country names taken
from some aspects of their land. In the southwest of Montenegro there's a
mountain with a dark grey color, if your Spanish is good enough, you'll know that
"Monte" means Mountain and "Negro" means black. Sierra Leone got its name from the
roaring sounds heard by the Portuguese colonizers in the mountains, they sounded like lion roars, but in fact they were thunders. Iceland is a funny story, the
Icelandic people didn't really want any visitors, so they decided to name the
island that way to deter visitors from coming.
The third group are the countries named after its location, Japan means "Land of
the Rising Sun" and they are in the east of China, and the Sun obviously rises
from the east. Same with the country of Timor Leste, "Timor" means "east" in Malay, and "Leste" means East in Portuguese, so they could be called "East-East". Australia
comes from "Australis" that means "Southern" in Latin, a short name of how the Greeks
call the lands on this side of the world. And South Africa was clever their
address is embedded on their name. - Hi dude what's your name
- I'm South Africa.
- But, where are you? - South Africa. The fourth and final group are the countries that take their name from a person like the Philippines,
named after Spain's King Philip. The second the America part of the United
States of America, name is thanks to this guy who figure that Christopher Columbus had found a new continent instead of landing in India, like he originally
thought. Some people didn't get the memo and still call these guys Indians.
Colombia as you probably figured his name in honor of Christopher Columbus,
Barbados means "The Bearded Ones". Columbus named that island after looking at the
banyan trees that you can find there. Other countries were named directly by
Columbus, like Santa Lucia, this is the only country named after a female name,
it was thanks to Santa Lucia of Syracuse a Christian martyr. Bolivia was named
after their national hero Simone Bolivar, the Solomon Islands after the biblical
King. And if you thought Turkey was named after a bird, you'd be wrong,
the name was taken after the ethnic group that used to live there. And then
there's a bonus group the rest names that don't fit into any of these groups,
like Comoros, comes from the Arabic "Al Qamar" and means "Moon". And talking about
the moon, Mexico which is a simplification of Metztlixihtlico... yeah say Mexico is a lot easier, it also means "In the novel of the Moon".
The Bhutanese people call their country group you'll that means land of a
thunder and Dragon which is pretty badass right? Now do you want something
more relaxing? Nauru which is an island in the Pacific was named after the indigenous
word "Anaero" which means "I go to the beach" Another curious case is the
Netherlands, aka Holland that's just a name of a province in the country. The
Holland area was very wealthy and had a lot of influence in the 19th century
over the rest of the country, thanks to that influence people began to
understand the Holland province as a referential point and took it as a
country name. Now in this part of the video is where we would add a name for
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