The place Did Europe’s International locations—and the UK—Get Their Names?

The typ­i­cal stu­dent trav­el­ing on a Eurail cross will cease in such lands as Öster­re­ich, Italia, Česko and Schweiz — also called Suisse, Svizzera, and Svizra. If that stu­dent hap­pens to hail from the Eng­lish-speak­ing world, the names Aus­tria, Italy, the Czech Repub­lic (the current transfer­ment for Czechia notwith­stand­ing), and Switzer­land will sound extra famil­iar. However the ques­tion inevitably involves thoughts whereas rid­ing between one his­tor­i­cal­ly and cul­tur­al­ly wealthy cap­i­tal to anoth­er: the place did all these coun­tries get their names in Eng­lish? How on Earth, for examination­ple, did Deutsch­land, identified in cer­tain oth­er Euro­pean lan­guages as Alle­magne, Ale­ma­nia, or Ale­man­ha, get to be referred to as Ger­many?

Lan­guage YouTu­ber Rob­Phrases has an expla­na­tion. “To the Romans, it was the land of the Ger­mani, their identify for the bizarre peo­ple converse­ing gib­ber­ish lan­guages to the east of the Riv­er Rhine,” he says in the video above, stand­ing in a for­est con­ve­nient­ly locat­ed in Ger­many itself.

They “additionally used the phrase ale­man­ni to explain a con­fed­er­a­tion of Ger­man­ic peo­ple, and that’s the place a load of oth­er lan­guages get their phrase for Ger­many too.” And the imply­ing of Deutsch­land? “Land of the Dutch,” that final actu­al­ly being the descen­dant of an previous Ger­man­ic phrase imply­ing ‘pop­u­lar’ or ‘peo­ple’ ” — which, earlier than that point, referred not sim­ply to human beings, however the pop­u­la­tion who spoke the area’s huge­ly beneath­stood “pop­u­lar lan­guages.”

Behind most each Euro­pean coun­attempt’s Eng­lish identify lies a sto­ry, if some­occasions an ambigu­ous, con­check­ed, and con­tro­ver­sial one. Most are additionally his­tor­i­cal­ly illu­mi­nat­ing: take Bel­gium, as soon as con­sid­ered a part of the Nether­lands (residence of the peo­ple we now name Dutch), whose identify derives from a tribe, or con­fed­er­a­tion of tribes, identified in Latin because the Bel­gae: a phrase “undertake­ed by peo­ple liv­ing within the south­ern Low Coun­tries dur­ing the area’s strug­gle for inde­pen­dence from Spain within the six­teenth cen­tu­ry.” Rob­Phrases has extra such sur­pris­ing information to disclose in the video simply above, during which he breaks down the names of all of the coun­tries within the Unit­ed King­dom, cov­er­ing Ire­land, Scot­land, Wales, his native Eng­land, and likewise the phrase Britain itself, in addition to the Nice usually connected to it. The lat­ter isn’t a boast, he stress­es, however somewhat a method of dis­tin­guish­ing the island from a part of France. As for which half, you’ll have to look at to search out out.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Map Reveals What Each Coun­attempt within the World Calls Itself in its Personal Lan­guage: Discover the “Endonyms of the World” Map

The Sur­pris­ing Pat­tern Behind the Names of Col­ors Across the World

A Map of How the Phrase “Tea” Unfold Throughout the World

Wel­come to Llan­truthful­p­wll­gwyn­gyll­gogerych­wyrn­drob­wl­l­l­lan­tysil­i­o­gogogoc, the City with the Longest Title in Europe

The His­to­ry of Europe from 400 BC to the Current, Ani­mat­ed in 12 Min­utes

The Complete His­to­ry of Eng­lish in 22 Min­utes

Based mostly in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. He’s the creator of the newslet­ter Books on Cities in addition to the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro. Fol­low him on the social internet­work for­mer­ly often called Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.