What We Call Countries VS What They Call Themselves

names more specifically country names every country is called something other than its flag or national anthem it's the main way to identify a nation by what we call it but countries aren't called the same thing everywhere and sometimes they vary with language what i'm talking about is the difference between an exonym and an endonym an endonym from the greek endon meaning inner and onoma meaning name is a native name for a geographical place meaning that it is used inside that place by its people while an exonym from the greek exo meaning outer and ronoma also meaning name is a non-native name for that same place meaning that it is only used outside of it by people that don't live there each country has at least one end of them it has to call itself something but it can have various accidents throughout the world for instance deutschland is the endonym for the country that is also known by the exonym germany in english and aleman in french exonyms aren't just translations of the native name into another language while they can be that they can also be fully different names that a particular people of the world have for that nation the reason for the difference between the endonyms and the various exonyms are usually one of three it can be derived from a different route as is the case with germany and deutschland they can be equivalent words only different in pronunciation or ortography ethiopia is an example of this with the endonym being ethiopia and those that are fully or partially translated from the native language because of an inability of pronouncing the native endonym so now that we've become aware that this is a reality country is being known differently throughout the world and now that we've understood what endonyms and exonyms are plus the difference between them let's look at a few examples of these differences throughout the world learning which countries are known by different names why that is and what they mean there is a really cool website that summarizes this whole topic endeniummap.com all credit to them for going through the effort of making this in it we can take a look at this really cool map which identifies each country with the name it calls itself it's ended him however some are not understandable to someone from europe or america unless you happen to speak arabic russian or some of the many asian languages which brings about another interesting aspect of this topic which languages are used for countries endonyms most countries have their own language and so their name for themselves is written in that language like turkey using turkish or portugal using portuguese but going from portugal's example portuguese is also used as the endonym language in many other countries worldwide a consequence of their colonialism and this happens as well mostly with english french and spanish portuguese is used in the endowments of eight countries spanish by 20 countries mostly in america french by 24 countries slash territories worldwide some in discount include french overseas territories and english is used in the endonyms of 60 countries or territories worldwide by far the most used language and then there are also other examples of languages used in not many but more than one country endonym such as romanian used by romanian and moldova and russian used by russia belarus and transnistria but like i mentioned this map is in the native languages in most cases becoming understandable when you don't know every language in the world so in addition i found this other map made by reddit user crimea hat which takes countries endonyms and then directly translates them into english which is a good exercise because it allows us to understand as i mentioned earlier that exonyms the names we call countries aren't always just a direct translation of their endonyms egypt's endonym is this in arabic and in english it's egypt but if you directly translate its endonym to english it is miser miser is an arabic name simply meaning country while egypt comes from the greek egyptos which was the greek pronunciation of the ancient egyptian name utkapta mention of the spirit bataan i'm going to mispronounce a lot of things in this video the greek exodus for egypt at the time was just a direct translation of its endonym but while the endonym changed in the meantime the exonym remained the same most of the countries whose endonym language is a latin language are essentially the same in other latin exonyms being just a literal translation one example is the caribbean island shared between france and the netherlands samachti sint martin as we see in this map the direct translation of endonyms is essentially the same throughout america as the exonyms in english are but as we get to europe this changes despite all the nations using latin scripts finland's endonym is swami ireland's is ade switzerland is el vitya greece elas and albania chicpedia as well as the first example we gave of germany being deutschland oh and hungary whose endonym is magyar rorzag germany comes from germania land of the germany an ancient tribe of the area named by julius caesar while deutschland comes from the old high german diustic which means of the people essentially land of the people finland equals land of the finns while swami just means land elvettia refers to an ancient local tribe while switzerland means land of the swiss greece was the roman latin name for elas the greek name of the territory chickpedia is derived from the word shkiptoi meaning to speak intelligibly i think while albania is the medieval latin name of the country which may be derived from the elydian tribe of the albany armenias is ayastan and georgia sacartvelo georgia after saint george or some people say it has another russian origin and sacartvelo is the native term for land of the cartevelians which i imagine were a local people in africa the direct translation of endonyms mostly corresponds to the english exonyms due to the colonization of european powers of these countries the only exception seemed to be egypt as we already saw algeria is al-jazeed a similar word to algeria but in the original arabic morocco is maghrib an arabic term literally meaning place of the setting of the sun while the latin word morocco comes from the capital of marrakesh it's interesting because maghreb in some european countries is used to describe an entire region in addition to morocco and not just the country also as we'll see ahead japan's entertaining means land of the rising sun it's interesting that morocco's indonesia is precisely the opposite all other african nations seem to have their endonyms being the same as their exonyms in english the only difference being in the spelling and pronunciation being done in the native languages in asia most are also just native versions of the english exonyms with the exceptions of china whose endonym is zhongguo meaning the central state in the native language while china seems to come from the persian word for the region bhutan's native name is drokul which literally means country of the drukpalig lineage or the land of the thunder dragon a much cooler name honestly north korea is called chozon which apparently literally means north korea in the local language while south korea calls itself angok the great han republic japan as i mentioned earlier is internally called nihon meaning origin of the sun and india is barat which originates from the sanskrit word barata which stands for agni meaning fire while india comes from the name of the river sindhu that has been used in greek since the 5th century bc it becomes further evident that many of the current english exonyms come from ancient greek perhaps due to the fact that many ancient maps were made by the greeks and place names in these maps were of course chosen by them in oceania there don't seem to be any major differences between endonyms and exonyms in english with them being the same at times translated to the local language new zealand is identified as aotearoa which is the native name for new zealand by the native maori people one literal translation seems to be long white cloud or long canoe while new zealand might come from the dutch province of zealand if you notice any mistakes in what i'm saying please let me know in the comments sometimes i might have the wrong information so in summary when we directly translated endonyms into english there are very few countries throughout the world with endonyms that have different meanings than their english exonyms with most of them just being direct translations with just small changes in spelling and pronunciation from my rough count through this map there are only about 17 countries worldwide whose antonyms are fully different words than their english exonims and not just a translation or adaptation there are also cases of countries who have requested other countries to stop using exonyms when referring to them using the native name in the local language two examples of this or cotivoir in africa which has requested countries use the french name instead of always translating the words into other languages creating names like ivory coast or costa del merci capo verde did the same asking for the portuguese ended him to be used instead of its exonyms such as cape verde and examples of countries which had endonyms that were a consequence of european colonization and then chose to change them effectively changing the name of their countries for instance in 1972 the government of then ceylon which is the anglicized form of the portuguese cello changed the name to sri lanka and swaziland changed its name to iswatini the same meaning land of the swazis but in native language so those are the names we call countries versus the names they call themselves understanding what endonyms and exonyms are the internal names of countries and the names other countries call those same places respectively and learning that exonyms aren't always direct translations of endonyms into another language but whole other names altogether varying in their origin although it's important to note that the comparison we did between endonyms and exonyms in this video was made using the direct translation of them into english the cases we saw here might not be common to all other languages and they're exams for nations throughout the world having a video which listed out and compared all the exonyms and endonyms that each country has for all the countries worldwide would not only be too long but also i think too dense and specific to be interesting although there are some specific interesting cases like norway being the only european country that refers to greece by ella's so if you have any interesting information about how a specific country calls another let me know in the comments below thanks so much for watching this video subscribe if you want and i will see you next time for more general knowledge [Music]

Channel: General Knowledge

Views: 820,122

Keywords: generalknowledge, funwithflags, countriesthatdon'texist

Id: lIlzGRcE3rY

Length: 10min 59sec (659 seconds)

Published: Fri May 06 2022