Why Is Hrvatska Called Croatia In English?

support name explained on patreon for one dollar a month to enjoy ad free videos exclusive content your name at the end of each video as well as the chance to have your idea for name explaining video made into reality go to patreon.com forward slash name explain or click the link down below Croatia is a nation located in central south east Europe it resides primarily across the north eastern coast of the Adriatic Sea and shares the land borders of Slovenia Hungary and Bosnia and husqvina the nation is home to around 4 million people with an area of just over 20 000 miles squared is it part of the Balkans well that seems to be somewhat debated and the general consensus is that parts of this nation sit within the Balkans Peninsula it is also a staggeringly beautiful country with places like split the island of Kirk and the brovnik especially looking like locations ripped straight out of a fantasy series or something the nation is also home to the largest truffle ever found up until 2014 and when the record was beaten this seriously seems to be a point of pride in Croatia and rightfully so I suppose I feel Croatia's biggest claim to fame should be its incredible determination to make sure that Bosnia husqvina got as minimal Coastline as possible in many languages around the world this country is called Croatia like in English or has a name of a similar sound take the French name of karate or the German name of a karatyan or the Hindi name of a Croatia or even the Japanese name of karachiya all these names sound very similar to that name of Croatia however a name sounding like this isn't Universal for the nation many languages use a name for Croatia that sounds nothing like Croatia the most noticeable example of this being the official language of the nation itself Croatian yep in Croatian Croatia isn't called Croatia it is instead called this name of halwatska looks and sounds nothing like the name of Croatia this is something English language couldn't end the name and an exonym an endonym is is the native name for a location used by his native speakers whereas an exonym is the name used for that area by non-native speakers so in this case harvatzka is the in the Nim and Croatia is the exonym Croatia is far from the only country to have different names in different languages there's Deutschland in Germany so me and Finland and so on the early days of name explained had a strong focus on these kinds of names but I haven't talked about them in years so it felt right to highlight them again anyway creation isn't the only language to use any for the country along the lines of havatska the languages of Slovenian Serbian and Bosnian will use similar names to hovatzka to refer to the country of Croatia you would probably notice this but there is something of a link between these nations that use havasca sounding names the languages mentioned of Croatian Slovenian Serbian and Bosnian oh syllabic languages it seems that Slavic languages tend to favor names that sound like kovatska though there are non-slavic languages that use Harvard inspired names such as the Turkish navy creature of havatistan or the Hungarian name of holdvato saga I imagine these kinds of names came about due to Geographic closeness to Croatia as opposed to linguistic closeness what's perhaps most interesting however is that many other Slavic languages use names for the country that seem like something of a hybrid between the names of krisha and harvatzka take the check name for the country of horvatzko or the Polish name of horazia these names that sound like a weird mixture of Croatia and harvaska aren't some weird human-made construct made to try and please everybody there is a reason that they sound like both names and that's because the names of Croatia and habaska are very much linked together in fact they're the exact same name often when it comes to antonyms and exonyms the names are completely different with different Origins and etymologies the aforementioned examples of Germany and Deutschland are a great example of that these two names mean completely different things with different Origins entirely this is not the case with Croatia and harvatzka however these are the same word with the same meaning just translated into different languages in fact what will be more fitting to say is that Croatia is just the English translation of the name havasca yeah harvatzka is the original form of this name before it was changed into Croatia which makes sense considering it's the native name for the land it would be strange if the name Outsiders use came first then the natives adapted it though countries having names given to them by non-natives isn't an entirely novel concept I suppose this name of harvatska Simply means the land of the crowds with quotes being the name of this London native inhabitants or as the croats are called in their native creation the harvati understanding that the crote according in their native language should help make the name of havasca make a tad more sense we can see these people's names in the former part of the name harvatzka I believe the scar at the end is a Slavic name forming element meaning land slash Landover we see in the native name of another Slavic speaking Nation too that being Poland and then native name of poliskar this means that the English name of Croatia also means the land of The Croods too and this is probably much easier to figure out I imagine for many of us we can clearly see their name at the start of this name and the ever-present ear suffix means Landover as many of you know I'm sure so while we know the country's name is land of the what we aren't so sure about is how exactly the harvati got their name to begin with obviously we know it would have been harvati initially before being translated into crowds but beyond that we really aren't too sure the name is pretty old most likely coming from the Middle Ages and annoyingly sometimes this kind of information was never fully recorded or kept track of her linguists over the years however have come up with some potential ideas as to what the name of hervati might mean and where it came from Wikipedia has a whole heap of these ideas and while we won't highlight all of them we will focus on a select viewer one idea is that it means tree perhaps in relation to the havati living amongst the trees another idea is that it means Ranger or Highlander or that it means freedom or to cut or strike one idea is that it means well-armed or Warriors clad with Holland but those ideas aren't thought to be as accurate by today's standards one of the more popular theories however is that it means mountains relating to the Russian word for mountain chains I'm sure you get the idea we really have a minimal clue where exactly the name haravati came from but people have had a good crack at it what we really know for sure is that they did have this name and eventually their land got named after them adopting that name of harvatzka that it still has today so who was it that turned harvatzka into the name of Croatia well it was of course the Romans and their Latin the land area that is now Croatia came under Roman rule in 32 BC and stayed under Roman rule until around 480 A.D this makes sense as the land is just across the water from the Italian Peninsula Croatia played a large role in the history of Rome 2. perhaps most noticeably one of the few Emperors who actually retired as opposed to died or was killed Diocletian were tied to the city of split which is in modern day creature his Palace is still one of the city's most popular landmarks while they had the land that made take some Modern Croatia they didn't actually call it Croatia to begin with nor did they call it haratsuka instead they named it Dalmatia in relation to another tribe who lived in this area to this day an area of Croatia is still cool down Asia by the time the name of volvati and harvatzka had come into use in the Middle Ages the Western Roman Empire was long gone and Latin had transformed into medieval Latin Vulgar Latin this was a more corrupt form of Latin spoken across Europe at this time in fact most modern romance languages like French and Spanish actually derived from Vulgar Latin as opposed to the proper OG Latin at this time a Vulgar Latin was being used as something of a lingua Franca across all of Europe even in parts of the continent that didn't use romance languages like in syllabic speaking parts of the continent now Slavic languages and romance languages are two very different kettles of fish each language feature different sounds and letter orders to each other which wouldn't fly in the other language when Latin speak came across words that didn't fit nearly into their language they adapted them so they could and harvatzka is a clear example of that this word of Harvard didn't gel with Latin speakers at all for a variety of reasons I mean just look at it a cluster of three consonants at the start of the word is unheard of in most romance languages one of the biggest issues was the first letter the H H has a strange history with Latin from being pronounced to being silent in different time periods by the Middle Ages it seems that Vulgar Latin speakers were not pronouncing H's this meant that Latin speakers who encountered this name had to do some Autumn to it so they could even pronounce it the first thing they did was add a c to the start of it CH was a much more acceptable way of starting a word in Latin so this made the name more manageable this gave us the name of travatska though as the H was silent it disappeared and gave us clovatzka the next issue this named faced for Latin speakers was that V between the r and the a these do not really appear all that often like this in Latin making it difficult to say to Latin speakers to combat this issue the V was replaced with a vow to make the word easy to say for Latin speakers the vowel was of course an O were with this change you will see we have already arrived at the name of klotzka the final thing that Latin speakers needed to do was replace the Slavic land of suffix scar with their own land of suffix ear and bingo we have the name Croatia this name of Croatia stuck around in Volga Latin and made its way across Europe being adapted into the various forms of the name that we mentioned up top the nation of Croatia itself however stuck with that name of javatska while over the years since the Middle Ages the land of Croatia found itself under a variety of different rulers from the dual monarchy to being part of Yugoslavia but it held on to that name using it when the nation took on its modern form in 1991 despite the fact that the names of Croatia and haravatska seem so different at first glance when we take it step by step to see how one name transformed into another we can see the change fairly clearly so why is harvatzka called Croatia in English well it's basically because the Latin speakers couldn't be bothered to figure out how to pronounce it foreign depends on viewers like yourself supporting the channel financially on patreon so a huge thank you to everyone who does donating just one dollar a month helps the channel amazingly and gets you bonuses including ad-free videos exclusive content the power to request ideas to be made into actual name explaining videos and your name at the end of the video with all these awesome people visit patreon.com forward slash name explain or click the link down below to find out how you too can support the channel thank you thanks for reaching the end of the video why not watch another And subscribe to keep up to date on all things name explained you can find myself on Instagram while name explain YT and join the Facebook group of friends on name explained to talk with myself and other name nerds although that will be linked down below anyway I hope you enjoyed this video and once again thank you all so much foreign

Channel: Name Explain

Views: 112,966

Keywords: Name Explain, Etymology, Language, Word Origins, Educational Videos, Geography Video, Croatia, Hrvatska

Id: vM2Re3Vv6tU

Length: 11min 37sec (697 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 24 2023