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cg rommel
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Topic: Meaning of country names. Posted: 07-Jan-2006 at 04:10 |
i think it would be more logical if they name iceland greenland, and named greenland iceland .....
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o_irengun
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Posted: 07-Jan-2006 at 04:42 |
Greek name for greece hellas-Light of wisdom
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Maju
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Posted: 07-Jan-2006 at 05:01 |
Originally posted by ulrich von hutten
and ICELAND - not a big surprise from the land out of ice.
Some norwegian settlers found the island in the middle of the 9th
century. they had an special navigation system- three black raven and
no gps
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I like the system.
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NO GOD, NO MASTER!
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Maju
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Posted: 07-Jan-2006 at 05:49 |
The names of the Basque:
The Basque Country is called Vasconia or
simmilar in Latin and other languages. This derives from the ancient
tribe of the Vascones, which comprised only part of the Basque-speaking
country, and whose ethymology is unknown.
We call our country Euskal Herria: the people or nation of Euskara (the Basque language). Basque is said Euskaldun, meaning Basque-speaker. It's not clear where the term Euskara (also Euskera) derives from. Yet the suffix -era/-ara means "mode" and is commonly used for languages ( Gaztelera = Castilian or Spanish, Frantsesera = French, etc.). Yet, if you look at any Basque dictionary you may notice that the only few words that start with eusk- are derivations of the verb eutsi,
meaning persist, sustain. I have hypothetized that it should be
translated as "the persistent language" or the "sustaining language"
but it's just my opinion, nothing more.
Basque names of the 7 provinces:
- Navarre (Nafarroa), originally Nabarra: nabar(-ra)
is a common adjective meaning both wide and brown, it probably referred
to the geography of the Basque lands south of the Pyrenees.
- Lower Navarre (Behenafarroa): no mistery here. Notice that lower is "up" in the map.
- Biscay (Bizakaia): an old word for "the mountain".
- Gipuzkoa, originally also Ipuzkoa. Origin unknown.
- Alava (Araba): some have speculated it could come from the Arabs
but it's much more likely that it comes from a Roman town called Alba.
- Labourd (Lapurdi): from the ancient city of Lapurdum, now Bayonne (Baiona)
- Soule (Zuberoa or also Xiberue in their dialect): uncertain.
Some other sub-Pyrenaic Basque names:
- Adour river (Adur): Adur is the magyc floid that is everywhere according to Basque mythology
- Ebro river (Iber): Ibar means river bank in Basque
- Garonne river (Garona): The suffix -on(-a) means "near". Garona would be literally "near the flame" (gar) but it could also be originally "gariona" (near the wheat - gari). Unclear.
- Aragon river and country (Aragoi): high valley. Originally Aragon county was just a valley in the high Pyrennees.
- Aran valley: redoundant name, aran means precisely valley (it can also mean berry and tanned)
- Tolouse (Tolosa): there's another Tolosa in Gipuzkoa. It means
twisted, folded. It seems to mean a place where the river is somehow
folded with meanders or making a curve.
- Many ancient Iberian cities ended (or started) their name in -iri, -uri, -ili, -uli. All those words mean city in
Basque but, of course, it should be an Iberian loan. Yet some ancient
Iberian cities had names that are perfectly traslatable using Basque,
most notably Iliberri (in Rousillon and modern Granada too), which
directly translates as "new city".
Some Latin American places with Basque ethymology:
- Durango, a major city of Mexico, takes its name from the town of
Durango, Biscay, with unclear ethymology (Edur-an-go?, Adur-an-go?,
Padur-an-go?... they would mean "from where the..." "snow", "magic
floid" and "swamp", respectively)
- All "Bolivarian" names, specially Bolivia. Bolibar is a village of Biscay too, from where the surname of El Libertador comes. Here the ethymology is only a little more clear: -ibar means, as mentioned above, river bank. But the role of the Bol- prefix is equally unclear.
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NO GOD, NO MASTER!
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Spartakus
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Posted: 07-Jan-2006 at 06:02 |
You love high explainable topics,don't you?
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"There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them. "
--- Joseph Alexandrovitch Brodsky, 1991, Russian-American poet, b. St. Petersburg and exiled 1972 (1940-1996)
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Posted: 10-Jan-2006 at 13:36 |
Originally posted by Komnenos
Niemcy (Polish) and similar in other Slavic languages, apparently from a Slavic word for dumb, not able to speak( the Slavic lang., I suppose)
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Yes, it's obviously true but there is a possibility that the word "niemy", which means just "dumb" or "mute" originates from two words "nie"+"my" (which mean respectively "not"+"we"). These two words are basic in every language and as a result of that they evolve relatively slowly. What I mean is that the Polish word for "Germans" indirectly comes from the words "not" +"we" like in the pattern: nie+my (not+we)=niemy (dumb, mute) and then Niemcy (Germans). I'm not entirely sure about that nevertheless I wouldn't exclude such a possibility.
Edited by Dharmagape
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Ellinas
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Posted: 10-Jan-2006 at 15:16 |
Hellas (Greece) means land of light as already some mentioned.
The name formed by Hellin (child of the sun/enlighted mind) son of Deukalion and Pyrra in Greek mythology, the couple who survived the last great cataclysm, the first ancestor of all the Hellenes.
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Posted: 11-Jan-2006 at 13:51 |
I dunno if someone already wrote the meaning of Afghanistan, but here it is: Afghan- obviously Afghan, and -istan means land. So Afghanista means the land of Afghans, and this can be applied to other countries too. EX. Tajiistan (Tajik-istan), Turkministan, Uzbekistan...
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Nagyfejedelem
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Posted: 11-Jan-2006 at 15:46 |
It's interesting. The Hungarian word for Germans is 'nmet', similar to 'nma', which means dumb. They are Slavic loan-words in Hungarian, aren't they?
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Posted: 11-Jan-2006 at 16:43 |
Originally posted by Nagyfejedelem
It's interesting. The Hungarian word for Germans is 'nmet', similar to 'nma', which means dumb. They are Slavic loan-words in Hungarian, aren't they? |
Yes, they are. When I was in Eger and watched weather forecast on Hungarian TV I noticed the similarities between Polish and Hungarian names for some days of week. I'll give you examples: English Hungarian Polish (pr. - pronounce) Wednesday szerda roda (pr. sh'roda) (sh' - soft s) Thursday csutortok czwartek (pr. tchvartek) Friday pentek pitek (pr. pyontek) Saturday szombat sobota I suppose that there are another similarities as well. To the best of my knowledge the explanation for this lies in the fact that when Magyars came to Panonia and conquered local Slavs they took over some Slavic words. I apologize to all Hungarians for not writing Hungarian diacritics but I truly didn't know how to do it.
Edited by Dharmagape
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Ponce de Leon
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Posted: 13-Jan-2006 at 12:27 |
Spain is derived from Hispania which in Latin means "land of the bunnies"
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Ponce de Leon
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Posted: 13-Jan-2006 at 12:27 |
Spain is derived from Hispania which in Latin means "land of the bunnie rabbits"
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Raider
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Posted: 16-Jan-2006 at 02:40 |
Originally posted by Dharmagape
Originally posted by Nagyfejedelem
It's interesting. The Hungarian word for Germans is 'nmet', similar to 'nma', which means dumb. They are Slavic loan-words in Hungarian, aren't they? |
Yes, they are. When I was in Eger and watched weather forecast on Hungarian TV I noticed the similarities between Polish and Hungarian names for some days of week. I'll give you examples: English Hungarian Polish (pr. - pronounce) Wednesday szerda roda (pr. sh'roda) (sh' - soft s) Thursday csutortok czwartek (pr. tchvartek) Friday pentek pitek (pr. pyontek) Saturday szombat sobota
I suppose that there are another similarities as well. To the best of my knowledge the explanation for this lies in the fact that when Magyars came to Panonia and conquered local Slavs they took over some Slavic words. I apologize to all Hungarians for not writing Hungarian diacritics but I truly didn't know how to do it.
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You are right. These are loan-words from the conquest era. Other day-names are from different origin but they are a similar type.
Monday - Htf -> first/head of the week (finno-ugric), since Monday is the first day of the week.
Tuesday - Kedd -> second (finno-ugric)
Wednesday - Szerda -> 3rd day
Thursday - Cstrtk -> 4th day
Friday - Pntek -> 5th day
Saturday - Szombat from Sabbath and
Sunday -vasrnap = market -day (Iranian) are exceptions.
Edited by Raider
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Maju
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Posted: 16-Jan-2006 at 06:50 |
Originally posted by Ponce de Leon
Spain is derived from Hispania which in Latin means "land of the bunnie rabbits"
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It's not that way: Hispania derives from Hesperides, which is a
deformation of Hespero (the evening star, that is the West). Spain and
nearby areas were the semi-mythic far west of the classical era.
Eventually the Iberian peninsula retained the name in exclussive,
though with the appearence of a state called Spain in the 16th century
(Philip II is the first one that signs as King of Spain), the name
largely lost its geographical meaning and was slowly replaced by
Iberia, which derives from the river Iber (now Ebro) and ultimately
from Basque Ibar (river bank).
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NO GOD, NO MASTER!
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Lilleman
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Posted: 16-Jan-2006 at 07:45 |
Sweden: Ruotsi, named after the area of Rosl*gen(Swedish in Finnish is ruotsalainen), where the first Swedish settlers came from.
In swedish Sweden is called Sverige. The "original" word for Sverige must have been Svearike. It means the "the kingdom/realm of the Svears".
'Rike' has been "distorted" in to 'rige' and 'svea' has been simplified to 'sve', thus the name Sverige. The Svear-people was one of the major factions of Sweden/Sverige in the olden days.
Norway: Norja, the word means "slender", "fragile", possibly beacuse the landscape there, or the shape of the country?
Interesting. I always thought the name of Norway, which is spelled/named Norge by both the norwegians and swedes, meant "the Northern kingdom/realm". 'Nor' (Nord) means 'north' and 'ge' probably means 'rige/rike' which, exactly as in the chase of Sverige (Sweden), means kingdom. The "original" name/word for Norge (Norway) must have been something like Nordrike/Norige.
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Voyager
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Posted: 21-Jan-2006 at 14:46 |
Originally posted by Ponce de Leon
Spain is derived from Hispania which in Latin means "land of the bunnies"
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For a moment, I thought you were talking about Playboy's.
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Nagyfejedelem
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Posted: 22-Jan-2006 at 16:35 |
We call our country as Magyarorszg, it means Magyar land or land of the Magyars. Truely the word orszg is very recurrent in country-names.
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Degredado
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Posted: 22-Jan-2006 at 17:51 |
I always thought that Spain derived from a Phoenician word meaning 'the land of hyraxes' because te phoenicians - for some reason - mistook rodents for diminute relatives of elephants.
But sometimes I wonder...there was a people called the Saefes of Sepes in the Iberian Peninsula...what if...
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Vou votar nas putas. Estou farto de votar nos filhos delas
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Gharanai
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Posted: 27-Jan-2006 at 09:02 |
Afghanistan - stand for two different words Afghani and the suffix -stan.
- Afghani means a Pashtun by origin.
- The suffix -stan is derived from a Persian word which means "place" or "where one stands".
Though now the word Afghani stands for different ethnics living in Afghanistans who are (Pashtun, Tajik, Uzbek, Hazara, Aimaks, Turkmen, Baloch, and others).
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Edited by Gharanai
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Styrbiorn
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Posted: 28-Jan-2006 at 07:56 |
Originally posted by Lilleman
Norway: Norja, the word means "slender", "fragile", possibly beacuse the landscape there, or the shape of the country?
Interesting. I always thought the name of Norway, which is spelled/named Norge by both the norwegians and swedes, meant "the Northern kingdom/realm". 'Nor' (Nord) means 'north' and 'ge' probably means 'rige/rike' which, exactly as in the chase of Sverige (Sweden), means kingdom. The "original" name/word for Norge (Norway) must have been something like Nordrike/Norige. |
You are correct. Norge comes from either Noriki or Northvegr, Northern realm/route respectively.
Svear is translated as Swedes, BTW. 'Svensk' and 'svenskar' are just the adjective versions of sveon-svear.
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