 |
What’s in a namePosted by Eddie on the 11th February, 2008 |
This whole calling-countries-by-names-that-aren’t theirs has confused me for years.
I went to Wikipedia to try and find out why it happens. Predictably I didn’t find the information I was looking for, but stumbled across some related trivia. Apparently nobody can decide what to call Germany. The French call it Allemagne, Estonians call it Saksamaa, the Latvians call it Vacija and in Poland it’s Niemcy.
Clearly – in calling it such a girly name – the Polish were fucking with fire.
edit: A clever reader emailed us clearing the whole matter up.
“Germanicus is so named because he conquered the land that the Romans had already been calling Germania for centuries. The Romans give an honorary extra last name (called an agnomen) to people who were really important or had great military victories. The reason that we call him that is because he was of a noble family and they all have extremely similar names, so Germanicus is an easy way to identify who we’re talking about.”
Golly, haven’t we got some clever readers, eh?
April 29th, 2008 at 9:24 pm
Shouldn’t that be ‘Hi I’m England AND WALES, you?’
y’know, since its missing Scotland and all…..
April 30th, 2008 at 9:54 am
Damnit! I thought we’d gotten away with that.
June 7th, 2008 at 6:02 am
Take it from a german history-geek. It’s called Deutschland because one of the major tribes spoke in a language called “theodisk” pronounced deoiditch which later pronounced doitsch (which is the correct pronounciation). Deutschland was not called Deutschland until very late (19th century), before it was the “Holy roman empire of german (deutscher) nations”.
June 7th, 2008 at 8:40 pm
Ahh, but Wales is only a principality and has been ‘part’ of England since something like the 12th century – hence it isn’t represented on the Union Flag whereas England, Scotland and N. Ireland are.
June 11th, 2008 at 11:36 pm
Wales may politically,and since Margret thatcher economically part of england too(she shut down all wales industrial and labor trades,making the Welsh reliant on their economy), but as a people wales is it own nation,it has a flag,a language(along with a culture far older than the English) and were the inhabitants of the lovely British isles before the “English” even set foot there,the fact we aren’t represented on the Union Jack is a big dispute between the Welsh and English,it being an iconic symbol around the world,the majority of the UK don’t want to change it,and when raised as an issue recently,it caused many problems due to racist attacks from the English against the Welsh,the Irish and Scottish support the Welsh move to have St David Represented on the flag,although a lot of Welsh nationalists really don’t care about the union jack because the Welsh flag is quite easily the coolest flag in the world by far.
all in all,all us Gaelic’s and Celts hate the English.oh and so do the Cornish,but then again everybody on the island hates those pretentious assholes.
(note,try typing Welsh in with spell correction,bet you it doesn’t tell you to put a capital on the beginning)
June 13th, 2008 at 8:42 pm
Now here’s another interesting and funny fact: most Slavic nations (not only Polish) call Germany something similar to “Niemcy” (“Nemecka”, “Njemacka” etc.) because of the Slavic root “niem”, which means mute or dumb. It seems that, upon encountering Teutonic tribes, the Slavic ones interpreted their language as an effort of a mute man to speak. And in most Slavic languages “German” means quite literally “a mute man”. How’s that about hoping it doesn’t stick?
August 24th, 2008 at 3:25 am
Since you’ve gone to the trouble of omitting Scotland how about removing Wales too, which isn’t actually part of England. Am I correct in thinking that this was made by an American? (Is that part of Canada?)
August 29th, 2008 at 4:36 pm
You know it is interesting that we call places like Warsaw…WAR-SAW…not Var-SaV…or Olomouc…ol-o-mou-k and not Olo-Mou-st. And how about Crakow or Krakow….Americans say Krak-Owh and really it should be Krak-Ofv. Why do we change others but New York is New York no matter where you go? Same saying. Where do we get off?
September 1st, 2008 at 3:42 pm
Haha @ Bones….
More like Canada is a part of the US.
September 18th, 2008 at 6:18 am
To add to the fun, Germany is called Þýskaland in Icelandic, Tyskland in Danish and Alemania in Spanish. No idea what the þýsk/tysk means though…
September 18th, 2008 at 5:43 pm
Hi, I found your blog on this new directory of WordPress Blogs at blackhatbootcamp.com/listofwordpressblogs. I dont know how your blog came up, must have been a typo, i duno. Anyways, I just clicked it and here I am. Your blog looks good. Have a nice day. James.
September 23rd, 2008 at 10:39 pm
I’m Welsh and I couldn’t give a monkey’s testi if we’re not on the Union Flag. Frankly, I quite like being seperate from the rest of our neighbours. Especially those pompous English-types I hear about on the news.
Anyone for starting a male-voice choir?
September 15th, 2009 at 9:05 pm
Germany is called Tyskland in Swedish.
March 20th, 2010 at 3:29 am
Aktuālākais valūtas kurss saskaņā ar Latvijas Bankas noteikto valūtas kursu. Pieprasītākie valūtas maiņas kursi. Valūtas kursa svārstības pēdējās nedēļas laikā. Vienkārši lietojams valūtas konvertētājs naudas maiņas aprēķināšanai. Izdevīgākās valūtas konvertēšanas bankas. Aktuālākā finanšu informācija vienuviet.