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?