The Name of Your Country

[Cheezy the Wiz]

Canada, or "Kanata" means something like "village" or "settlement." A very big settlement now.

Nova Scotia is French for "New Scotland." I'm not sure how similar we are to Old Scotland though.

After the failed Scottish Jacobite uprising in 1746(?), the English systematically destroyed the highlander way of life, executing most of the clan leaders, building massive cattle fences across the previously-open highland plains, and forcibly suppressing the Gaelic language and customs. Many of the survivors of this cataclysm went west to the New World and founded Nova Scotia.

 

[luiz]

The Portuguese really should have kept the original native name, Ibirapitanga, for Brazil - That name doesn't suck.

There was no orginal native name to Brazil, simply because no native had any idea that this land is so big. For a tamoio living in Rio the Marajó island in Pará was as unknown as Japan.

Edit: and usually the people who like to say there was a native name to Brazil, even though that is clearly false, use the word Pindorama, tupi-guarani for "land of the palm trees".

 

[W|M]

I used Ibirapitanga as that was what the name of the land was to the Tupí in the area where Europeans first landed.

 

[Joecoolyo]

Since America was taken by the OP, I'll do my city and state.

"Chicago" is basically a French rendering of a local Native American word, which means "wild onion", or "wild garlic".

Illinois was the name the French gave to the local Native Americans here. According to wiki, the word Illinois comes from the local verb "irenwe·wa", which means "he speaks the regular way". The French spelled the "we" part "ois" instead, and sometime later, we have Illinois.

 

[trader/warrior]

I never liked how Norway or Norge sounds. It just doesn't fit as a name IMO. Noreg is nicer, but Norvegia would have been even better, if a bit over the top and pretetious sounding. The meaning of it is nice and straight forward though.

My province, Akershus, aker means field as in acre and hus means house as in a district. Pretty boring. My city is named after a tree.

 

[Traitorfish]

After the failed Scottish Jacobite uprising in 1746(?), the English systematically destroyed the highlander way of life, executing most of the clan leaders, building massive cattle fences across the previously-open highland plains, and forcibly suppressing the Gaelic language and customs. Many of the survivors of this cataclysm went west to the New World and founded Nova Scotia.

You almost make it sound like the British state committed an act of genocide. Again.

 

[Lone Wolf]

but Norvegia would have been even better, if a bit over the top and pretetious sounding.

In Russian, it is spelled "Norvegia" (pronounced with a consonant "y" between letters "i" and "a").

You almost make it sound like the British state committed an act of genocide. Again.

No accusation is unjust for the British!

 

[Optical]

New Zealand. Typical colonial name... Eh.

The Maori name for here, Aotearoa ('land of the long white cloud'), is IMO preferable - and kinda cool and poetic - except that where I live, they're usually blankety grey clouds that always deliver rain.

 

[ZeletDude]

Idaho is supposed to mean "Light on the mountain" or something, but it's likely that it's a hoax.. and it has a rather unfortunate name.. :\

 

[innonimatu]

In Russian, it is spelled "Norvegia" (pronounced with a consonant "y" between letters "i" and "a").

And in portuguese it's spelled "Noruega", very similar, only the "i" got dropped.

Portugal, btw, got its name from the old medieval county centered in Portucale, and that from the roman city of Portus (port) Cale, now Porto (which for some reason is known in english as Oporto). The settlement predated roman times but who originally founded and named the city is lost to history.

And Brasil got lucky that the original name Vera Cruz didn't stuck - that would be sucky!

 

[W|M]

Yeah, being called ''Island of the True Cross'' is kind of misleading.

The city where I originate, Niterói, has a Tupí name meaning ''Hidden Waters''. It was founded due to the Portuguese rewarding the local Tupí tribe which had helped them drive out the French from the area around Rio de Janeiro by giving them land across Guanabara Bay to settle. Niterói is still the only city in Brazil to have been founded by a non-assimilated, non-Christian Amerindian.

 

[sophie]

Let's see...state:

According to wiki, California derives from a popular Spanish novel Las Sergas de Esplandián, which describes an island east of Asia inhabited entirely by Amazon women, ruled by the queen Calafia and filled with, yes you guessed it...


Link to video.

The Spanish explorers originally applied the name to Baja California (our south of the border hermanos) as they originally thought the phallic penisula to be an island (an island filled with GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOLD). They later realized that they once again cocked it up with the naming, but it was too late; they'd already signed the lease.

As for my town - Santa Cruz not to be confused with the other 32450978239457 San/Santas in California means "Holy Cross" and was named for the Mission established in the area in 1791: La Misión de la exaltación de la santa cruz.

Funnily enough, just to rain on illram or anyone else's parade, the more important, but less hippy town to our north, San Francisco (Saint Francis) was not given to it by the Spanish. Instead, the town was originally named "Yerba Buena", a much more appropriate name, I think, as it translates, essentially, to "Good Grass". The name was changed to San Francisco by the Americans during the Gold Rush, presumably in reference to the nearby Presidio. Much cooler sounding name, but unfortunately an inferior etymology.

 

[innonimatu]

As for my town - Santa Cruz not to be confused with the other 32450978239457 San/Santas in California means "Holy Cross" and was named for the Mission established in the area in 1791: La Misión de la exaltación de la santa cruz.

Iberians did had a fixation on crosses when it came to naming new lands!

 

[Evie]

And that's just ONE of the potential acts of genocide/ethnic cleansing directly related to the creation of Nova Scotia.

On the provincial, regional, municipal level, both present and past...

Ontario is derived from the Huron term Ontarí:io, meaning "Great Lake", the name was first given to Lake Ontario, and applied then to the province that grew alogn its shores. It's fairly appropriate for one of the two State/Provinces that border four out of five Great Lakes (the other is Michigan).

Ottawa get its name from the nearby Ottawa river, which derives from "Adawe", which in Algonquin means "to trade" or "traders", a name given by the Algonquin to a people of traders who lived around Manitoulin island on Lake Huron. The French traveled to get there via the Ottawa river from Montreal, so named the river "Ottawa" (well, Outaouais, which the British wrote down as Ottawa), and the city later adopted the name instead of its original "Bytown" (named after Colonel By, who supervised the construction of the canal connecting the Ottawa to Lake Ontario)

National Capital Region means...what it says.

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On the other side, Québec is derived from Montagnais "Kébec", meaning "where the river narrows", applied to the place where the estuary of the Saint Lawrence narrows down from several kilometers wide to just one kilometer wide, which is where the city of Québec was built. Then the highly imaginative British government decided to apply the city name to the entire province, and we've been stuck with it since, especially after the doofuses in the RoC stole Canada from us .

My native hometown, Beloeil is French. It beams "Beautiful Eye", but in this case, the meaning is actually Beautiful view, refering to what the region looks like when seen from the summit of nearby Mount Saint-Hilaire, or to what the mountain looks like when seen from the shore in Beloeil. Legend has it that the first seigneur of the place ascended the mountain, and, looking down, exclaimed "Quel bel oeil!", "What a beautiful view".

Beloeil is in both the Vallée-du-Richelieu and Montérégie regions, both of which are french names. Vallée-du-Richelieu means "Richelieu valley", and refer to the fact that it's along the middle course of the Richelieu river, which was named by Samuel de Champlain to honor his patron, the Cardinal Richelieu (yes, that Cardinal Richelieu). Montérégie loosely mean "The Monteregian region". Monteregian refer to the Monteregian hills that are the most striking feature of the region. They draw their names from the latinized form of Mount Royal.

 

[Agent327]

Perhaps a weird question, but are you happy with the name your country bears? I mean, say, America is named after some cartographer dude, who wasn't even that great, and he never even been there. It should have been "Colombia", ffs.

Actually, Amerigo Vespucci wasn´t a cartographer, actually did discover the continent of America (and realized that he did), and was the first to write about it. Columbus was mainly interested in what could be gained there, was a horrible governor, and til his dying day (in poverty) believed he had reached Asia.

On another note, Low Countries is a term used to describe both Holland and Belgium. The official name ´the Netherlands´is appropriately ambiguous.

 

[Jehoshua]

So 'australis' means 'southern'. Before it was discovered, it was 'Terra Australis Incognita', and then kinda evolved from there. I have no idea why it was changed from 'australis' to 'Australia', especially when that changes the second 'a'.

To elaborate on Holy Kings comments. Australis means southern and Australia means Southern Country or more literally "The State of the South". The change was necessary to ensure a more appropriate name for the state since simply calling it "South" was not appropriate and Terra Australis is not the most intuitive of names.

Etymologically 'ia' is a latin post fix that mean 'the state of' thus why you see many countries and territories end in the "ia' post fix. So Pennsylvania means "State of Penn's Wood" and Malaysia means "State of the Malays" to use some examples. However as Holy_King mentioned the ia is a feminine ending (all the italic come romance languages divide words into feminine and masculine, and the state is generally concieved of as feminine "a la motherland") but that is a consequence of the latin language rather than being the intrinsic reason for the change I would think, and rather the meaning of the post fix is what was important in the name changing decision.

 

[Tee Kay]

It sure beats New Holland.

 

[SuperBeaverInc.]

I figure I'll just do the other Canadian provinces and territories that haven't been done yet, since I enjoy this thread.

British Columbia - Named as a result of the Columbia River basin, with the province being the British part of the region, as compared to the American one.

Alberta - Named after Princess Louise, Queen Victoria's 4th daughter, full name Louise Caroline Alberta.

Saskatchewan - Named after the Saskatchewan River, which was named after the Cree word meaning 'swift flowing river', kisiskāciwani-sīpiy.

Manitoba - Means either 'straight of the spirit' or 'lake of the prairies', and originates from either the Cree, Ojibwe, or Assiniboine language.

Prince Edward Island - Named after Prince Edward, Duke of Kent and Strathearn, fourth son of King George III and father of Queen Victoria.

Newfoundland and Labrador - Newfoundland is exactly what it sounds like, but pronounced more like Newfundland. Labrador is supposed to be named after João Fernandes Lavrador, who was the first to explore the area.

Yukon - Means 'Great River' in Gwich'in language.

Northwest Territories - They are territories, in the northwest. Originally was North-Western Territory, and was named because it consisted of most of western/northern Canada, but has shrunk considerably down to its current size.

Nunavut - Means 'Our Land' in Inuktitut.

All definitions come from Wiki, so don't blame me if they are wrong.

 

[SS-18 ICBM]

Not too happy about the Philippines being named after some Spanish monarch I don't give a crap about. Neutral with regards to Canada.

 

[Pangur Bán]

Yes and no. We're pretty sure that "Scotia" originally denoted Ireland; the question is how it came to denote Ireland in the first place., and why it later became applied exclusively to Scotland. Don't really know the details with "Alba", though.

For clarification, Scotia is a metonym from Scoti, a people who attacked Roman Britain. The etymology of Scoti is uncertain. Hibernia was the Roman name for Ireland, but in the early middle ages Scotia is used for Ireland too in Latin writers: the Scoti had become associated with Ireland (either they always were or it was a new development since the 4th century, both possibilities supported by the evidence).

"Scotland" is attested in Old English as the word for Britain north of the Forth from the early 10th century, and Scotia among the Continental Walha from the mid-to-late 10th or early 11th century (Life of Catroe). Maybe it came to both from the Norse, but who knows. It was extended to mean the whole kingdom ruled by the Dunkeld dynasty in the 13th century.

In Celtic languages Alba and Cruithne/Prydyn (with variants) are the words for "Scotland", also the words for "Pictland" -- the distinction is a linguistic illusion.