20 Countries whose name origin you would never guess

When visiting a country for the first time, we rarely imagine that something is hidden in the nation’s name. Thus, one African region may be named after a hooded coat and another after a river with shrimp. What connection might there be between Venezuela and Venice, and what do Spain and rabbits have in common? And finally, you will know where the homeland of honest people is.

O awesome.club collected impressive stories that are hidden in the names of 20 countries.

Around 300 a. C., the Carthaginians arrived in the Iberian Peninsula and were the first to call it Spain (Ispania comes from the Phoenician word sphan, meaning “rabbit”), and which translates to “land of rabbits”. The Romans arrived centuries later and accepted the name of the Carthaginians, calling the land Spain (Hispania).

The Spanish expedition that passed along the north coast of South America in 1499 gave the name “little Venice” to this place, as the houses of the natives rose above the water with wooden supports joined together like fragile bridges. They reminded Europeans of the famous city on the Adriatic coast. Originally this name was given to the small village, however later it was extended to the whole country.

In European languages, the name “Hungria” comes from the Latin form Ungari, which, in turn, is a Turkish term taken from Onogur, which means “10 arrows”. “Onogur” was the common name for the tribes that ruled the eastern lands of Hungary in the late 9th century AD.

The name of this African country is special: in translation from the Mossi language, “Burkina” means “honest people”, and in the Yula language, “fasao” means “homeland”.

According to one of the hypotheses, the old name of the country (Mexihco) was created from two Nahuatl words: “Moon” (metztli) and “navel” (xictli). This meaning, “place in the center of the Moon”, may refer to the location of the city of Tenochtitlan in the middle of Lake Texcoco. The system of pooled lakes was shaped like a rabbit, which the Aztecs related to the moon.

The name of this dwarf state, Nauru, in the Pacific Ocean, according to one of the versions, comes from a Nauru word “Anaoero”, which means “I go to the beach”.

The word “Kyrgyz” from the Turkish language is considered to translate as “40” and is related to the history of the union of 40 regional tribes by the legendary hero Manas. The Persian suffix “stan” means “earth”.

Icelandic legends say that a Norwegian named Naddodd was the first foreigner to arrive in Iceland in the 9th century. He called the place “the land of snow” (Snaeland), because it snowed a lot there. Afterwards, the Viking Flóki Vilgerðarson arrived at the coast carrying cattle. There passed the cold season. The winter was incredibly difficult, the fjords were covered with ice. Because of this, Flóki called the place “the land of ice” – Iceland (ice is “ice”, land is “land”).

The name of the country in the Japanese language consists of two characters: 日本. The first symbol (日) means “sun”, the second (本) is “fountain”. Therefore, Japan is translated as “the source of the sun”. Hence its other name: the land of the rising sun.

At the end of the Middle Ages, the region that was in the low waters of the rivers Rhein, Maas and Scheldt, along the coast of the North Sea, began to be called “low lands”, a name originated from Nederlanden.

According to one of the hypotheses, in the 6th century BC, Ligurian tribes founded the colony of Monoikos. “Monos” from the Greek, means “unique”, and “oikos” is “house”.

The origin of the name of this West African country is related to the ancient name of the local river, which the Portuguese called Cameroon River🇧🇷

According to the most common point of view, the name comes from the term “viteliu”, from the Oscan language, which is translated as “calves”.

The name of the city and country in Southeast Asia comes from the Malay language “sinha”, which means “lion”, and from the Sanskrit “puro”, which translates as “city”.

According to one of the versions, the name comes from the Eteo-Cypriot language and means copper, whose deposits are very abundant on the island. Furthermore, it is well known that the island gave its name to copper in classical Latin “Cyprium”, which is “metal of Cyprus”, later reduced to Cuprum.

The word “Kazakh” comes from the old Turkish word “qaz” which means “to wander” and reflects the nomadic culture of the Kazakhs and the Persian suffix “stan” which means “land”. Therefore, Kazakhstan can be literally translated as “the land of wanderers”.

The name of the country comes from the word “kanata” which means “settlement”, “village” in the Laurentian language of the Iroquois, who lived in the village of Stadacona, on the outskirts of modern Quebec. At first, this word was used to name just one village, then the entire region and soon extended to most of the neighboring territories in North America, governed by the British Empire.

According to one of the hypotheses, the country was named after an indigenous word that means “the end of the world”. From the Mapuche language, “chilli” translates as “there, where the earth ends”.

The name of this country located in the Pacific Ocean comes from the Malay expression “orang papuah”, which is “person with curly black hair”. This name was given by the Portuguese Jorge de Menezes in 1526, when he saw the hair of the local population. In this same century, the island was visited by a Spanish navigator, Yñigo Ortiz de Retez, and he named it “New Guinea”, since he saw the similarity of the local population with the aborigines of Guinea, in Africa.

The name of this state in Central Africa comes from the Portuguese name of the local river Gabon, which means “coat with a hood”. The name originated from the specific shape of the river mouth.

What country have you been to and what did you discover about the mysterious origin story of your name?