Example:
USA 美国 - 美 mean “beautiful” and 国 is “country”
So when my mom told me we were going to move to 美国, I, having never heard of anything about this country ever before, already had a positive impression of this “beautiful country”.
France 法国 - 法 is one of the characters in 法律, law, so my first impression was, that these people probably have very strict rules and are law abiders
Britain/UK 英国 - 英 is one of the characters in 英雄, hero, so I just imagine British people like to help the innocent (this was before I learned about British colonialism lol, but I guess the 英 character still sort of partly relevent, as in they view themselves as “hero”, aka: they interfere with other’s countries bussiness a lot)
Germany 德国 - 德 is one of the characters in 道德, morality, so I had a subconcious belief they were very moral people. I didn’t even know about the holocaust yet. 💀
Mexico 墨西哥 - 墨 is ink, 哥 is brother, so I though these are dark-skinned people that value brotherhood, masculinity.
South Korea 韩国 - 韩 sounds like 寒, so I just assumed it was a very cold country (isn’t it tho?) Oh BTW, I was in South Korea… in the airport waiting for a transfer flight, never actually entered the country for real, that was 15 years go, the closest I’ve ever been to South Korea. Wanna go there someday, see the snow (cuz its a 寒国 “cold country” remember xD)
Japan 日本 - 日 is the sun, so I thought it gets like very sunny or something
These are the few on the top of my head. You can mention any below and I can tell you what my “subconcious feel” about the name is.
I’ve always found it mildly xenophobic that basically 0 nations refer to any other nation by what that nation refers to itself as.
Xenophobic is a bit much. These names were mostly probably formed out of ignorance, and once a name is established it’s hard to change.
Yeah, how is that xenophobic?
I guess foggy there means it’s “mildly” xenophobic when you don’t bother to get someone’s name right.
A lot of names got changed during immigration due to wilful xenophobia last century, for example. Xenakis to Johnson, etc.
Structural linguistic problems like not having notation for foreign pronunciation isn’t necessarily xenophobic, but failure to address the problem might be.
Hi everyone, I’m from the great nation known as the Central Nation (中国, China) of Asia, known officially as, the Central Hua-People’s Republic (中 华人民 共和国, PRC)
🤣
Actually that kinds sound a bit “Ancient” and cooler.
Or do I use the Pinyin pronunciation instead of translating?
Hi everyone, I’m from Zhōnghuá Rénmín Gònghéguó. (Good luck pronouncing that with the tones correct 😉)
Interesting thought
I don’t think the other nations are too bothered by it in most cases.
The country that comes to mind first is Germany. They call it Deutschland. I never looked into why we as English speakers call it “Germany”. I just do it because everyone else does.
I haven’t heard of Germans getting upset about it. If they were legitimately offended, I’d start calling it Deutschland, no problem.
The real issues come in when there’s a historical context. Like, if the name contains a slur for the people in that nation. Or if you mix up the names of neighbouring Balkan countries.
IIRC Germany > Germania > Allemania > Alemanic tribes, people who lived in Germany. France calls them “Allemagne” as well, you can see where that came from.
Germany used to be a collection of tribes and depending on which of these tribes the countries around them had contact with that’s the name that stuck in that language.
Yeah, many Western European maps still refer to it as Alemania, which in beer contexts is quite a hoot :)
It’s been changing a bit with British English in a few places. I remember when the Netherlands was more commonly referred to as Holland, which is no longer that common at all anymore.
Netherlands isn’t exact with the native name being Nederlands and is instead more of a “sound-a-like” translation as if we had it spelled in it’s native way you know the lamen would instead just call it the Nedderlands.
Nederland and Netherlands both mean low country? Low as in Lower Rhine. It has an origin in the Roman name “Germania Inferior”.
Nether means low in English and Nederlands is mostly below sea level, but I wonder why it’s plural?
The late medieval Burgundians will have been the first to call it the low countries (les pays-bas). They acquired these territories (various duchies and counties in Belgium + Netherlands + bits around it) over time, not as one piece of land. All those different territories had different laws and traditions, different crown laws (HRE or kingdom of France), different local charters, … It wasn’t one country, so plural makes sense.
It used to be the Kingdom of the United Netherlands. I mean, it still is, but now that refers to everything including Curaçao, Saint Martin, etc