Country names in different languages

by **Stoo** » May 17th, 2006

I noted on an earlier thread a posterâ€™s disapproval of the use of Burma over the now officially recognized Myanmar, and my own reverse disapproval inherited from colleagues. While not bothering to reply to the post, the entire idea has been running through my mind lately. Some counties, like America, are pronounced and spelled almost exactly the same way regardless of the language. But other countries, like Germany, are totally different and the nobody seems to get their knickers in a twist about it. (Germany in English, Deutschland in German, l'Allemagne in French, and Nachzweimalbiere in Stuvolian.)

What gives?

by **static** » May 17th, 2006

There are no shortage of pedants who search the internet for the opportunity to wag their fingers and exclaim "tut tut".
They are immediately recognizable as they visibly have their undies in a bunch.

by **ivybell** » May 17th, 2006

It probably only makes a difference when the names have some sort of political connotation, as in the case of say, Burma, Yugoslavia, or Palestine/Israel/Occupied territory/whatever.

Germany is an odd one though, since it seems to change its name quite alot in different languages. It's similar to the French version in Arabic (kind of like Allamania), Tedesco in Italian while others stay rather close to the English version. Mentioning the Arabic, a number of ME country names change in Arabic, i.e. Morroco is Maghreb, Egypt is Misra.

Don't really think this has answered your question as I've also often wondered about the wide variety of names for Germany and not for other countries.

by **ivybell** » May 17th, 2006

quote:
Originally posted by static:
There are no shortage of pedants who search the internet for the opportunity to wag their fingers and exclaim "tut tut".
They are immediately recognizable as they visibly have their undies in a bunch.

Ahh, yes. While there is alot of good information to be had at Lonely Planet, there does seem to be a large group of the above posters just waiting to say you're wrong.

by **Stoo** » May 17th, 2006

Sadly, I was refering to a fellow bootie. Then he did describe himself (him?) as an infrequent poster, so i guess we are off the hook.

by **christina-in-brooklyn** » May 17th, 2006

quote:
Originally posted by ivybell:
Germany is an odd one though, since it seems to change its name quite alot in different languages. It's similar to the French version in Arabic (kind of like Allamania), Tedesco in Italian while others stay rather close to the English version. Mentioning the Arabic, a number of ME country names change in Arabic, i.e. Morroco is Maghreb, Egypt is Misra.

Don't really think this has answered your question as I've also often wondered about the wide variety of names for Germany and not for other countries.

I know, what gives? Any Germans in the house to answer that? I got geographically hijacked by that one when traveling, stupidly asking some tourists where was "Alemania", was that somewhere in France?

by **oswiu** » May 17th, 2006

A funny experience I had with this:

In northern Pakistan I met an old gentleman whose national origin was entirely lost on me.
I asked him where he was from and he replied "Yunnan." I assumed this meant Yunnan province in China, which would make some sense, since there are Muslims living there, and they might conceivably have some religious reason to travel to Pakistan.

Later I learned that he was actually from Greece, Yunnan being the name for his country in Urdu.

The funniest thing about all this was how long it took for me to realize that I had completely and utterly misconstrued his answer

by jv » May 17th, 2006

I think the political connotations are the difference maker. But there certainly isn't a shortage of examples ... and funny stories.

In the Middle East, one understood that I wanted to go to Damascus until I referred to it by its (apparently) more colloquial name "ash-Sham." I still don't know if my pronunciation of "Damash" was just bad, or if no one calls it that.

by **ivybell** » May 17th, 2006

That's odd about the name for Damascus. My teacher, (Syrian) taught us that it was Damashquc (poor spelling, in Arabic dal, meem, sheen, qaaf)

by **ivybell** » May 17th, 2006

Here is a possible answer about Germany (from a poster on another board)

"Germany", "Germania" come from latin. "Deutschland" is the name the German gave to their own country in their own language wich is not a romance language. "Allemagne/Allemand" come from "Aller Mann". The arabic name probably come from French. All those name are different because they come from different periods in history. The USA is quite a young nation compared with the different german states across history.

by jv » May 17th, 2006

quote:
Originally posted by ivybell:
My teacher, (Syrian) taught us that it was Damashquc (poor spelling, in Arabic dal, meem, sheen, qaaf)

Well, there's your explanation perhaps ... I couldn't pronounce it right. But ash-Sham is definitely in wide use. According to Wikipedia (for what it's worth):

quote:
In Arabic, the city is called Ø¯Ù…Ø´Ù‚ Ø§Ù„Ø´Ø§Ù… Dimashq ash-Sham. Although this is often shortened to Dimashq by many, the citizens of Damascus, and of Syria and some other Arab neighbors, colloquially call the city ash-Sham. Ash-Sham is derived from the Arabic root for North, and Syria - particularly historical Greater Syria - is called bilad ash-sham in Arabic. The English name for Damascus is taken from the Greek Î”Î±Î¼Î±ÏƒÎºÏŒÏ‚, via Latin. This comes from the old Aramaic name for the city â€” ×“×¨×ž×©×§ DarmeÅ›eq, which means "a well-watered place". However, pre-Aramaic tablets unearthed at Ebla refer to a city to the south of Ebla named Damaski [1]. It is possible that the name 'Damascus' pre-dates the Aramaic era of the city. Damascus is designated as having been part of the ancient province of Amurru in the Hyksos Kingdom, from 1720 to 1570 BC. (MacMillan, pp. 30-31).

Also, I think Stoo's original question was not why some countries have different names, but rather why some people get upset when people favor one of these names over another (specifically Burma v. Myanmar) for political reasons. Or maybe I'm misreading him.

That said, it's looking like the topic of multi-monikered locales -- and the related misunderstandings -- is definitely a topic of its own.

Statistics for the last 7 days
New Posts	301
Newest Member	Adyshore

Country names in different languages

Country names in different languages

Who is online