As i thought Portugal was named after a port, iceland after ice , then Spain should have been named after pain , Monaco named after the biscuit company monaco same for brittania , then Luxembourg should have been named after the luxury of the country , Germany should have been money , Netherlands should be like its neither land nor water , Italy should have been named after tally marks , denmark named after marks german old currency , slowakia would have been slow wake Slovenia be like slow veins , Macedonia named after apple mac , Croatia should be like named after asia , Romania named after romans , Sweden named after sweet dish like its , Switzerland named after a land where swiss people live lol , Norway named after the way of nor , Belgium named after the bells , Estonia named after stone, Hungary is simple when we are hungry, Moldova named after mold over saying it faster would sound moldova and Ukraine named after crane thats all i thought when i was kid i hope no one gets offended
@Ararune Better explained. In most Slavic languages Germans are called: Nemci, Nijemci, Njemci which means "mute people'' because they didn't speak language that Slavs could understand, or they could understand Slavs.
1:25 The idea that a place could be named "Port Port" (each half derived from a different language) is surprisingly plausible. There are many places with names like that. The Sahara Desert is one example (sahara means "desert" in Arabic). Tom Scott discussed the phenomenon in one of his videos while visiting a place that could reasonably be translated as "Hill Hill Hill Hill."
@@HansWurst-bf4qg The "Hill Hill Hill Hill" is in reference to Torpenhow Hill, where supposedly "Tor" "Pen" "How" all mean hill in different languages, this is likely a myth, and does not refer to anything in regards to Sahara. But "Sahara" comes from Arabic, I think, and means "desert" , so Sahara Desert is literally "desert desert". The presense of only one port in Porto is as such irrelevant. The idea is that the locals at the time called the area "cale" from their word for "port", the Romans would not have known the meaning of this word and could so easily have called it "Portus Cale", adding their own word for "port". This is a relatively common thing when a new people encounter a place and ask for its name without knowing the local language. The Gobi desert is another one, as "gobi" means "desert" as well. And for a time Hawai'i was known as "owhyee" adding "'o", the Hawai'ian copula(to be) as the local said to the English "'o hawai'i(this is Hawai'i)".
The Romans called Cartago Nova the current Spanish city of Cartagena, but Cartago (Carthge) comes from the Phoenician Qart Hadasht, which means new city, so Cartago Nova means new new city.
Portugal became from medieval latin Portucale, Portucalis. From latin "Portus" (port)+ greek "kallos"( beautiful), so it was a Beautiful Port. Portus is now the Oporto City in north of Portugal.
It is actually 'passage port' or the passage at the port. Portus meaning passage in latin (in french and spanish it is still used as in "port d'envalira" or "puerto de navacerrada"). Cale meaning port in latin.
the worst part about it is the fact that the literal translation of the countries name is black mountain so who ever came up witht he name Montenegro was a racist
@@gababoy1237 No? They just named the country like that because it was a black mountain. You do realize the people back then weren't so picky and sensitive about everything they hear, unlike nowadays.
About portugal,as our history refers,Portugal comes from Porto Calmo (Calm/quiet Harbour). Im Portuguese and thats not a theory.thats what is on our history
For Bulgaria, there may be another explanation. In Greek, the second letter of the alphabet had phonetic value B, but later transitioned to V. Several words in south-eastern Europe can trace origin to this transition; for example, the city of Bethlehem is named in some old songs as Vitlaim. And bulgars use Cyrillic writing, derived from the Greek alphabet. So their name might very well be coming from the Volga River, where they were known to live before their migration to the Balkans.
There was a Bulgaria around the river Volga but it was a different one from the one on the Danube river. Both came from same older Bulgaria however very different. Also it is very easy to say Cyrillic comes from Greek but that is not true in the direct sense just because of some similarities. I can say a lot but just remembered comments are a bit pointless
@@СимеонТодоров-ы9н The moredern cyrilic alphabet is the renovated version of the "Glagolitsa" writing system made by St. Kiril and St. Metodii Brothers by their students who were sent on a pilgrimage by the Emperor of the Byzantium Empire in order to make peace with the tribes that came during the Migration Period aka as the Barbarian Invasions. The Bulgarian Kingdom at the time was the biggest one on the Balkan peninsula and since it encompassed not only people from the Bulgarian tribe but many other smaller tribes and all of them were seen as barbarians by surrounding nations and were not accepted on the International stage of Europe at the time. Both the Pope and the Emperor of Byzantine wanted to convert them to their respectful religion - Catholicism from the Pope and Eastern Orthodox Christianity from the Byzantium Empire. It also aligned withthe desire of Khan Boris I later known as Knyaz Boris Mihail I to unite his nation and make it internationally recognized by the other European countries. Before their coming to the Dunabe valley in 681AD, the Bulgarian tribe is known to have had its origins north of the Black Sea. But it is factualy known that the Cyrilic alphabet took a lot of elements from the ancient greek alphabet.
There is a city in South-West of Portugal, near the Atlantic Ocean which is named "Odemira", the same name as the river that crossed the city, So, you will see a Portuguese map of the region naming this river "Rio Odemira", so the Odemira river. But the name Odemira is in fact two words, one from Visigoth language "mira" which means running water or river, and "Od", which came from the Arabic word "wad", which means also river. So, we have a city name which means River-river, and so on, this city is crossed by the river River-river!
Not to be pedantic, but "Portus Cale" meaning "port port" actually makes sense; Romans often asked the locals what the name of their native places were, and the locals often responded by just mentioning the common name of the place indicated; that's why in England there are multiple "River Avon", "Avon" meaning "river" in ancient English. So that's why "port - port" could be an actual origin for the name.
@@dehro Ursus Arctos, the bear bear, is actually the Brown Bear. The Latin name for the Grizzly is even better: Ursus Arctos Horribilis. Meaning "The *horrible* bear bear"!
It's worth noting that "Cymru" in Welsh is not pronounced like "simru" but more like "kummri". Also the term "Scotland" is (or was originally) an exonym. The name for Scotland in Scottish Gaelic is "Alba", which derives from Old Irish "Albu" or "Albain", which is believed to have been used to describe the land of the Picts and other Celtic territory of what is now Scotland.
TH-cam seriously can't handle "Montenegro"?? FFS, a beginner level programmer could code an exception for that in the algorithm. It's a whole damn country.
And most likely there is an exemption hahah i guess hes american so he got triggered. I'm from montenegro and living in australia whenever i met someone from usa they got upset that i said (as a white dude) that im from montenegro Murica and ignorance goes together like russia and vodka
@@filipdraskovic2418 At the start of the vidoe he said he is portugese, this is thing about youtube and his ignorance, not about General Knowledge. He had to do it or youtbe algorithm would just block or demonetized his video.
@@lemonaj4408 must have missed that part There are a lot of videos on yt about montenegro One of which is from geography now and i haven't heard that he got blocked cause of that
@@filipdraskovic2418 it's not that he'd get blocked, but the video would likely get demonetised. I wonder why the country's name is translated that way though, surely Cernagora or something like that would be better and closer to how slavs call it in general.
This video was more about the origin of their english or native name. A lot of countries have very different names in different languages, especially neighbours.
"Slavs" comes probably from the slavic word for... "word" :) "Słowo", "Slovo" etc. "Słowianin" (slav) meant - "someone who speaks our tongue", "The user of the words". On the same basis many slavic languages call Germans "Niemcy", "Nijemci", "Nemci" etc. which is derived from the word "niemy" - "mute", "Someone who doesn't speak our tongue". For a long time it was a general term for any non-slavic people/foreigners.
@@TheMrlukagwell I've seen this circulating over the internet too but it's an obvious fake that became popular because many people repeat it without checking. Slave in Latin is "servus" and the origin of the world "slave" is old English, not Latin, so this theory has no base. The widely accepted theory of the slavs people name origin is indeed coming from the word "word" i.e. people that speak the same language.
@@TheMrlukag wizardman1976 is right, his argument is valid. Slavs were not Rome's slaves. And what do you mean by "Roman Latin" are you american or something? Cuz you really seem dumb to be an european.
Fun fact: In Polish we use the word "republika" for all the countries that have "republic" in their names but for Poland and only Poland we use word "rzeczpospolita" instead.
I love all these "river river", "hill hill", and "port port" names, but nothing beats the Yucatan peninsula which roughly means "I don't know what you're saying" in old Mayan.
Sounds similar to something I heard about in that the Kangaroo name came from 'I don't understand" in Aboriginal. Explorers really didn't give much thought over the fact that foreign people of foreign lands didn't speak their languages.
About the name 'Belarus'. The name Ruscia Alba (Ruthenia Alba) was first mentioned in the 1250s in an anonymous geographical treatise originating in Ireland. Most likely, this name was not known in Rus' itself (the name Rus' itself had just begun to take hold in the territories from the Black Sea to the Baltic Sea). Therefore, it is most likely that the name White was added to Rus by medieval European cartographers. Many regions were given the name of White Ruthenia by cartographers, but it's funny, the Novgorod Republic was called White Ruthenia the most. Over time, cartographers began to come up with new names, such as Red Ruthenia, the territory of modern Ukraine, and Black Ruthenia, the land of the Balts. And here again, the same tradition of medieval cartography was at work: whichever name I want to give it and wherever place I want to put it, I do it. In 1470, the Novgorod Republic was conquered by the Moscow principality, and after that Moscovia was called White Ruthenia. To put it quite simply, Novgorod, Moscow, and the Polotsk principality were called White Ruthenia, although no one knew of any White Ruthenia in these lands. In the second half of the 16th century, maps became more and more detailed, and the term finally settled on the lands of modern Belarus. This was facilitated by the appearance of historical chronicles by Marcin Kromer, Maciej Stryjkowski, and others. This was also influenced by the Livonian War, when in 1563 the Muscovy captured Polotsk, and since Muscovy was often called White Ruthenia, and news of this war spread throughout Europe, Polotsk also began to be called White Ruthenia. In 1579 Stefan Batory expelled the Muscovites from Polotsk, but the name remained and from the end of the 16th century Belarus began to be called the land with a predominantly Orthodox population, which had previously been simply called Ruthenia or Lithuanian Ruthenia. In the early 17th century, the name Belarus became widely accepted, for example, in 1632, King Wladyslaw 4 restored the Orthodox diocese in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and it was called White Ruthenian. At the same time, in the official documents of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the term white Ruthenia was increasingly used to refer to the lands of modern Belarus. Despite the fact that the state that included the lands of White Ruthenia was called Lithuania, Muscovy began to use the term White Rus more and more often, referring to the lands of Belarus and rarely Ukraine. Because, in their view, Ruthenia is theirs and they need to capture it. It didn't take long; in 1654, Muscovy troops under the leadership of Alexei Mikhailovich attacked the Belarusian lands of the GDL in order to "defend the Orthodox population," and he resumed his title of Tsar and Grand Duke of Great, Little, and White Russia. In the 18th century, the name Belarus became an authoritative term. The Belarusian nobility originating from Polotsk or Mogilev called themselves Belarusian, Jewish qahals in the east were called Belarusian synagogues, the National Education Commission had 2 districts, Lithuanian and Belarusian, and the word Belarus was often caricatured in the administrative division of representatives of Catholic institutions. As part of the Russian Empire, the Belarusian lands began to be referred to as the Northwestern Krai. In the 19th century, the name Belarus finally spread to all the lands of modern Belarus. This was facilitated by the growth of nationalism in Europe (due to the idea that every nation should have a language, land, religion, and of course, a name). Because before that, despite the fact that they spoke the same language, they often called themselves Litvins (not Lithuanians, but residents of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania), Poles (mostly Catholics), Rusyns (residents of the Rus), but most often simply Tuteishya. Why was the name Belarus chosen when Belarus was created, and not, for example, Lithuania? First of all, this name was more often used in reference to the szlachta, but the Belarusian szlachta did not care about the restoration of the Litvin state and identity, they helped Poland to advocate statehood and increasingly called themselves Poles. And the Baltic peoples, who were experiencing a rise in nationalism at the time, appropriated the name Lithuanians, and this word was already taken. As a result, the term Litva ceased to be used and was completely replaced by Belarus, first as the name of the language spoken by the Tuteishya, and then as the name of the people. There were attempts to spread the name of the language as Kryvitskaya, the people as Kryvichs, and the name of the state as Kryvia, but this name did not catch on. Only Belarus caught on. It's a good word that unites Belarus with the history of the ancient Rus, while separating us from it with the word White :)
As a language lover,"Vela" means white in Tamil language. And the 'V' sound sound will deform to 'B'. Its quite intresting🙂.In Kannada language,"bela" means white. (South Indian language family)
"Port Port" is not as unreasonable a name as you might think. There's a lot of places in England that had similar things happen. Torpenhow Hill is probably the most notable, which means Hill-hill-hill Hill in their respective languages over time.
I just got that! And, the tribe the Denmark got its name from, the Danes, left the area of Sweden where the Svea were, and settled in Scania, which was then considered Denmark, and in the islands of Denmark. The Jutes had the mainland. All in all, I consider it a win for Sweden ! 😁
Absolutely hilarious that you wrote Slovakia for Slovenia. Did you know their embassy’s actually arrange to meet to exchange letters that have been addressed to the wrong country because this is so common. So don’t be too hard on yourself.
I can add that the region of Scandinavia got it's name from Sweden's southernmost province Scania (thought to be an island by the romans), because this was the place settlers first arrived to the region. The name is possibly derived from the Germanic root Skaðin-awjã, which appears in Old Norse as Skáney. The Germanic stem can be reconstructed as Skaðan- meaning "danger" or "damage" (English scathing, German Schaden, Swedish skada). The second segment of the name has been reconstructed as awjō, meaning "land on the water" or "island". The name Scandinavia would then mean "dangerous island", which is considered to refer to the treacherous sandbanks surrounding Scania.
Romans or other people did not settle Scania . Rather it was thought to be an island because of the myths/histories recounted later by people who left from scania and settled elsewhere. For example Jordanes who was a Roman but of distant gothic decent.
There are English rivers named Avon, which is the Celtic word for river. So Avon River simply means River River. So it could be Harbour Harbour as well.
It's really interesting, like nowadays countries names are just names, but in the beginning they were probably just normal words that they associated with these places
Yes names held more meaning in the past. I learned that with people names were an identity with power and substance almost as it explained who you was.
@@General.Knowledge 6:47 + 21:41 Arabs in Syria , Lebanon Jordan and Palestine (Israel) will get it wrong 😂 it's a 6ual pronounce ( éir air er etc..) it means p-nis 😂
@@General.Knowledge 22:03 Khoroathos kh like J in Juan , th like thunder 😘and i love you and your channel .. I'm very grateful for your work and tiredness.. God bless you
Actually, Belarus doesn't mean "White Russia", it means "White Rus' " and relates us to the medieval East Slavic state "Kievan Rus' " as known as Ruthenia. Meanwhile, "Russia" is kind of a version of "Rus' " name that used Moscovians to call themselves to highlight the difference between them and Volga's tartarians.
Moscovians were Rus...they call themselves Russians because they are Russians. Belorussians are also Rus... It's like calling belorussians "minskovites"
Besides, what's that about the origin of "slav" not being known? "Slovo" means "word", "slava" is a cognate word meaning "fame". "Sloviane" meaning "people of the word", as opposed to "niemcy" (the mute ones) is obvious and I thought pretty well established.
@@ltu42 It's so obvious i never thought about that! This is exactly the thing i came for but didn't learn from the video, thank you. (but i also understand that going extra deep for every country would make this already long video twice as long...)
You missed an important theory on Finland. Finland had an abundance of swamps and marshes, and "Suo" means swamp in Finnish. So "Suomi" could very possibly get its name from there.
Yes, Finland was a collection of tribes and was generally divided by Sweden and Russia after medieval period kicked in. Finns did not have a specific name to signify the area except the word Suomi that is an ancient word for swampland as Finland was mostly forests and swamps as we became an agriculture later than most european countries due to lingering ice age.
Missing on purpose the “negro” from Montenegro is actually very alarming about the conformism that we live in today. You should be an absolute idiot to relate this with the history of enslavement of African people by the colonial powers in the past. Montenegro is a slavic country with absolutely nothing related in their history with African slaves… Banning words because you want to express your empathy is actually not doing anything. This is another nonsense that white people came up with to show how progressive and forward thinking they are, but in fact it does not solve any issue, exactly the opposite - creates a bigger issue - censorship and conformism.
This is all because most internet pop culture is heavy USA influenced and so we import all their shit. Major socials platforms are Americans, and so they apply their kind of politically correct. In my language (romanian) , black is said "negru", So on YT I couldn't even say "I have a black cat" 🤣🤣
Nobody is trying to "cancel" Montenegro. The reason General Knowledge is self-censoring is because TH-cam's software is bad at distinguishing between similar sounding words, so there's a small chance that saying 'Montenegro' could result in the automated system demonetizing it. Its just bad programming, not 'nonsense made up by white people'.
@@BioTheHuman If it detected you were speaking Romanian then you could say that without needing to worry. TH-cam's slur-detection software is very poorly built, but it can at least tell the differences between common languages. You wouldn't need to self-censor in that case.
and the name is literally a Venetian translation of the local name "Crna Gora." Perhaps updating it to the modern "Montenero" might placate the censors?
Netherlands are named this way not because they are below the sea level, rather because the lands are at the lower flow of "the rivers" (Maas and Schelde, and Rhein, by extension) where the deltas of the revirs meet the North Sea.
It's also interesting, that Poland in Hungarian is Lengyelország. While most nations made contact with the Polanie tribe, Hungarians met the Lędzianie tribe, and named country after them.
There is a lot of misconception about Poland names origins also among our borders. In fact it wasn't named after Polanie Tribe but "Polacy" means "those who came after Lech" our mythical king. We are sometimes called "Lechici" or "Lechistan". It was an communist interpretation because they didn't wanted us to reffer to kings but to commoners. Still many of us believes it. "Polacy" basically means the same as "Szlachta". One is "after Lech" and the other is "from Lech".
@@Pedrinho8080 In polish, for example, consonants in a row (sz, cz, dz, dź, ch, rz...) most of the time creates one sound, without knowing a rule you naturally can't read it, just like it is in english (sh, ch, ck, gh, kn, th...) and in other languages, so it's not a thing only in est. european languages. The cyrillic alphabet simplified those consonants by writing them as a one letter, for ex. polish "szcz" sound is wrote as "щ" (similiar sound) in russian.
"Port port" isn't so strange. In the US, flat top mountains or buttes are sometimes named "Table Mesa." Since "mesa" means "table " in Spanish, the feature is then actually called "Table table." But a lot of English speakers, especially the early settlers, didn't realize that when naming a flat-topped mountain.
"Port port would not make sense" - There is a Town in Australia called Townsville which means town's town, and there is a hill in England called Torpenhow Hill - derived from Norse, Welsh, Saxon and finally modern English this literally means hill hill hill hill. Got to love names :)
That's because England and it's villages were home to many people from many cultures, basically the new inhabitants used to take the previous word for town from the original habitants as a proper name while also adding the word they used to indicate a town. So you have things like Town(English)+ville(french/norman)= Townville
Bulgaria has many other meanings that you definitely miss bro. BULG/VOLG according to some derrives from the river VOLGA or VULGUS/VULGAR or FOLK in Latin means People. (In Bulgarian meaning VULK (Wolf), White or Bright) & Aria (Arian simply reffering to Arian race, Tall or also Aristocratic). Another meaning is Five Arrows but nobody knows its origin couse it's very ancient. In other words nothing to do with the turkic meaning Mixed let alone with Revolt or Disorder. :D
Originally Bulgars/ Vulgars were nomads that came from Volga. They had another state around Volga, Volga- Bulgaria, that stopped to exist after Mongol invasion. In Bulgaria those nomads mixed with south slavs.
There was no Bulgarian state before the Bulgar tribes settled in the Balkans. The Byzantine Greeks named them Bulgars, because they came from the area of the river Volga. Such is the case with the Slavic tribes that settled in the Byzantine province of Macedonia. They were given names based upon the area where they settled. But because they were federation of different Slavic tribes they were reffered as Sclavenoi or Sklaveni.
"Slav" - (or slov) in many slavic languages means "word" or "speech", so slavics name themselves this way cuz they use similar language. Also in some slavic languages germans are called "nemchy" (немцы), that mean "voiceless" cuz germans had different language, so they cant speek to slavs.
Yeah I think that is what we learned in school... slovo=word, so peoples wich you could understand and talk to... as oposing to Nemci/Niemci/Nijemci= mutes, the peoples you vould not understand or talk to,bc they do not know your language, almost all those people being germanic trives that live close to slavic ones... It is interesting that slavic settlers of the Balkans, called latin speakers in Dacia Wlachs...and for a long time that land was called Walachia....land of romans, but in Serbian, Bulgarian... simmiliar how germanic settlers in Britain called celtic people Welsh, qnd that name kinda stuck...
@@Jukanella i found a quora page about it: www.quora.com/What-is-the-origin-of-the-term-Slav#:~:text=The%20English%20word%20Slav%20could,a%20speaker%20of%20their%20own By the way i'm sorry if i offended you, i didn't meaned to
I'm pretty sure to have learned that France is called "Frankreich" in German because a part of the "Franks", a Germanic tribe, went over to back then "Gallia" and conquered most of the land. They would also be the first kings of France. Hence they named their empire after their tribe. The original natives of France were the Gauls which is why it was called Gallia during the reign of the Roman Empire. So I find this explanation very plausible and a bit more concrete than that it's just called France because of the word "franc". I feel like this way the origin makes a lot more sense. But I haven't any research. This is just the left-overs of my history classes.
@@urlauburlaub2222 Netherlands just means low lands. Belgium was part of it. Holland was a province and it always have been an important province of the Netherlands politically since 1011 and also because of the VOC which spreaded this name all over the world. What do you mean with Germanic Empire because it was the Holy roman empire back then.
@@urlauburlaub2222 That's a pretty confused story. The Netherlands really does literally mean the low lands. The country as a whole is a river delta where various parts used to be water bodies or subjected to flooding several months of the year. This especially relates to Holland and Zeeland which makes it pretty silly to assume that the name was derived from an old Germanic name for woodlands. Regarding the mix-up with Holland being referenced as the country's name, this hardly has anything to do with the People from Holland claiming ownership of the rest of the country. What did however happen is that Holland became prominent at sea with ships sailing from various harbours in Holland, Zeeland and Flanders (so not just Amsterdam) flying the `princenflag` which was associated with William of Orange who was of the noble House of Nassau - the proprietors of the County of Holland and Friesland. The countries that were bugged by those ships didn't really care about the petty feelings of crew that originated from further inland and the family members that they left behind and simply referred to all of them as Diutch (`the people` in accordance with the Germanic origin - only in their case used sarcastic to imply that they were all uneducated savages) and being from Holland.
"Lingua Franca" is still used nowadays, and has nothing to do with the Franks. I tend to believe the name 'France' is a mix of gallicism (or gallo-roman) and franks -- of course in german it would be frankreich, but it's franCia in spanish, italian, frança in portuguese, etc.
Portus Cale meaning Port Port does make sense. Stuff like this happens all the time. It did happen a fair bit when the romans settled new areas, and that makes sense. If the area was called 'Cale', and the romans knew it as such without generally recognizing its meaning, they could promptly add 'Portus'. That's because they would see 'Cale' as a proper noun on itself, therefore, it would make sense for them.
@@2009heyhow because the actual capital is Tokyo which means Eastern capital. As Tō means east/eastern and Kyō means capital. Kyoto though can be translated to Capital, Capital Capital, or more accurately as Capital City (Kyō for capital and to for city). Of-course for a short while Kyoto was known as Saikyō which meant Western Capital or it was also just simply called Kyō (capital)
Spain being the land of rabbits in roman times actually makes a lot of sense. Rabbits used to be only native to the iberian peninsula and were introduced to the rest of europe by the romans. It's also possible that "spania" originally meant "hyrax" in carthaginian and later got applied to rabbits because they look somewhat similar. Also for the germany one: A better translation for "diutisc" would be "someone that belongs to our people" or "someone that speaks our language". Both meant the same in medieval times because speaking a west germanic language was the big thing the infamously fragmented germanic regions had in common.
Fun fact: the reason Norwegian has two writing systems is because when Norway decided to develop its own writing system rather than using danish, two people started work on it. One person named Knut Knudsen decided to norwegianify the danish language, while Ivar Aasen decided to go around the entire county and turn the dialects into a written form
Just a point on Portugal's name potentially meaning "port port", that's actually incredibly common through history for different groups to essentially use two words that mean the same thing.
if some american find the meaning port-port for portugal strange, "ville" is the french word for "town" or "city" so townsville in Lousiana means basicly towntown
"Port Port" actually makes the most sense to me for Portugal. After all, tautological names originally deriving from translation confusion are relatively common.
yeah, like the original word for port could've been forgotten or ignored over time so they added the more modern word port in front of it and decided it was good
In most slavic languages Slavs are ``those who use words`` And they call germans ``speechless`` I first found this about czech language slavs= slované| slovo=word germans= němci | němý=mute And i soon found out lot of other slavic languages share this phenomenon and i think its hilarious
Berlin comes from ancient Sorbian (Slavs from Germany, also known as Wends) word "brljin" which means "mud hole". Like the place where pigs roll in mud. True story.
@@PokojniToza1804Serbia got the name from Byzantine Empire. From the latin word: Servus(engl. servants). They were neither warriors or skilled in anything,they were useless(just like today)so Byzantines called them "servants". True story.
The czechs can regularly talk to Slovaks and Slovenes with no issue and can sometimes understand Poles and Russians The languages arent that diffrent ( i am czech )
15:14 The word Slav comes from "slovo", which means "word" in slavic languages. The Slavs are those, who can speak words (understandable for other slavs), while "niemec" ("German") means "the dumb one", i. e. one who can't speak a Slavic language.
@@steveholmes3471 Yes it is a Greek (Byzantine) word for slave - Σκλάβος (Sklávos), which is why it is being promoted. Slovo is spelled with an "o" and "slava" (fame) would be highly unlikely. This "Slavic/Germanic" bullshit, dates back from the Victorian era, when the City decided to divide Europe to protect its own hegemony from European challengers.
Great video :) Cymru is pronounced 'cum-ree' in Welsh and I was always taught it meant 'countrymen', although maybe it was once used to mean friends too
I've always found it interesting how Cymru means fellow countrymen and Wales means foreigners. I suppose because both clearly come from a desire to name a group of people, not the land or country, and both clearly show the circumstances under which the names arose.
I assume we have all seen Tom Scott's video on the Torpenhow Hill (The Hill Hill Hill Hill)? th-cam.com/video/NUyXiiIGDTo/w-d-xo.html How about that tweet by Neil deGrasse Tyson, about these two popular things in L.A.: The La Brea Tar Pits (The The Tar Tar Pits)? or The Los Angeles Angels (The The Angels Angels)? (I mean, California was once a part of Mexico, so no wonder they anglicise Spanish place names).
"White Russia" is how I learned the country name as a kid in Germany: Weißrussland I totally missed when it happened but nowadays all official sources call it "Belarus" in german too.
Both in German and in Dutch, Belarus is still called white russia. "Port port" would honestly not be particularly surprising. Happens a lot when outsiders name things based on local names. For example, in the UK there's the river avon. Where "avon" is old welsh for "river". So it's "river river". I think it's mildly amusing, but also kinda obvious, that a lot of countries are basically called "our land" in same ancient tongue. Although there's also a lot that base it off the latin name for the local tribe, which also makes sense, given how much people idolized the romans in the past (and still kinda do).
@@mathieunorth9147 why "Union Union"? Soviet doesn’t mean Union. You can translate it like "advice", "council" or even "recommendation". But the meaning of Soviet referring to Soviet Union has only one meaning. It is the council, which should mean it is a Republic of workers and peasants councils.
Belarus means always White Russia, no matter how political motivated some changes are. Because there is always the Slavic word, that means «White» and the word «Rus», which is «Russia» in Latin language. Germany call it since the protests not Weissrussland anymore, but Belarus(Russland is Russia in German). It’s not officially changed in the language, just politically motivated to split it from Russia and popularized in German media. But if they follow this "logic", they should rename most of the countries in their language.
Hi, a Croat here. A common theory of the international name of Croatia is that it was simply too difficult to pronounce "Hrvatska" (because of the hrv), so Latin speakers decided to "simplify" the pronunciation (or base it around other Slavic peoples' pronunciations, which I'll get to a bit later). The most commonly accepted theory of the origin of Croats is that we migrated here from an area in southern Poland and northern Slovakia known as "White Croatia", where a large part of the Carpathian mountains are located, so it is very possible that "Hrvat" is a derivative of "Karpat", especially because a common way of naming Croats in other Slavic languages sounds very much like "Kharvat"; and I believe the similarity between "Karpat" and "Kharvat" is obvious.
I love how every other country has countless theories and opinions about the name origins, while Romania is like : "yep, the Roman Empire, Rome... so Romania it is🤷🏻"
Thats because, the Winner takes it all.They kill the Language and Culture. It gave many Tribes in pre-roman Italy and Greece Colonys too. The Indians(native Americans) had 500 Nations, now they count only 50 States and the Indians get only what?
@@kallejodelbauer2955 uhmm no, actually that's wrong, the Romans didn't have great control of Dacia, but they managed to coexist peacefully with the Dacians and many Romans fell in love with the land and people there and moved permanently, or simply wanted to get as far away from Rome as possible and a land The Romans could barely control was perfect, they didn't ruin Dacian culture, they merged with it, this is probably the most peaceful takeover in history :) it's quite wholesome actually...and it was all good until the Huns, Magyars and more came and burned everything xD
@@birisuandrei1551 In French they did them be part of Rome too.But only after 1/3 get killed and another 1/3 get into Slavery. And didnt came Spartacus from Thracia?
@@celestindimitriu3675 It was an Order.I would say, thats the worst what a Culture could happend. A hole Country that by Order, didnt talk anymore his own Name.Thats like in the 70s TV-Series "Roots".You dont be called Kunta Kinte anymore,i had give you the new Name Toby.This must be a slavery Regime,or they dont care anything at all.
@@celestindimitriu3675 That they did on every Country.Dacia had no written language at all.If it give no written proofs, all History came from the Romans.Dacia had good Fighters,thats what the Romans needed. They fight a War with a Country,get all the Gold to make Streets and Buildings and with the Rest of it they make a Aggrement.Its like under new Management,but they fight now for them.If they like the Dacia People and want let fight them for them,they can make a aggrement with them, without a war against him.After a lost War then you dont have a Choice anymore.They had co-operate with them,the same what French do in WW2.But they, had a Choice,they didnt fight with Germany. Forget what the Romans wrote,think what had you do, if you should fight for them.History is allways written by the Winner.Ok they can had a good Time in this Empire,but no written proofs came from thenself.Its like Trumps 20000 Fake-News wich he had make in only 4 Years.A Roman Cesar had even more Control of the People, then Trump now.
The origin of word slav is from old slavic "slovo" - "a word". Basicly slavs are different tribes that can understand each other. Their neighbours are germanic tribes, called ' nemtsi, nemeth" by the slavs. That means silent, dumb.
Coming from a Polak, I agree! Słowiańi are people of "the word" and speak a common/similar tongue. Origin known indeed. In fact "slave" was derived from us as many Slavic people were enslaved during the Roman imperial reign. Fun fact: the word "robot" was derived from the common Slavic word "robota" meaning "work". Now robots are slaves to us, but for how long? Neo save us haha.
@@jablko0075 ah ok, I didn't know that, thanks for clarifying. In croatian "slovo" translates to "letter" (as in character) and the "word" would be "riječ". And "letter" (as in the thing you mail) is "pismo".
The example of calling the Netherlands Holland being like calling England London I think is slightly inaccurate it’s more like the very real thing of calling the entire UK England
I'm afraid you missed the most important part about "the land of the Franks" for France. The meaning you offered is technically correct but it's simply that the Franks were a germanic tribe that invaded what was left of Roman Gaul after the fall of Rome. Until the 1100s (iirc) France was called the land of the Franks .... because it was mostly populated by the ethnic group of the Franks. It's only after the Franks settled in Gaul that the word was "latinized" as "francus" and gained the meaning of "free man", just like Francia is a "latinized" form of the original germanic term for the Franks, since the Franks themselves adopted the language and most of the culture of Roman Gaul.
@@tribunal3003 I agree that we're not germanic, however we can't deny their impact on our history! The Franks built what would be medieval France, in that regard they left us way more than the Gauls did. If you look it up, you'll see that there is some frankish influence on our language, the rest being obviously vastly latin and yet there are much more frankish words than there are gallic ones. So yeah, not saying we are germanic but we're certainly some sort of cousin of germanic cultures. As for "ethnicity", the Franks simply mixed with the roman-gallic majority that had completely assimilated to roman culture. They're still very much there and when you look at early "french" kings their germanic origins are obvious. At some point, these Roman-Gallish just stopped calling themselves that way and started referring to themselves as the Franks, accepting the name of their new rulers in a way.
Latvian here, yeah our name derives from ancient Baltic tribe the Latgallians who still live in the Latgale region or southeastern part of Latvija. But there’s another variation for our name that I just wanted to tell just because our nation doesn’t just consist of Latgallians but also with Curonians, Selonians and Semigallians), which formed the ethnic core of modern Latvians together with the Finnic Livonians. So another belief of where our name came from is the literal translation which means “forest clearer”, because that was the main thing which the ancient tribes of our people did alongside seafaring. Overall great video, it was nice to learn about other countries meanings to, I didn’t know most of this. Cheers.
As a Finn and Finnish speaking myself, the odd Finnish name of "Suomi" sounds like land of swamps or wetlands. Word "Suo" means a swamp. So I was also told in the School.
I used to think that when fin is a part of a fish and suomu(=scale) is also that both Finland and Suomi would derive from fish 😁 But that's only my own pondering, in Uni we were told the Sami connection. Although the word saame(=Sami) was also told to have been transformed from the word häme witch is a part of Finland where the Sami people lived before Finns pushed them to Lappland.
@@aikslf yes. And ancient Finns learned to turn swamps into farmland. So the theory of Suomi coming from Suo(swamp) and Suomaa(swampland) makes a lot of sense, since Finland used to have a lot of swamp land and people living there had to learn to cope with it. "Alussa oli suo, kuokka ja Jussi"(in the beginning there was a swamp, hoe and Jussi) is also an old saying. Suomi coming from Saami doesn't make sense since Finns discriminated the Sami people
@@aikslf A lot of land in europe had to be "tamed" ... and the area of Brandenburg / Berlin was full of "wet grassy fields with some small patches of forest". It took a lot of work to make it arable. Sadly people do not recongnise the NEED for swamps, because they are capable of absorbing and buffering floods, which happen every once in a while and lead to a lot of destruction along the bigger rivers which will bring the masses of water downstream from the mountains (where the rain dumped all the water).
Another fun fact about Germany: in some languages (e.g. Spanish, Turkish), Germany is "Alemania/Almanya", derived from a tribe in the current south-west of Germany. dialects in the region (+Swiss German) are considered to be "alemannic".
@@Humbulla93 Similarly in Hungary it's 'svábok' even though the majority clearly have names originating from Franken and Bayern. Mine's relatively common in Austria and Bavaria. Some Germans came from Erdély/Transylvania and originate from Saxony, my grandfather from Eastern-Hungary is probably related to them. The actual swabians are a very small minority among so called 'swabians'.
I always found Germany name quite fun, different languages call it quite differently. English = Germany, German = Deutschland, Spanish = Alemania, Czech = Německo, Finnish = Saksa ... :D
Greece is actually a totally ancient greek word, from the word Graikos (Γραικος), which means The son of the old lady in ancient greek. Caesar just used the word, but didnt created it. Beautiful video, i subscribed 👌
@DarkPinkYoshi In France we call it Allemagne, from the Alamanni people, a lot of roman and celtic languages did that too, and I have no idea why, because Germany was founded like 800 years after the disparition of the Alamanni ^^'
Origin of word "slavs" is pretty much known. It is from noun slovo, meaning word, to describe group of people who speak the same language. More popular explanation though is, that it´s from noun sláva, meaning glory, so the one who has glory is Slav. A lot of slavic names end with -slav, e.g. Bohuslav (boh=god), Dobroslav (dobro= good), Víťazoslav (víťaz=winner) etc. It actually can be both at the same time, because, the slav in names has meaning: spread word (of glory)/celebrate glory of boh (god), dobro (good) and víťaz (winner). Sláv (or slav as english doesn´t have much diacritic ) also means to celebrate, usually in church, like celebrate god (sláv boha).
@@clarkkent551 Debatable. There are quite logical theories of the origin of the word Slavs both from the word Slave and from the word Slovo (word in russian) As if the Slavs are a group of people who understand each other / speak the same words
@@clarkkent551 "Slave" is derived from "Slav", not the other way around. It took place within the historical context of the Islamic slave trade, which post-dates the emergence of the Slavs by a few centuries. Both the Crimean Tartars and the Ottoman Turks would enslave large portions of the Slav territories they conquered, typically as prisoners of war, or simply raided and kidnapped as captives.
@@clarkkent551 Depends on whether you are brainwashed with German History Propaganda. Yes, if you get your in depth knowledge from Wikipeedallover which is edited 100% Woke and Politically Correct and shuns all inferior Eastern European knowledge. No, if West education from the Frankfurt Schul is seen as a Global Psy-Op.
There's a lot of tautological placenames. Roman shows up, asks a Celt "what do you call that?", Celt says "(celtic word of port)", Roman writes down Port Port.
You‘re implying that the either the Celts or the Romans or both had an understanding of what the original celtic name for that region (celtic port) meant at that time.
Even if they did understand the language (and likely they did or had translators), the sound of a name is more important for communication than its meaning. A complete translation into the empire's official language would create a communication barrier with the locals. It would also be uselessly generic for a large empire with many ports, while for the locals it may be the only port. On the other hand, the use of the name untranslated would fail to highlight the strategic information that there is a port there. And so, bastardized tautological names are born.
@@KimonFrousios brilliantly explained, exactly what you said. Language barriers were quite extreme back in the day, it is my assumption that it was extremely difficult to find someone fluent in both the Roman Languague and some far away Tribal Language the Romans barely have any contact with, therefore ltranslation and naming oddities would be pretty common.
Im sorry but the way you pronounced Cymru had me dying 😂😂 Reminded me of all the times I've said a word wrong because I learned it by reading and had never heard anyone say it lol.
You dont need to feel offended, Im a Slovak citizen and my colleagues at work never learn the difference between Slovakia and Slovenia and at some point I just gave up to correct them. It doesnt matter though because both countries are beautiful in nature, people and history. What bugs me more is that mostly US people consider both Slovakia and Slovenia to be former soviet states or "the eastern europe" which is untrue.
Fun fact: in america, theres a group of people, primarily in pennsylvania, who speak a variety of german known as pennsylvania dutch. This is because the definition of dutch was more akin to deutsch at the time they were settling there
The Dutch are Germanic people and for a very long time where part of the Holy Roman Empire with all the other Germanic people of the region. In the Middle Ages, the Dutch were just as German as Bavarians, Saxons, and Swabians. But being the "Germans" that lived closest to Britian and had the most trade and contact with the English, they got to keep the name "Dutch" when they became a separate entity, while all the other people of the Holy Roman Empire eventually became "Germans" in English.
I’m making Mother’s Day brunch just south of Pennsylvania Dutch country and I wanted to do recipes pertaining to the Netherlands so when I googled Dutch brunch recipes I had to scroll through too many pages about the Pennsylvania Dutch 😂
Theres an amazing, underrated action drama series called Banshee, that featured an Amish community in a fictional small town in Pennsylvania that originally hailed from those exact settlers and people. Pennsylvania Dutch was spoken frequently on the show in their scenes together.
Germany derives from the "Ger-mans" which means "Men with gers (ger = spear)" or simply "spear men". Then the Romans latinized the land of the Spear-/ Ger-mans to Germania. So that's that
And that is just one name among many. Seriously, I don’t think there’s any country (in Europe at least) with as many different names across languages as Germany (Deutschland, Alemania, Saksa, etc)
That's why we should not use a antiant (!) tribe names for the entire modern Nation! Alemans were a tribe in south-west (next to the french calling the entire region "Alemagne"). Saksa were a tribe in the North (moving together with Angles to Englaland). Today three Bundesländer have their name: Sachsen, Sachsen-Anhalt & Niedersachsen. It's similar to calling Netherland Holland or calling a Scotsman English. The Nation built by the tribes in 1871 (yes, very late - before that there were just Unions) is called "Deutschland". Therefore "dutch" should not be used for the Netherland (which are calling Germany as "Duitsland").
@@bloempin it’s a bit late for that though, isn’t it? Think of all the countries that are named after ancient tribes: Germany, England, France, Russia, Denmark, Hungary, Czechia, Turkey, Greece, Italy, Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, Mexico, Laos, Iran, Syria, to name but a few… We’d have to change all of those names
Does anyone know the ancient name of Germany? It's actually mentioned in the Bible! Genesis 10:2 Gomer. Under the table of nations. No idea what Gomer means. But the first name for Germany.
@@SoniaJbrt I wouldn’t put too much stock in what the Bible says about that subject, given that it was written after the Romans had already made contact with Germanic tribes. There is just no overall term for the region among the Germanic people themselves (that we know of). It has been suggested that “Germani” is an overall description used by the Gauls to describe their eastern neighbors as a whole, but that’s still not confirmed. Basically, there is no known endonym from that time, and the oldest exonym for that specific region was Germania.
Fun Fact:Montenegro nativ name Crna Gora axually means black forest gora means forest.🇲🇪 And we had two names befor, Duklja which comes from latin I think and zeta.
It is remarkable that most of the countries names in Greek language still are translations of their ancient names. Like Germania (Γερμανία) or Kossovo (Κοσσυφοπέδιο) meaning plain of the black birds. And these names can spotted even in ancient Greek or Medieval Greek documents.
@Maniatika web in albania we call it Dardani, and kosovo only bcs other countries know it as kosovo, sooo no, Dardania (kosovo for you to understand) it's not the land of blackbirds
@@bledarlala6822 I know very well the word "Δαρδανία" and "Δαρδάνοι", they exist in ancient Greek bibliography and describe an ancient tribe with Thrace origin I think (please check it). However the name - word Kossovo is something different and was created around Middle Ages for a specific field. Both in Slavic and Greek language the land - field that nowadays is State is translated with the same way. (land of blackbirds).
It's funny how many countries' names came from or were affected by Greek words. (including Croatia whose name you wrote in Greek but you mentioned it derived from another language).
“Scotti” was the Roman name for the Gaelic tribes who raided Britain. When the kingdom of Dal Riada merged with lowland Alba it became known as Scotland.
@@Mugdorna That's interesting. Wiki says the first mention of scotti was in Latin in 312CE. But I know that Strabo called it Scotland, in Greek, in 200BCE.
Interesting *possible* story for the name "Monaco": In older Latin and Spanish (possibly others too), Munich or München in Germany is called "Monaco". The name of "München" derives from Old Bavarian "Monchen" or German "Mönchen", meaning monks and monastery because of the monastery there. As a result, the name of the modern country could be related to this
Das Wort Mönch stammt von dem Substantiv altgriechisch μοναχός monachós, das vom Adjektiv altgriechisch μόνος mónos „allein“, abgeleitet ist. ... Aquila, Symmachus) bezeichnet das Wort eine Person, die „allein“ ist und ein religiöses Leben führt.
The term "Ukraine" derives from the prefix ‘u’ - ‘in’, ‘inside’ and the root ‘krai’ - land, thus meaning ‘inland’, ‘inner land’ referring to Kyiv and Pereiaslav compared to its outskirts.
@@vlad22rus First mention of a word "ukraine" was in 12th century where it literally means "all-country". ...а томъ бо поути разболѣсѧ Володимеръ. Глѣбовичь. болѣсть тѧжкою ѥюже скончасѧ. И принесоша и во свои градъ. Переӕславль на носилицахъ. и тоу престависѧ мс̑ца априлѧ. во. и҃ı дн҃ь и положенъ бъıс̑ во црк҃ви ст҃го Михаила. и плакашасѧ по немь вси Переӕславци. бѣ бо любѧ дроужиноу. и злата не сбирашеть. имѣниӕ не щадѧшеть. но даӕшеть дроужинѣ. бѣ бо кнѧзь добръ. и крѣпокъ на рати. и моужьствомъ крѣпкомъ показаӕсѧ. и всѧкими добродѣтелми наполненъ. ѡ нем же Оукраина много постона. И так как по нику видно что ты узкий, отвечу тебе понятной тебе языкой. Возьми свои имперские стереотипы, засунь их себе поглубже и перестань пудрить людям мозги своей чушью.
@@bestsnitka4688 Обоссышь, то к чему ты отсылаешься (Переяславльская летопись) была написана примерно в 1420 годах о событиях 12 века. Можешь дальше переписывать историю из-за вашего комплекса неполноценности. А сам термин как я и писал означат край страны, в зависимости от периода он менялся. Так, по документам существовала Окская Украйна (сейас эти земли полностью Российские). т.к., границы России проходили по реке Оке. Я могу тебе советовать только подучить нормальную историю, а не высерать вашу украинскую шизу. То что ты написал вообще не опровергает мною сказанное : Окраина - это край Руси (России). И вообще, почему не на фронте?
@@bestsnitka4688 Пардон, но это не упоминания Украины, а именно что значение "пограничной территории между чем-то", потому что в летописях встречаются обозначения и "псковской «оукраины»" это так обозначали псковские деревни между Русью и Ливонским орденом, к примеру, в Псковской I летописи 1271г и 1348 г. А Добжинская земля, которая была границей между Польшей и Тевтонцами называли "Краиной"(Crayna, Craina), а ведь есть еще словенская Крайна. Так что это никак не может быть первое упоминание Украины, а просто определенная местность пограничная.
@@gadgetest4600самое смешное, что название "украина" как окраина именно что отражает ее историю. В этом нет ничего плохого или позорного, но некоторые упоротые украинцы продолжают изобретать байки про укропитеков и натягивать сову на глобус.
You don't. Kaliningrad was once part of Poland, but was taken by Russia (from the Germans) at the end of World War II. Edit: I get it. It's not depicted on the map.
Since when? Yes, I've heard about it before, but I think its justa sarcastic name for the country. The river Lietava hypothesis makes way more sense. And I'm speaking as a native Lithuanian from Kaunas
Name Lietuva originated from Lietuva land (land (žemė) being a government unit of baltic tribes), it before becoming the strongest land in the region was small and it makes sence for it's name to have originated from Lietava river. However, Lietava river is very small and it is very likely that it's name originated from rain (lietus). Therefore the name of Lithuania does have connection with rain, but from a bit further then it is generally thought.
On Sweden; There is one Roman source from 100 AD, a historian named Tacitus, that mentions Sweden by the name "Suiones". It's still derived from the same meaning , "our own", so while modern Sweden (Sverige) didn't appear until the 1200s AD the name appears to have much older roots.
Hungarian here. So Magyar ( Hungarian) comes from the name of one of the brothers of the pair: Hunor and Magor. They were brothers. Hunor was the forefather of the Huns, Magor was the forefather of the Magyars. This " myth" is written down in our oldest chronicles the Chronicon Pictum ( képes krónika). According to myth, they both chased a magical deer. This deer symbol can be found in old Hungarian burials, and also in pre Hungarian burial grounds of the avars of pannonia..before the Hungarians came to the region. This is why we believe that we are also in connection with avars, and the huns, as they used the very same bows, and artifacts .. such as the magical deer, the turul bird... the bows...just search avar burial deer or hun burial deer, it is the very same artifact. 😅
He did detailed a analysis for the local names of western countries. Its discriminatory, but Czechia was at least handled with some dignity. I mean I know that Slovakia is small and insignificant, but the term "Slavs" is used to describe ethnic origin of half the Europe so he could say more than: "The origin of Slavs themselves is seemingly unknown." (Such information is uninteresting, useless and false. Dneper and Tigris?)
@@nandinhocunha440 Hellas, which is how ancient Greeks called themselves(Hellenes) means “land of light”. Greece comes from Grekos( Grekòs, Γραικός) which was the first Greek tribe the Romans came in contact to. These Greki were a tribe from Epirus, region of Greece. When they met the rest of the Greeks they called them with the same name they used for the first ones they came in contact, because they realised it’s the same people.
@@francescocattaneo8256 You gotta change some languages too, how dare they use similar words to say "black". Or are you a racist and invalidate any language that isn't English?
Very well made video, thanks. Only the underlying martial music made me uncomfortable, as it symbolizes the innumerable and still ongoing military conflicts between competing nations.
Great video! A fun fact for you: According to a Greek I once met, we Norwegians are the only other country besides themselves to call Greece "Hellas". And some explanation for why Norway has two official written languages: We have so many very different dialects, not just different accents, but completely different words for the same things and very different sentence structures. Sometime during the 1800s, a guy named Ivar Aasen decided to travel the country to collect all the different words and phrases to collect them into what became Nynorsk (literal translation: New Norwegian). I believe this was to distinguish the 'real Norwegian' from the Danish the people were learning at that time being under Danish influence. So the other official written language of Norway is heavily influenced by older Danish and resembles mostly the dialects you find around our capital Oslo :)
And we two teories on why it is called norway or noreg/norge, the first is the one he explained in the video and the other comes from the word "nór" wich means small or narrow waters/sound.
@@geogeo2299 No, I'm not. They speak Norwegian for sure. I'm simply saying that Norwegian consists of many different (and some very similar) dialects. How the people in and around the Oslo area speak now, is the Norwegian modernised version of an older Danish I believe. Keep in mind I'm no linguistics professor, this is merely the common conception amongst Norwegians.
Also as a finn: The "Suo" part from the Finnish country name Suomi means swamp. Basically Finland used to be fully swamp. Also our capital was built on a swamp.
Boii was a celtic tribe who lived there. Romans called their land "Boiohaemum" (Empire/Kingdom of Boii) from it = Bohemia.. however Bohemia is now 1 of 3 parts of modern Czechia. It's the biggest and most developed one. Moravia and Czech Silesia are other two parts.
First notices about Spain, far before Rome, are related to a Celtiberic town. That town was named "Tartessos" which associated territory would eventually extend frm the actual Gibraltar strait to the portugese Algarve. The town was known for their metal works. By the way it was, for Mediterranean cultures, (greeks and phoenicians) the western most known land at the time. So, both meanings, Town at the West and Metal workers" make a lot of sence.
Actually, there was a tribe in viking sweden called the "svea" that later took control over the "göta" tribe, so I think that Sweden/Sverige is from Svea
@@fakename2336 It is possible that Gutar (Gotland), Götar (Götaland), Goths and Jutes (Jylland) all got their names from the same source, but its uncertain, stretched over millenia and very complicated even if they somehow can be traced back to a common origin. One hypothesis is that the source word means pour, either meaning spill their seeds, as a euphemism for 'man' or pour as in metal casting.
@@fakename2336 No, that is Götaland, a past of mainland Sweden, Gotland comes from the Goths, some traveled south to Italy and Africa to and became Visigoths and Ostrogoths, but some went north to Sweden and thus the name, Gothland, and the old viking name for the area around the current capital was Sviþjod (Svithjod), routhly meaning People of the Svith (Swede)
Dude, you have slaughtered this map. Poland annexing the Kaliningrad oblast? Moldova having access to the Black Sea and annexing Odessa? What is this weird shape of Macedonia?
Lol, at this point Poland annexing Kaliningrad is a long-standing tradition represented by no less than Russia during winter Olympics there, so I would cut them some slack with that one.
10:40 honestly you spoke deutch out almost perfectly and “Nederlander” was pretty close as well. Could’ve passes as an foreigner who’s been living in the Netherlands for 5/10 years.
21:43 C'mon YOU HAD ONE JOB... Funny how it's almost always Slovenia that gets mistaken for Slovakia, but Slovakia is never Slovenia. Pls people, do your research
Za nas nepojmljivo, ampak tujci, kot da bi vedeli, da smo Slovaki in Slovenci bili nekoč ena etnija, preden so nas Avstrijci in Madžari ločili na dva dela (pred približno 1200 leti). Oni so bili Panonski Slovenci, mi pa Alpski Slovenci. Zato so to dejstvo uporabili Hrvati, ko so osvojili naše kraje.
@@bojanstare8667 Tak nejak. Sme v podstate jeden národ, lenže pri rôznych migráciách sme sa často delili. Vy používate starší jazyk, my máme mladší. Cudzinci still making the same mistakes, while at the same time not making them.
Haha! When I went to Czecho-Slovakia (pre split, in 1991) someone asked me "When are you going to Czechoslovenia?" Probably Slovenia gets mistaken for Slovakia because it's smaller, although Slovakia is pretty darn small itself. All in all, a very enjoyable video.
I think that Suomi (Finland) is comes from “suo”, which means “swamp”, because a Finn is “suomalainen”, which pretty much translates as “somebody from the land of the swamps”.
Possible, but unlikely, since Finland is not more swampy than any of the surrounding lands. It’s entirely possible that suomi is a bastardization saami or something similar which might have Saami or even Paleo-European roots. Saami languages replaced the original Paleo-European languages in Finland after all, before being mostly replaced by Proto-Finnish.
Usein unohdetaan Suomi sanan kohdalla yhteys sen vironkieliseen vastineeseen "Soome". Molemmissa on selkeästi sana "suo" ja erityisesti vironkielisessä pääte "me" joko löytyy myös sanasta "häme". Voisiko olla niin, että "me" on esimerkiksi metsään viittaava lyhenne?
Haha, when talking about Slovenia and the similarity of its name with Slovakia, the title actually says “Slovakia”. Which serves as proof that EVERYONE mixes up the names of these two (which I as a Slovak am particularly happy about 🤣)
It is interesting how similar we are, but we are separated and we have almost no contact. We never talk about Slovakia, we don't listen their music, I never watch their movies, nothing. But we have a lot of same words and almost the same flag. Someday I will go there. Greetings from Slovenia.
Dutch is coming from the people living in the Netherlands, part of northern Germany, Denmark and a small part east of Denmark in Germany. It was a language spoken by them, Dietsch, Deutsch, which became by the Brits naming those people Dutch.
@@finn4012 Wexit, Scexit, North I-rexit, and last but not least Eexit! Will the sun finally set on the British Empire?! Find out next episode on Dragon Ball Z!
That always confuses me when I see political talks about the UK breaking apart but theyre only ever talking about Scotland and Northern Ireland as if Wales was obviously English? Or maybe its just because many people out of the UK dont even know that Wales exists -.-
there is a ancient story of the brothers lech and czech, who went to the west to found new countries. then they stoped, shot arrows in the sky and asked the gods for a sign. where lechs arrow landed a white eagle rose to the sky. lech settled and took the white eagle a his symbol. czech continued his journey to the west and later founded czechia. the white eagle continues to be the polish emblem and lech still is a very popular name in poland.
@@michaelalbertson7457 I checked on Wikipedia and it seems that in Poland we have 3 brothers but Chech Republic has version of legend with 2 brothers 😁 but what is interesting, Rus was responsible for founding Ukraine ;) In Wielkopolska Chronicle in 13 century they say that Lech Chech and Rus were sons of Pannonian Prince 😁
The word "slav" is probably derived from the proto-Slavic word "slovenin", which in turn is derived from "slovo" meaning "word". "Slovenin" would mean "people who use the same words", or less literally "people who understand each other". In opposition, the non-Slavic people were called "niemcy" - "mute people", as they were people who used understandable words. According to another theory the word "slav" is derived from Latin "sclavus" meaning "slave", since many slaves in ancient Rome were of Eastern European origin.
Extra fun fact, the Russian word for German (person) is “nemets”, coming from the Slav word for “foreigner” or “outsider”, Germany and the rest of the Western European empires were considered very foreign (as in different from the Russian world) all through medieval and early modern history.
Only the first etymology is correct, while the second is vice versa. Yes, many Slavic pagans were used as slaves in early middle ages, and from their ethnonym "Slavs" derives the word "slave". It doesn't make sense that Slavs call themselves a latin word which would be offensive to them...
"slava" means "glory" in slavic languages... why should slavs call themselves by a latin word which means "slave"?! that's a totally stupid theory used by people who hate slavic people
Did I get any country's meaning wrong? A few of them didn't have that much information available online
As i thought Portugal was named after a port, iceland after ice , then Spain should have been named after pain , Monaco named after the biscuit company monaco same for brittania , then Luxembourg should have been named after the luxury of the country , Germany should have been money , Netherlands should be like its neither land nor water , Italy should have been named after tally marks , denmark named after marks german old currency , slowakia would have been slow wake Slovenia be like slow veins , Macedonia named after apple mac , Croatia should be like named after asia , Romania named after romans , Sweden named after sweet dish like its , Switzerland named after a land where swiss people live lol , Norway named after the way of nor , Belgium named after the bells , Estonia named after stone, Hungary is simple when we are hungry, Moldova named after mold over saying it faster would sound moldova and Ukraine named after crane thats all i thought when i was kid i hope no one gets offended
You made a little mistake at 21:47
You were talking about slovenia but you wrote Slovakia next to the flag
@@Alexander-lg1pk i wanted to comment the same thing
6:51 Northern Ireland???
Slovenia you said was Slovakia.
The fact that you can't pronounce "Montenegro" because of youtube censorship is scandalous
@@RIlianP Nigeria?
@@ifeanyiobiora-okafo7017 named after same river, but different country.
Yes, its hilarious. What about sport programmes, do they ban it too?
@@11Survivor Niger has a french pronunciation and not what you think it sounds in English
@@abhiinair I am French.
So?...
In Greek, France is still called Gallia.
as a frenchman, still being called a gaul is awesome !
"gallian democracy" instead of "french republic" indeed
@@expneperien 🇨🇵❤🇬🇷
@Ararune Better explained. In most Slavic languages Germans are called: Nemci, Nijemci, Njemci which means "mute people'' because they didn't speak language that Slavs could understand, or they could understand Slavs.
@@expneperien why
"home of the Boii" god bless our ancestors.
Yes Boii
Oh shit, waddup
Yeah boii
i literally wanted to say that as well
Yeah Boii
1:25 The idea that a place could be named "Port Port" (each half derived from a different language) is surprisingly plausible. There are many places with names like that. The Sahara Desert is one example (sahara means "desert" in Arabic). Tom Scott discussed the phenomenon in one of his videos while visiting a place that could reasonably be translated as "Hill Hill Hill Hill."
There is many hills in the Sahara but only one Port in Porto^^
@@HansWurst-bf4qg The "Hill Hill Hill Hill" is in reference to Torpenhow Hill, where supposedly "Tor" "Pen" "How" all mean hill in different languages, this is likely a myth, and does not refer to anything in regards to Sahara. But "Sahara" comes from Arabic, I think, and means "desert" , so Sahara Desert is literally "desert desert".
The presense of only one port in Porto is as such irrelevant. The idea is that the locals at the time called the area "cale" from their word for "port", the Romans would not have known the meaning of this word and could so easily have called it "Portus Cale", adding their own word for "port".
This is a relatively common thing when a new people encounter a place and ask for its name without knowing the local language. The Gobi desert is another one, as "gobi" means "desert" as well. And for a time Hawai'i was known as "owhyee" adding "'o", the Hawai'ian copula(to be) as the local said to the English "'o hawai'i(this is Hawai'i)".
The Romans called Cartago Nova the current Spanish city of Cartagena, but Cartago (Carthge) comes from the Phoenician Qart Hadasht, which means new city, so Cartago Nova means new new city.
Portugal became from medieval latin Portucale, Portucalis. From latin "Portus" (port)+ greek "kallos"( beautiful), so it was a Beautiful Port. Portus is now the Oporto City in north of Portugal.
Anche dire "Giardino dell'Eden" è ridondante, Eden significa a sua volta "giardino". 😂😅
"port port" makes total sense in geography, trust me
Yep, greetings from "mountain mountain mountain" (mount Fuji Yama)!
It is actually 'passage port' or the passage at the port. Portus meaning passage in latin (in french and spanish it is still used as in "port d'envalira" or "puerto de navacerrada"). Cale meaning port in latin.
@@henriqueOvermelho thanks!
The old Celtic word for "river" is "avon". In the UK, we have the River Avon. So, yep!
I'm more of a desert desert guy myself
The n-word: *is literally the word for a very common color in many languages*
TH-cam: "You can't say that."
the worst part about it is the fact that the literal translation of the countries name is black mountain so who ever came up witht he name Montenegro was a racist
@@gababoy1237 I think it meant black as in the fact the mountain could be stone which is dark grey like black? Maybe not.
And it's not even the n-word. But hey, some TH-camrs even cenzor words like suicide bc it makes TH-cam sad or something
@@gababoy1237 No? They just named the country like that because it was a black mountain.
You do realize the people back then weren't so picky and sensitive about everything they hear, unlike nowadays.
@@gababoy1237 I hope this is a troll
In Greek we call Portugal “Porto-Gallia” and France is “Gallia”, so it literally translates to Port of the Gauls, aligning with the third theory more
I was thinking it was derived from "Porto Regal" ...or royal port.
But that might just be my own fantasy.
@@Snaakie83 north of portugal is the spanish province of galicia (not to be confused with polish galicia).
in Italian the term "franco" can still be used for the adjective "honest"
About portugal,as our history refers,Portugal comes from Porto Calmo (Calm/quiet Harbour). Im Portuguese and thats not a theory.thats what is on our history
@@jaye20 In romanian "franc" is another word for sincere
For Bulgaria, there may be another explanation. In Greek, the second letter of the alphabet had phonetic value B, but later transitioned to V. Several words in south-eastern Europe can trace origin to this transition; for example, the city of Bethlehem is named in some old songs as Vitlaim. And bulgars use Cyrillic writing, derived from the Greek alphabet. So their name might very well be coming from the Volga River, where they were known to live before their migration to the Balkans.
There was a Bulgaria around the river Volga but it was a different one from the one on the Danube river. Both came from same older Bulgaria however very different. Also it is very easy to say Cyrillic comes from Greek but that is not true in the direct sense just because of some similarities. I can say a lot but just remembered comments are a bit pointless
Or we have the coincidence that both explanations are right.
@@СимеонТодоров-ы9н The moredern cyrilic alphabet is the renovated version of the "Glagolitsa" writing system made by St. Kiril and St. Metodii Brothers by their students who were sent on a pilgrimage by the Emperor of the Byzantium Empire in order to make peace with the tribes that came during the Migration Period aka as the Barbarian Invasions. The Bulgarian Kingdom at the time was the biggest one on the Balkan peninsula and since it encompassed not only people from the Bulgarian tribe but many other smaller tribes and all of them were seen as barbarians by surrounding nations and were not accepted on the International stage of Europe at the time. Both the Pope and the Emperor of Byzantine wanted to convert them to their respectful religion - Catholicism from the Pope and Eastern Orthodox Christianity from the Byzantium Empire. It also aligned withthe desire of Khan Boris I later known as Knyaz Boris Mihail I to unite his nation and make it internationally recognized by the other European countries. Before their coming to the Dunabe valley in 681AD, the Bulgarian tribe is known to have had its origins north of the Black Sea. But it is factualy known that the Cyrilic alphabet took a lot of elements from the ancient greek alphabet.
The name Volga is from 17 century,befor tne name is ITiL.In all map of Romans .End Herodot and Strabon, the ancient autors they raight Itil
@@georgiivanov1568
what's the name
"It could mean Port Port, but that makes no sense."
_Lake Chad visibly fuming_
East Timor or Timor Leste too haha
I live next to a lake called Vesijärvi, which means Waterlake. Lake WaterLake.
Gobi Desert too lol
Sahara too...
There is a city in South-West of Portugal, near the Atlantic Ocean which is named "Odemira", the same name as the river that crossed the city, So, you will see a Portuguese map of the region naming this river "Rio Odemira", so the Odemira river.
But the name Odemira is in fact two words, one from Visigoth language "mira" which means running water or river, and "Od", which came from the Arabic word "wad", which means also river.
So, we have a city name which means River-river, and so on, this city is crossed by the river River-river!
21:43 As a Slovene, my disappointment is immeasurable and my day is ruined
😂
mate he even wrote it as Slovakia :D I almost spilled my drink when it appeared on the screen :D
I also noticed it 😅 even knowlidged people still are cofused with this names
not Slovene, but I'm totally in love with your country and yeah, it ruined my day even more.
@@radeksilar543 hey, he got the flag right, tho at least haha He was speaking of its connections with Slovakia and probably that made him mess it up.
Not to be pedantic, but "Portus Cale" meaning "port port" actually makes sense; Romans often asked the locals what the name of their native places were, and the locals often responded by just mentioning the common name of the place indicated; that's why in England there are multiple "River Avon", "Avon" meaning "river" in ancient English. So that's why "port - port" could be an actual origin for the name.
Does "cale" also mean "castle"? Just curious... maybe "port-castle"?
also, ursus arctos, the grizzly bear's scientific name..stands for bear bear, in latin and greek
@@dehro Ursus Arctos, the bear bear, is actually the Brown Bear. The Latin name for the Grizzly is even better: Ursus Arctos Horribilis. Meaning "The *horrible* bear bear"!
@@kaji9704 good call.. I misremembered
Sahara desert = desert desert
It's worth noting that "Cymru" in Welsh is not pronounced like "simru" but more like "kummri".
Also the term "Scotland" is (or was originally) an exonym. The name for Scotland in Scottish Gaelic is "Alba", which derives from Old Irish "Albu" or "Albain", which is believed to have been used to describe the land of the Picts and other Celtic territory of what is now Scotland.
Why the hell is the u pronounced i?
@WhizzKid2012
Because Welsh orthography is different to English.
An English U sound is represented by a Y I'm Welsh.
W and Y are vowels in Welsh btw.
After all the nutter comes from another continent
So Norway has two names😂 😂 nutter
@@WhizzKid2012 because it's a very different language
TH-cam seriously can't handle "Montenegro"??
FFS, a beginner level programmer could code an exception for that in the algorithm. It's a whole damn country.
And most likely there is an exemption hahah i guess hes american so he got triggered.
I'm from montenegro and living in australia whenever i met someone from usa they got upset that i said (as a white dude) that im from montenegro
Murica and ignorance goes together like russia and vodka
@@filipdraskovic2418 At the start of the vidoe he said he is portugese, this is thing about youtube and his ignorance, not about General Knowledge. He had to do it or youtbe algorithm would just block or demonetized his video.
@@lemonaj4408 must have missed that part
There are a lot of videos on yt about montenegro
One of which is from geography now and i haven't heard that he got blocked cause of that
TH-cam must understand that the world doesn't speak only English.
@@filipdraskovic2418 it's not that he'd get blocked, but the video would likely get demonetised.
I wonder why the country's name is translated that way though, surely Cernagora or something like that would be better and closer to how slavs call it in general.
When mentioning Slovakia, you were actually talking about Slovenia. They are two completely different countries, but often get mixed up.
Also when talking about Slovenia , the name is givien is Slovakia faceplam :D
I felt the pain, made me think if that's actually trolling or coincidence :D
And Kosovo isn't country...
@@milutinitc4937 kinda is...
@@shmo_de yes, kinda...
In Greek, Switzerland is still called Elvetia, and as already mentioned from a fellow Greek, France is still called Gallia.
This video was more about the origin of their english or native name. A lot of countries have very different names in different languages, especially neighbours.
@@Notmyname1593 Yeah definitely, just wanted to point it out for fun.
In Portuguese (and I believe in Spanish as well) we can refer to Swiss people both as "HELVÉTICO(S)" or "SUIÇO(S)"
@@stellak.6095 funny we in Romania also call it Elveția 😂🙏🏻
In Romanian its Elvetia as well
"Slavs" comes probably from the slavic word for... "word" :) "Słowo", "Slovo" etc. "Słowianin" (slav) meant - "someone who speaks our tongue", "The user of the words". On the same basis many slavic languages call Germans "Niemcy", "Nijemci", "Nemci" etc. which is derived from the word "niemy" - "mute", "Someone who doesn't speak our tongue". For a long time it was a general term for any non-slavic people/foreigners.
Well, I`ve heard that word "Slavs" came from Roman Latin which means "slaves", because Slavs were one of first slaves in early Rome.
@@TheMrlukagwell I've seen this circulating over the internet too but it's an obvious fake that became popular because many people repeat it without checking. Slave in Latin is "servus" and the origin of the world "slave" is old English, not Latin, so this theory has no base. The widely accepted theory of the slavs people name origin is indeed coming from the word "word" i.e. people that speak the same language.
We romanians call them Germani (germans) or Nemți (nemtzi), this proves your argument is valid and you are right
@@TheMrlukag wizardman1976 is right, his argument is valid. Slavs were not Rome's slaves. And what do you mean by "Roman Latin" are you american or something? Cuz you really seem dumb to be an european.
@@Djjswjsj In russian it will be same 'немцы' or 'nemtzi' if write with lattin letters :)
Fun fact:
In Polish we use the word "republika" for all the countries that have "republic" in their names but for Poland and only Poland we use word "rzeczpospolita" instead.
...rzeczpospolita of course is an polonization of the latin res publica - which in english can be translated as common good, or commonwealth
@@polishmemefactory4793 which of course goes back to the first rzeczpospolita, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth
@@Morrov Which was an Oligarchy with weak king
@@alo5301 Depends on the Period, the Late Commonwealth, yes you can call it that, but not the Early and Golden Age periods.
@@polishmemefactory4793 sorry but how do you pronounce that
It's funny the fact that Greeks use many "original" country names (such as "Scotia", "Hispania", "Helbetia") and not their subsequent versions
In Romania those are very similar as well: Scotia (Scotzia), Spania, Elvetia (Elvetzia)...
Belarus is also called white Russia in Greek.
@@Bakerygo same in mandarin
And Gallia (France)
In Polish: Szkocja, Anglia, Hiszpania, Francja
I love all these "river river", "hill hill", and "port port" names, but nothing beats the Yucatan peninsula which roughly means "I don't know what you're saying" in old Mayan.
🤣🤣🤣🤣 love this
Must be like how the Greeks came up with the word barbarian, as in people that go "bar bar bar" 🤣
This is everywhere in America. The explorer were asking what is that? and the translator was answering I don't know in local language.
@@user-vg6sg7kh1q yup, I live next to the "Great River" River
Sounds similar to something I heard about in that the Kangaroo name came from 'I don't understand" in Aboriginal.
Explorers really didn't give much thought over the fact that foreign people of foreign lands didn't speak their languages.
About the name 'Belarus'. The name Ruscia Alba (Ruthenia Alba) was first mentioned in the 1250s in an anonymous geographical treatise originating in Ireland. Most likely, this name was not known in Rus' itself (the name Rus' itself had just begun to take hold in the territories from the Black Sea to the Baltic Sea). Therefore, it is most likely that the name White was added to Rus by medieval European cartographers. Many regions were given the name of White Ruthenia by cartographers, but it's funny, the Novgorod Republic was called White Ruthenia the most. Over time, cartographers began to come up with new names, such as Red Ruthenia, the territory of modern Ukraine, and Black Ruthenia, the land of the Balts. And here again, the same tradition of medieval cartography was at work: whichever name I want to give it and wherever place I want to put it, I do it. In 1470, the Novgorod Republic was conquered by the Moscow principality, and after that Moscovia was called White Ruthenia. To put it quite simply, Novgorod, Moscow, and the Polotsk principality were called White Ruthenia, although no one knew of any White Ruthenia in these lands. In the second half of the 16th century, maps became more and more detailed, and the term finally settled on the lands of modern Belarus. This was facilitated by the appearance of historical chronicles by Marcin Kromer, Maciej Stryjkowski, and others. This was also influenced by the Livonian War, when in 1563 the Muscovy captured Polotsk, and since Muscovy was often called White Ruthenia, and news of this war spread throughout Europe, Polotsk also began to be called White Ruthenia. In 1579 Stefan Batory expelled the Muscovites from Polotsk, but the name remained and from the end of the 16th century Belarus began to be called the land with a predominantly Orthodox population, which had previously been simply called Ruthenia or Lithuanian Ruthenia. In the early 17th century, the name Belarus became widely accepted, for example, in 1632, King Wladyslaw 4 restored the Orthodox diocese in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and it was called White Ruthenian. At the same time, in the official documents of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the term white Ruthenia was increasingly used to refer to the lands of modern Belarus. Despite the fact that the state that included the lands of White Ruthenia was called Lithuania, Muscovy began to use the term White Rus more and more often, referring to the lands of Belarus and rarely Ukraine. Because, in their view, Ruthenia is theirs and they need to capture it. It didn't take long; in 1654, Muscovy troops under the leadership of Alexei Mikhailovich attacked the Belarusian lands of the GDL in order to "defend the Orthodox population," and he resumed his title of Tsar and Grand Duke of Great, Little, and White Russia. In the 18th century, the name Belarus became an authoritative term. The Belarusian nobility originating from Polotsk or Mogilev called themselves Belarusian, Jewish qahals in the east were called Belarusian synagogues, the National Education Commission had 2 districts, Lithuanian and Belarusian, and the word Belarus was often caricatured in the administrative division of representatives of Catholic institutions. As part of the Russian Empire, the Belarusian lands began to be referred to as the Northwestern Krai. In the 19th century, the name Belarus finally spread to all the lands of modern Belarus. This was facilitated by the growth of nationalism in Europe (due to the idea that every nation should have a language, land, religion, and of course, a name). Because before that, despite the fact that they spoke the same language, they often called themselves Litvins (not Lithuanians, but residents of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania), Poles (mostly Catholics), Rusyns (residents of the Rus), but most often simply Tuteishya. Why was the name Belarus chosen when Belarus was created, and not, for example, Lithuania? First of all, this name was more often used in reference to the szlachta, but the Belarusian szlachta did not care about the restoration of the Litvin state and identity, they helped Poland to advocate statehood and increasingly called themselves Poles. And the Baltic peoples, who were experiencing a rise in nationalism at the time, appropriated the name Lithuanians, and this word was already taken. As a result, the term Litva ceased to be used and was completely replaced by Belarus, first as the name of the language spoken by the Tuteishya, and then as the name of the people. There were attempts to spread the name of the language as Kryvitskaya, the people as Kryvichs, and the name of the state as Kryvia, but this name did not catch on. Only Belarus caught on. It's a good word that unites Belarus with the history of the ancient Rus, while separating us from it with the word White :)
Ruthenia the territory of Western Ukraine, in Galicia and Transcarpathia, It is mentioned in relation to Galicia-Volhynia Rus .
@@hycylkaksenja3565And it is often labeled Russia Rubra...Red Russia
Great information! Thank you! Next time I will write something equally interesting about the history of the Hungarians = Magyar People.
@@mitchyoung93No, Red Ruthenia. Modern Russia is Rossiya with an "o". That's a big difference in the slavic language in terms of territory.
As a language lover,"Vela" means white in Tamil language. And the 'V' sound sound will deform to 'B'. Its quite intresting🙂.In Kannada language,"bela" means white. (South Indian language family)
"Port Port" is not as unreasonable a name as you might think. There's a lot of places in England that had similar things happen. Torpenhow Hill is probably the most notable, which means Hill-hill-hill Hill in their respective languages over time.
yes, see also the sahara desert, which is the arabic word for desert followed hy the english word for desert.
@@grievuspwn4g3 Hill River River Hill Hill Hill
Found the Tom Scott viewer
Chad Lake as well is just lake lake
Actualy ireland a there is a county called waterford in irish it means portlaurge
Interesting fact, when Sweden and Denmark play against each other. It is Swe:den, the remaining letters are Den:mark.
I just got that!
And, the tribe the Denmark got its name from, the Danes, left the area of Sweden where the Svea were, and settled in Scania, which was then considered Denmark, and in the islands of Denmark. The Jutes had the mainland.
All in all, I consider it a win for Sweden ! 😁
I'm pretty sure that works with Cyprus vs Russia too
@@lbp1672 Yes, but do they play against each other? This is in reference to football. Where they use only the first three letters.
@@Chris-bn1vt yes ik and chances are that the occasional friendly might happen between them or they play against each other in wc qualifiers
@@lbp1672 You are correct, I just checked. They do play against each other in UEFA.
Absolutely hilarious that you wrote Slovakia for Slovenia. Did you know their embassy’s actually arrange to meet to exchange letters that have been addressed to the wrong country because this is so common. So don’t be too hard on yourself.
Lol, didn't even notice that :D
even the flags are similar lol, the best way would be slovenia take its naval jack as country flag and the name would be slowenya
Oh, they exchange "letters". Let me guess, they exchange a and k for e and n?
@@apollon6870 I guess it's time for me to learn Slovakian language :D nobody can tell us apart anyway
@@imehandle do you think that IT IS so diferent front slovenian, that there IS something to learn?
I can add that the region of Scandinavia got it's name from Sweden's southernmost province Scania (thought to be an island by the romans), because this was the place settlers first arrived to the region. The name is possibly derived from the Germanic root Skaðin-awjã, which appears in Old Norse as Skáney. The Germanic stem can be reconstructed as Skaðan- meaning "danger" or "damage" (English scathing, German Schaden, Swedish skada). The second segment of the name has been reconstructed as awjō, meaning "land on the water" or "island". The name Scandinavia would then mean "dangerous island", which is considered to refer to the treacherous sandbanks surrounding Scania.
Vi er fucking farlige !
Romans or other people did not settle Scania . Rather it was thought to be an island because of the myths/histories recounted later by people who left from scania and settled elsewhere. For example Jordanes who was a Roman but of distant gothic decent.
@@oceanlivz It was not my intention to suggest the romans settled Scania, I was reffering to pre-historic migrations into the Scandinavian peninsula.
There are English rivers named Avon, which is the Celtic word for river. So Avon River simply means River River. So it could be Harbour Harbour as well.
There's a hill in England whose name, if you translate it, works out to Hill hill hill hill.
@Ararune and Chad lake is just lake lake, too.
And Sahara Desert is desert desert
Caladh (pronounced cala) means Jetty in Irish. Caladhphort is used on modern Irish to mean a port, literally jetty harbour.
There's a road by me "La Rue Road". I'll let you figure that one out by yourselves.
Gotta love the meaning behind Bohemia "home of the boii". Me and the boiis going to czechia
"Boi" in portuguese means 'ox', 'steer' or 'bullock'.
@@DomingosCJM Boi in romanian is the plural of bou, which means ox, so boi means oxes
Damn people don't need to travel to other countries just to graze their oxen.
Haa
in hebrew, boi ("bo-ee") means 'come' (feminine form).
It's really interesting, like nowadays countries names are just names, but in the beginning they were probably just normal words that they associated with these places
It really is!
welcome sir your now entering tree!
Yes names held more meaning in the past. I learned that with people names were an identity with power and substance almost as it explained who you was.
@@General.Knowledge 6:47 + 21:41 Arabs in Syria , Lebanon Jordan and Palestine (Israel) will get it wrong 😂 it's a 6ual pronounce ( éir air er etc..) it means p-nis 😂
@@General.Knowledge 22:03 Khoroathos kh like J in Juan , th like thunder 😘and i love you and your channel .. I'm very grateful for your work and tiredness.. God bless you
Actually, Belarus doesn't mean "White Russia", it means "White Rus' " and relates us to the medieval East Slavic state "Kievan Rus' " as known as Ruthenia. Meanwhile, "Russia" is kind of a version of "Rus' " name that used Moscovians to call themselves to highlight the difference between them and Volga's tartarians.
Moscovians were Rus...they call themselves Russians because they are Russians. Belorussians are also Rus... It's like calling belorussians "minskovites"
General Knowledge: puts "Slovakia" instead of "Slovenia" on screen when talking about Slovenia
Me: Not you too 😩😩💀
I hate this
Besides, what's that about the origin of "slav" not being known? "Slovo" means "word", "slava" is a cognate word meaning "fame". "Sloviane" meaning "people of the word", as opposed to "niemcy" (the mute ones) is obvious and I thought pretty well established.
@@ltu42 It's so obvious i never thought about that! This is exactly the thing i came for but didn't learn from the video, thank you.
(but i also understand that going extra deep for every country would make this already long video twice as long...)
never was a part of Chechoslovenia
@@kleinweichkleinweich CZECHOSLOVAKIA!!!!!!!!!!
You missed an important theory on Finland. Finland had an abundance of swamps and marshes, and "Suo" means swamp in Finnish. So "Suomi" could very possibly get its name from there.
Yes, Finland was a collection of tribes and was generally divided by Sweden and Russia after medieval period kicked in. Finns did not have a specific name to signify the area except the word Suomi that is an ancient word for swampland as Finland was mostly forests and swamps as we became an agriculture later than most european countries due to lingering ice age.
The origins of "Suomi" is just full of theories
My suggestion is that we stop calling it Finland in English and start calling it Swampy. It's phonetically more similar to Suomi, and also very cute.
@@papitata or just Swampnistan...
Finland, Fen-Land... Suomi, Suo-Maa.
I don't know about you, but I find this a sensible enough correlation.
Missing on purpose the “negro” from Montenegro is actually very alarming about the conformism that we live in today. You should be an absolute idiot to relate this with the history of enslavement of African people by the colonial powers in the past. Montenegro is a slavic country with absolutely nothing related in their history with African slaves… Banning words because you want to express your empathy is actually not doing anything. This is another nonsense that white people came up with to show how progressive and forward thinking they are, but in fact it does not solve any issue, exactly the opposite - creates a bigger issue - censorship and conformism.
this is why I call the country "Monteneggroll"
This is all because most internet pop culture is heavy USA influenced and so we import all their shit.
Major socials platforms are Americans, and so they apply their kind of politically correct.
In my language (romanian) , black is said "negru", So on YT I couldn't even say "I have a black cat" 🤣🤣
Nobody is trying to "cancel" Montenegro. The reason General Knowledge is self-censoring is because TH-cam's software is bad at distinguishing between similar sounding words, so there's a small chance that saying 'Montenegro' could result in the automated system demonetizing it. Its just bad programming, not 'nonsense made up by white people'.
@@BioTheHuman If it detected you were speaking Romanian then you could say that without needing to worry. TH-cam's slur-detection software is very poorly built, but it can at least tell the differences between common languages. You wouldn't need to self-censor in that case.
and the name is literally a Venetian translation of the local name "Crna Gora." Perhaps updating it to the modern "Montenero" might placate the censors?
Netherlands are named this way not because they are below the sea level, rather because the lands are at the lower flow of "the rivers" (Maas and Schelde, and Rhein, by extension) where the deltas of the revirs meet the North Sea.
It's also interesting, that Poland in Hungarian is Lengyelország. While most nations made contact with the Polanie tribe, Hungarians met the Lędzianie tribe, and named country after them.
There is a lot of misconception about Poland names origins also among our borders. In fact it wasn't named after Polanie Tribe but "Polacy" means "those who came after Lech" our mythical king. We are sometimes called "Lechici" or "Lechistan". It was an communist interpretation because they didn't wanted us to reffer to kings but to commoners. Still many of us believes it. "Polacy" basically means the same as "Szlachta". One is "after Lech" and the other is "from Lech".
I cant pronounce any word that have more than 3 consoants in a row(something common in eastern european languages)
@@Pedrinho8080 In polish, for example, consonants in a row (sz, cz, dz, dź, ch, rz...) most of the time creates one sound, without knowing a rule you naturally can't read it, just like it is in english (sh, ch, ck, gh, kn, th...) and in other languages, so it's not a thing only in est. european languages.
The cyrillic alphabet simplified those consonants by writing them as a one letter, for ex. polish "szcz" sound is wrote as "щ" (similiar sound) in russian.
@@Pedrinho8080 it is pronounced like lyAkhi
lyAkhy, accent on the big A
@@Rubashny_czerep I speak portuguese and here we have only a little of examples of this
"Port port" isn't so strange. In the US, flat top mountains or buttes are sometimes named "Table Mesa." Since "mesa" means "table " in Spanish, the feature is then actually called "Table table." But a lot of English speakers, especially the early settlers, didn't realize that when naming a flat-topped mountain.
One of our local rivers is called the River Avon ... which means "the river river" since Avon derives from a Brittonic word for river.
"Port port would not make sense" - There is a Town in Australia called Townsville which means town's town, and there is a hill in England called Torpenhow Hill - derived from Norse, Welsh, Saxon and finally modern English this literally means hill hill hill hill. Got to love names :)
Port du Graal (french) = Portugal
That's because England and it's villages were home to many people from many cultures, basically the new inhabitants used to take the previous word for town from the original habitants as a proper name while also adding the word they used to indicate a town. So you have things like Town(English)+ville(french/norman)= Townville
So, the city of Townsville is a real place? Go figure :D
“Lake Chad” = “Lake Lake” in the local African language.
Do you mean "Welsh, Gaelic" because Welsh is not a Goidelic language and is unintelligible to the Gaelic languages.
Bulgaria has many other meanings that you definitely miss bro. BULG/VOLG according to some derrives from the river VOLGA or VULGUS/VULGAR or FOLK in Latin means People. (In Bulgarian meaning VULK (Wolf), White or Bright) & Aria (Arian simply reffering to Arian race, Tall or also Aristocratic). Another meaning is Five Arrows but nobody knows its origin couse it's very ancient. In other words nothing to do with the turkic meaning Mixed let alone with Revolt or Disorder. :D
Originally Bulgars/ Vulgars were nomads that came from Volga. They had another state around Volga, Volga- Bulgaria, that stopped to exist after Mongol invasion.
In Bulgaria those nomads mixed with south slavs.
Bulgaria cannot come from any Turkish word simply because the name is older than the turks
Absolutely right which answeres to the question that Bulgarians are not turkic tribe at all.@@impas
There was no Bulgarian state before the Bulgar tribes settled in the Balkans. The Byzantine Greeks named them Bulgars, because they came from the area of the river Volga. Such is the case with the Slavic tribes that settled in the Byzantine province of Macedonia. They were given names based upon the area where they settled. But because they were federation of different Slavic tribes they were reffered as Sclavenoi or Sklaveni.
NO they weren't. No nomads ever built cities or defeated the Romans @@alexzero3736
"Slav" - (or slov) in many slavic languages means "word" or "speech", so slavics name themselves this way cuz they use similar language. Also in some slavic languages germans are called "nemchy" (немцы), that mean "voiceless" cuz germans had different language, so they cant speek to slavs.
Also we have word "slava" which means "glory", but as i remember "slava" also came from "slovo" ("word")
Yeah I think that is what we learned in school... slovo=word, so peoples wich you could understand and talk to... as oposing to Nemci/Niemci/Nijemci= mutes, the peoples you vould not understand or talk to,bc they do not know your language, almost all those people being germanic trives that live close to slavic ones... It is interesting that slavic settlers of the Balkans, called latin speakers in Dacia Wlachs...and for a long time that land was called Walachia....land of romans, but in Serbian, Bulgarian... simmiliar how germanic settlers in Britain called celtic people Welsh, qnd that name kinda stuck...
I thought it came from "slave" in latin
@@BEFICENT no it isn't -_-
@@Jukanella i found a quora page about it: www.quora.com/What-is-the-origin-of-the-term-Slav#:~:text=The%20English%20word%20Slav%20could,a%20speaker%20of%20their%20own
By the way i'm sorry if i offended you, i didn't meaned to
I'm pretty sure to have learned that France is called "Frankreich" in German because a part of the "Franks", a Germanic tribe, went over to back then "Gallia" and conquered most of the land. They would also be the first kings of France. Hence they named their empire after their tribe. The original natives of France were the Gauls which is why it was called Gallia during the reign of the Roman Empire. So I find this explanation very plausible and a bit more concrete than that it's just called France because of the word "franc". I feel like this way the origin makes a lot more sense. But I haven't any research. This is just the left-overs of my history classes.
🇫🇷 = France > Frankreich > Reich der Franken > Realm of Franks
🇦🇹 = Austria > Österreich > Östliches Reich > Eastern Realm
@@urlauburlaub2222 Netherlands just means low lands. Belgium was part of it. Holland was a province and it always have been an important province of the Netherlands politically since 1011 and also because of the VOC which spreaded this name all over the world.
What do you mean with Germanic Empire because it was the Holy roman empire back then.
Correct Werners Gaming Lounge! As you can see in this animation nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franken_(volk)#/media/Bestand:Franks_expansion.gif
@@urlauburlaub2222 That's a pretty confused story. The Netherlands really does literally mean the low lands. The country as a whole is a river delta where various parts used to be water bodies or subjected to flooding several months of the year. This especially relates to Holland and Zeeland which makes it pretty silly to assume that the name was derived from an old Germanic name for woodlands.
Regarding the mix-up with Holland being referenced as the country's name, this hardly has anything to do with the People from Holland claiming ownership of the rest of the country. What did however happen is that Holland became prominent at sea with ships sailing from various harbours in Holland, Zeeland and Flanders (so not just Amsterdam) flying the `princenflag` which was associated with William of Orange who was of the noble House of Nassau - the proprietors of the County of Holland and Friesland. The countries that were bugged by those ships didn't really care about the petty feelings of crew that originated from further inland and the family members that they left behind and simply referred to all of them as Diutch (`the people` in accordance with the Germanic origin - only in their case used sarcastic to imply that they were all uneducated savages) and being from Holland.
"Lingua Franca" is still used nowadays, and has nothing to do with the Franks. I tend to believe the name 'France' is a mix of gallicism (or gallo-roman) and franks -- of course in german it would be frankreich, but it's franCia in spanish, italian, frança in portuguese, etc.
Portus Cale meaning Port Port does make sense. Stuff like this happens all the time. It did happen a fair bit when the romans settled new areas, and that makes sense. If the area was called 'Cale', and the romans knew it as such without generally recognizing its meaning, they could promptly add 'Portus'. That's because they would see 'Cale' as a proper noun on itself, therefore, it would make sense for them.
I mean Timor Leste also just means East East.
@@liltinglullaby3282 there's also lake Chad in Africa; 'chad' meaning 'lake' in kanuri
And Sahara Desert is desert desert
Port Port is nothing Compared to Capital Capital Capital (Kyoto). Which is not the capitol of Japan.
@@2009heyhow because the actual capital is Tokyo which means Eastern capital. As Tō means east/eastern and Kyō means capital. Kyoto though can be translated to Capital, Capital Capital, or more accurately as Capital City (Kyō for capital and to for city). Of-course for a short while Kyoto was known as Saikyō which meant Western Capital or it was also just simply called Kyō (capital)
Spain being the land of rabbits in roman times actually makes a lot of sense. Rabbits used to be only native to the iberian peninsula and were introduced to the rest of europe by the romans. It's also possible that "spania" originally meant "hyrax" in carthaginian and later got applied to rabbits because they look somewhat similar.
Also for the germany one: A better translation for "diutisc" would be "someone that belongs to our people" or "someone that speaks our language". Both meant the same in medieval times because speaking a west germanic language was the big thing the infamously fragmented germanic regions had in common.
Fun fact: the reason Norwegian has two writing systems is because when Norway decided to develop its own writing system rather than using danish, two people started work on it. One person named Knut Knudsen decided to norwegianify the danish language, while Ivar Aasen decided to go around the entire county and turn the dialects into a written form
They should’ve committed to one or the other... I don’t see anything wrong with danish influence anyway
@@shqiptarskii u danish?
@@Ossian-dr1vr probably
@@Ossian-dr1vr I’m American
@@shqiptarskii 😬
Just a point on Portugal's name potentially meaning "port port", that's actually incredibly common through history for different groups to essentially use two words that mean the same thing.
Gal (galas) means end/finish - in ancient time, last land in west direction, reachable without boat
In Switzerland there are a couple of creeks called "Aa Bach" Aa is just an old word for creek or stream and Bach means creek.
in english, Lake Chad, a large lake in Africa literally translates to Lake Lake
aye one example i can think of is Timor Leste means East East
Torpenhow in Cumbria, UK, means hill hill hill.
if some american find the meaning port-port for portugal strange, "ville" is the french word for "town" or "city" so townsville in Lousiana means basicly towntown
Also the much more well known Townsville in Australia.
Also the much more well known Townsville in Australia.
@@zuccyamom8485 am i stupid ?
thats dumbdumb
this guy is not american?
As a Hungarian, I finally know what my country's name means!
Really well made video, the research must've been crazy interesting!
@perseus274 As I know is from the tribe Onoghuri , That's why we call you Ungarci . Ungaria. But Magyar is what real name is.
@perseus274please read a book, you give me a headache.
Your country's name is Magyarország, Hungary is translated into english, hungar/hungur comes from hun people. This video is fake.
"Port Port" actually makes the most sense to me for Portugal. After all, tautological names originally deriving from translation confusion are relatively common.
yeah, like the original word for port could've been forgotten or ignored over time so they added the more modern word port in front of it and decided it was good
@@kirtil5177 It's the same when one says "Sahara desert", as "Sahara" means "desert" in Arabian
@@JossLun 'Torpenhow Hill' is a hill in England, where 'Tor', 'Pen', and 'How' all mean hill
Also, Portugal named East Timor (the portugese word for East) and Timor means in the lokal language east as well, soo East East. Good job, Port Port
@@noahsimon7658 That's my favorite one. Also the multiple rivers named "Avon" ("river").
In most slavic languages Slavs are ``those who use words`` And they call germans ``speechless``
I first found this about czech language
slavs= slované| slovo=word
germans= němci | němý=mute
And i soon found out lot of other slavic languages share this phenomenon and i think its hilarious
Bro this is hilarious
Berlin comes from ancient Sorbian (Slavs from Germany, also known as Wends) word "brljin" which means "mud hole". Like the place where pigs roll in mud. True story.
@@PokojniToza1804 The name still holds true
@@PokojniToza1804Serbia got the name from Byzantine Empire. From the latin word: Servus(engl. servants). They were neither warriors or skilled in anything,they were useless(just like today)so Byzantines called them "servants".
True story.
The czechs can regularly talk to Slovaks and Slovenes with no issue and can sometimes understand Poles and Russians
The languages arent that diffrent ( i am czech )
15:14 The word Slav comes from "slovo", which means "word" in slavic languages. The Slavs are those, who can speak words (understandable for other slavs), while "niemec" ("German") means "the dumb one", i. e. one who can't speak a Slavic language.
I'm glad you explained that, I was taught that it derived from the word slave,after the turk invasion.
@@steveholmes3471 Yes it is a Greek (Byzantine) word for slave - Σκλάβος (Sklávos), which is why it is being promoted. Slovo is spelled with an "o" and "slava" (fame) would be highly unlikely. This "Slavic/Germanic" bullshit, dates back from the Victorian era, when the City decided to divide Europe to protect its own hegemony from European challengers.
@@julianpetkov8320 thank you I clearly need to read up on the subject and educate myself, I thank you your words of wisdom.
@@steveholmes3471 Not at all, I'm glad if you found it informative. Cheers.
In Slovene, "nem" means "mute", so a person that is not able to speak. So "nemci" would be, "people who are not able to speak (our language)".
Great video :) Cymru is pronounced 'cum-ree' in Welsh and I was always taught it meant 'countrymen', although maybe it was once used to mean friends too
I've always found it interesting how Cymru means fellow countrymen and Wales means foreigners. I suppose because both clearly come from a desire to name a group of people, not the land or country, and both clearly show the circumstances under which the names arose.
@@boop-9167 Kernow - Cornwall.
"Port Port" makes perfect sense when you consider that Sahara means "desert" and Avon means "river."
There is a place in the Northwest of England called Pendle Hill which translates as "Hill Hill Hill"
I assume we have all seen Tom Scott's video on the Torpenhow Hill (The Hill Hill Hill Hill)?
th-cam.com/video/NUyXiiIGDTo/w-d-xo.html
How about that tweet by Neil deGrasse Tyson, about these two popular things in L.A.:
The La Brea Tar Pits (The The Tar Tar Pits)? or
The Los Angeles Angels (The The Angels Angels)?
(I mean, California was once a part of Mexico, so no wonder they anglicise Spanish place names).
The cheapest beer in my country was simply called beer, so we had beer beer.
@@kubadzejkob332 The La Brea Tar Pits could be more like "The The Tar Tar Pits" still hilarious
@@saulocodes Corrected, thanks.
"White Russia" is how I learned the country name as a kid in Germany: Weißrussland
I totally missed when it happened but nowadays all official sources call it "Belarus" in german too.
oh interesting, we still call it Wit-Rusland in Dutch
In Danish it’s also still Hviderusland - as literally translated as in German and Dutch 👌🏼
Good! It's a sign of progress!
In Denmark I don't think we care much. We also offecially calls the Netherlands for Holland still.
@@TheBarser ? The name is netherlands holland is a province lmao
Both in German and in Dutch, Belarus is still called white russia.
"Port port" would honestly not be particularly surprising. Happens a lot when outsiders name things based on local names. For example, in the UK there's the river avon. Where "avon" is old welsh for "river". So it's "river river".
I think it's mildly amusing, but also kinda obvious, that a lot of countries are basically called "our land" in same ancient tongue. Although there's also a lot that base it off the latin name for the local tribe, which also makes sense, given how much people idolized the romans in the past (and still kinda do).
Belarus is also White Russia (Valko-Venäjä) in Finnish
We call it "white russia" in Hungarian as well
This is true for Norwegian as well.
@@mathieunorth9147 why "Union Union"? Soviet doesn’t mean Union. You can translate it like "advice", "council" or even "recommendation". But the meaning of Soviet referring to Soviet Union has only one meaning. It is the council, which should mean it is a Republic of workers and peasants councils.
Belarus means always White Russia, no matter how political motivated some changes are. Because there is always the Slavic word, that means «White» and the word «Rus», which is «Russia» in Latin language.
Germany call it since the protests not Weissrussland anymore, but Belarus(Russland is Russia in German). It’s not officially changed in the language, just politically motivated to split it from Russia and popularized in German media. But if they follow this "logic", they should rename most of the countries in their language.
Hi, a Croat here. A common theory of the international name of Croatia is that it was simply too difficult to pronounce "Hrvatska" (because of the hrv), so Latin speakers decided to "simplify" the pronunciation (or base it around other Slavic peoples' pronunciations, which I'll get to a bit later). The most commonly accepted theory of the origin of Croats is that we migrated here from an area in southern Poland and northern Slovakia known as "White Croatia", where a large part of the Carpathian mountains are located, so it is very possible that "Hrvat" is a derivative of "Karpat", especially because a common way of naming Croats in other Slavic languages sounds very much like "Kharvat"; and I believe the similarity between "Karpat" and "Kharvat" is obvious.
I love how every other country has countless theories and opinions about the name origins, while Romania is like : "yep, the Roman Empire, Rome... so Romania it is🤷🏻"
Thats because, the Winner takes it all.They kill the Language and Culture.
It gave many Tribes in pre-roman Italy and Greece Colonys too.
The Indians(native Americans) had 500 Nations, now they count only
50 States and the Indians get only what?
@@kallejodelbauer2955 uhmm no, actually that's wrong, the Romans didn't have great control of Dacia, but they managed to coexist peacefully with the Dacians and many Romans fell in love with the land and people there and moved permanently, or simply wanted to get as far away from Rome as possible and a land The Romans could barely control was perfect, they didn't ruin Dacian culture, they merged with it, this is probably the most peaceful takeover in history :) it's quite wholesome actually...and it was all good until the Huns, Magyars and more came and burned everything xD
@@birisuandrei1551
In French they did them be part of Rome too.But only after 1/3 get killed and another 1/3 get into Slavery.
And didnt came Spartacus from Thracia?
@@celestindimitriu3675
It was an Order.I would say, thats the
worst what a Culture could happend.
A hole Country that by Order, didnt talk
anymore his own Name.Thats like in the 70s TV-Series "Roots".You dont be called Kunta Kinte anymore,i had give you the new Name Toby.This must be a slavery
Regime,or they dont care anything at all.
@@celestindimitriu3675
That they did on every Country.Dacia had no written language at all.If it give
no written proofs, all History came from the Romans.Dacia had good Fighters,thats what the Romans needed.
They fight a War with a Country,get all the Gold to make Streets and Buildings and with the Rest of it they make a Aggrement.Its like under new Management,but they fight now for them.If they like the Dacia People and want let fight them for them,they can
make a aggrement with them, without
a war against him.After a lost War then you dont have a Choice anymore.They had co-operate with them,the same what French do in WW2.But they, had a Choice,they didnt fight with Germany.
Forget what the Romans wrote,think
what had you do, if you should fight for them.History is allways written by the Winner.Ok they can had a good Time
in this Empire,but no written proofs came from thenself.Its like Trumps
20000 Fake-News wich he had make in only 4 Years.A Roman Cesar had even more Control of the People, then Trump now.
The origin of word slav is from old slavic "slovo" - "a word". Basicly slavs are different tribes that can understand each other. Their neighbours are germanic tribes, called ' nemtsi, nemeth" by the slavs. That means silent, dumb.
Yes, not dumb meaning "stupid" but dumb meaning "mute"
Nemats = a mute
Nemtsi = the Mutes
Slovo translates to "letter"
Coming from a Polak, I agree! Słowiańi are people of "the word" and speak a common/similar tongue. Origin known indeed. In fact "slave" was derived from us as many Slavic people were enslaved during the Roman imperial reign. Fun fact: the word "robot" was derived from the common Slavic word "robota" meaning "work". Now robots are slaves to us, but for how long? Neo save us haha.
@@mariopurisic5133 I don't know if it's like that in all the slavic languages but in Czech slovo means word. Letter is písmeno
@@jablko0075 ah ok, I didn't know that, thanks for clarifying. In croatian "slovo" translates to "letter" (as in character) and the "word" would be "riječ". And "letter" (as in the thing you mail) is "pismo".
Every Country: Has a historic and old reson for their name
San Marino and Liechtenstein: "It's a Family!"
Well, technically Serbia too then
"Historic and old reason" = Some random tribe
@@blyatuber old name for Serbia is servia, servants most of servants in roman empire come from there
Moldova: Named after a dog
@@Jonassoe :-)
The example of calling the Netherlands Holland being like calling England London I think is slightly inaccurate it’s more like the very real thing of calling the entire UK England
Very interesting, as usual, Meu general!
'-'
Mew 2
Me- Where are you from
Ronaldo- Port Port
Penaldo saved me from paying fines, he stole all my pens, so my fines are not paid, and the judge was meh! Thank you, Penaldo!
And a portuguese port wine is called portportport
I'm afraid you missed the most important part about "the land of the Franks" for France. The meaning you offered is technically correct but it's simply that the Franks were a germanic tribe that invaded what was left of Roman Gaul after the fall of Rome. Until the 1100s (iirc) France was called the land of the Franks .... because it was mostly populated by the ethnic group of the Franks.
It's only after the Franks settled in Gaul that the word was "latinized" as "francus" and gained the meaning of "free man", just like Francia is a "latinized" form of the original germanic term for the Franks, since the Franks themselves adopted the language and most of the culture of Roman Gaul.
But where did the Frank and others derive their name. I'm guessing a lot of the tribal knowledge is lost from history.
@@tribunal3003 I agree that we're not germanic, however we can't deny their impact on our history! The Franks built what would be medieval France, in that regard they left us way more than the Gauls did. If you look it up, you'll see that there is some frankish influence on our language, the rest being obviously vastly latin and yet there are much more frankish words than there are gallic ones. So yeah, not saying we are germanic but we're certainly some sort of cousin of germanic cultures.
As for "ethnicity", the Franks simply mixed with the roman-gallic majority that had completely assimilated to roman culture. They're still very much there and when you look at early "french" kings their germanic origins are obvious. At some point, these Roman-Gallish just stopped calling themselves that way and started referring to themselves as the Franks, accepting the name of their new rulers in a way.
@@ChloHB I just wondering since 'frank' is associated with freedom does the word 'frank' cognate with 'free' in English?
Latvian here, yeah our name derives from ancient Baltic tribe the Latgallians who still live in the Latgale region or southeastern part of Latvija. But there’s another variation for our name that I just wanted to tell just because our nation doesn’t just consist of Latgallians but also with Curonians, Selonians and Semigallians), which formed the ethnic core of modern Latvians together with the Finnic Livonians.
So another belief of where our name came from is the literal translation which means “forest clearer”, because that was the main thing which the ancient tribes of our people did alongside seafaring. Overall great video, it was nice to learn about other countries meanings to, I didn’t know most of this. Cheers.
As a Finn and Finnish speaking myself, the odd Finnish name of "Suomi" sounds like land of swamps or wetlands. Word "Suo" means a swamp. So I was also told in the School.
Does Finland have swamps?
I used to think that when fin is a part of a fish and suomu(=scale) is also that both Finland and Suomi would derive from fish 😁 But that's only my own pondering, in Uni we were told the Sami connection. Although the word saame(=Sami) was also told to have been transformed from the word häme witch is a part of Finland where the Sami people lived before Finns pushed them to Lappland.
@@aikslf yes. And ancient Finns learned to turn swamps into farmland. So the theory of Suomi coming from Suo(swamp) and Suomaa(swampland) makes a lot of sense, since Finland used to have a lot of swamp land and people living there had to learn to cope with it. "Alussa oli suo, kuokka ja Jussi"(in the beginning there was a swamp, hoe and Jussi) is also an old saying. Suomi coming from Saami doesn't make sense since Finns discriminated the Sami people
@@aikslf A lot of land in europe had to be "tamed" ... and the area of Brandenburg / Berlin was full of "wet grassy fields with some small patches of forest". It took a lot of work to make it arable.
Sadly people do not recongnise the NEED for swamps, because they are capable of absorbing and buffering floods, which happen every once in a while and lead to a lot of destruction along the bigger rivers which will bring the masses of water downstream from the mountains (where the rain dumped all the water).
@@aikslf About 30 percent of Finland is covered by swamps.
Another fun fact about Germany: in some languages (e.g. Spanish, Turkish), Germany is "Alemania/Almanya", derived from a tribe in the current south-west of Germany. dialects in the region (+Swiss German) are considered to be "alemannic".
in ex yugoslav countries germans are called švabi, comming from swabia the southwestern region of germany
in finland its called something derivative of Saxons/Saxony . In Denmark its called "tyskland" which is cognate to deutchland
@@Humbulla93 Similarly in Hungary it's 'svábok' even though the majority clearly have names originating from Franken and Bayern.
Mine's relatively common in Austria and Bavaria.
Some Germans came from Erdély/Transylvania and originate from Saxony, my grandfather from Eastern-Hungary is probably related to them.
The actual swabians are a very small minority among so called 'swabians'.
FINALLY SOMEONE ACKNOWLEDGES TURKISH
same in French we say Allemagne
I always found Germany name quite fun, different languages call it quite differently. English = Germany, German = Deutschland, Spanish = Alemania, Czech = Německo, Finnish = Saksa ... :D
Italian : tedesco
Latvian : Vācija
Polish: Niemcy
All tribes: The Allemanes, Saxons...so it makes sense. The slaves call us mute (nemecki) we call our servants slaves after slavs....😉
Ironocally the English name is the most accurate as it derives from Germania.
Greece is actually a totally ancient greek word, from the word Graikos (Γραικος), which means The son of the old lady in ancient greek. Caesar just used the word, but didnt created it. Beautiful video, i subscribed 👌
I love the fact that we Greeks still use the roman names. For example
France -> Gallia England -> Anglia
Wow that's cool
Anglia is not the roman name, the Angles have conquered the island, when Rome falled ^^
The roman name was Brittania ;)
@@krankarvolund7771 true we use Bretània (Βρετανία) when we talk about the Island and Scotia (Σκωτία) for Scotland
@DarkPinkYoshi In France we call it Allemagne, from the Alamanni people, a lot of roman and celtic languages did that too, and I have no idea why, because Germany was founded like 800 years after the disparition of the Alamanni ^^'
@@TheNIK10000 Bretania is in France, not in England. lol
Origin of word "slavs" is pretty much known. It is from noun slovo, meaning word, to describe group of people who speak the same language. More popular explanation though is, that it´s from noun sláva, meaning glory, so the one who has glory is Slav. A lot of slavic names end with -slav, e.g. Bohuslav (boh=god), Dobroslav (dobro= good), Víťazoslav (víťaz=winner) etc. It actually can be both at the same time, because, the slav in names has meaning: spread word (of glory)/celebrate glory of boh (god), dobro (good) and víťaz (winner). Sláv (or slav as english doesn´t have much diacritic ) also means to celebrate, usually in church, like celebrate god (sláv boha).
Slav = word root of slave. Yes or No?
@@clarkkent551 Debatable. There are quite logical theories of the origin of the word Slavs both from the word Slave and from the word Slovo (word in russian) As if the Slavs are a group of people who understand each other / speak the same words
@@clarkkent551 "Slave" is derived from "Slav", not the other way around. It took place within the historical context of the Islamic slave trade, which post-dates the emergence of the Slavs by a few centuries. Both the Crimean Tartars and the Ottoman Turks would enslave large portions of the Slav territories they conquered, typically as prisoners of war, or simply raided and kidnapped as captives.
@@clarkkent551 Depends on whether you are brainwashed with German History Propaganda.
Yes, if you get your in depth knowledge from Wikipeedallover which is edited 100% Woke and Politically Correct and shuns all inferior Eastern European knowledge.
No, if West education from the Frankfurt Schul is seen as a Global Psy-Op.
@@jczartoryski actually vikings kidnapped and sold slavs
There's a lot of tautological placenames. Roman shows up, asks a Celt "what do you call that?", Celt says "(celtic word of port)", Roman writes down Port Port.
I see you watch those Tom Scott videos too, lol
You‘re implying that the either the Celts or the Romans or both had an understanding of what the original celtic name for that region (celtic port) meant at that time.
And then they stab each other for 400 years.
Even if they did understand the language (and likely they did or had translators), the sound of a name is more important for communication than its meaning.
A complete translation into the empire's official language would create a communication barrier with the locals. It would also be uselessly generic for a large empire with many ports, while for the locals it may be the only port. On the other hand, the use of the name untranslated would fail to highlight the strategic information that there is a port there. And so, bastardized tautological names are born.
@@KimonFrousios brilliantly explained, exactly what you said. Language barriers were quite extreme back in the day, it is my assumption that it was extremely difficult to find someone fluent in both the Roman Languague and some far away Tribal Language the Romans barely have any contact with, therefore ltranslation and naming oddities would be pretty common.
Im sorry but the way you pronounced Cymru had me dying 😂😂 Reminded me of all the times I've said a word wrong because I learned it by reading and had never heard anyone say it lol.
21:47
As a proud Slovenian, i am extremly triggered.
lol i didnt even notice until u pointed out he literally spelled it wrong lmao
Hi stef
Nisam slovenac ali i mene je mater mu jbm😂
You dont need to feel offended, Im a Slovak citizen and my colleagues at work never learn the difference between Slovakia and Slovenia and at some point I just gave up to correct them.
It doesnt matter though because both countries are beautiful in nature, people and history. What bugs me more is that mostly US people consider both Slovakia and Slovenia to be former soviet states or "the eastern europe" which is untrue.
Slovenoslovakia...... Still, didn't get butchered as much as Montenegro.
Fun fact: in america, theres a group of people, primarily in pennsylvania, who speak a variety of german known as pennsylvania dutch. This is because the definition of dutch was more akin to deutsch at the time they were settling there
The Dutch are Germanic people and for a very long time where part of the Holy Roman Empire with all the other Germanic people of the region. In the Middle Ages, the Dutch were just as German as Bavarians, Saxons, and Swabians.
But being the "Germans" that lived closest to Britian and had the most trade and contact with the English, they got to keep the name "Dutch" when they became a separate entity, while all the other people of the Holy Roman Empire eventually became "Germans" in English.
I’m making Mother’s Day brunch just south of Pennsylvania Dutch country and I wanted to do recipes pertaining to the Netherlands so when I googled Dutch brunch recipes I had to scroll through too many pages about the Pennsylvania Dutch 😂
That seems very cursed
Theres an amazing, underrated action drama series called Banshee, that featured an Amish community in a fictional small town in Pennsylvania that originally hailed from those exact settlers and people. Pennsylvania Dutch was spoken frequently on the show in their scenes together.
thats not true. i suggest you read up on the history of it. there are some very useful videos on the topic on youtube
Germany derives from the "Ger-mans" which means "Men with gers (ger = spear)" or simply "spear men". Then the Romans latinized the land of the Spear-/ Ger-mans to Germania. So that's that
And that is just one name among many. Seriously, I don’t think there’s any country (in Europe at least) with as many different names across languages as Germany (Deutschland, Alemania, Saksa, etc)
That's why we should not use a antiant (!) tribe names for the entire modern Nation!
Alemans were a tribe in south-west (next to the french calling the entire region "Alemagne"). Saksa were a tribe in the North (moving together with Angles to Englaland). Today three Bundesländer have their name: Sachsen, Sachsen-Anhalt & Niedersachsen. It's similar to calling Netherland Holland or calling a Scotsman English.
The Nation built by the tribes in 1871 (yes, very late - before that there were just Unions) is called "Deutschland". Therefore "dutch" should not be used for the Netherland (which are calling Germany as "Duitsland").
@@bloempin it’s a bit late for that though, isn’t it? Think of all the countries that are named after ancient tribes: Germany, England, France, Russia, Denmark, Hungary, Czechia, Turkey, Greece, Italy, Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, Mexico, Laos, Iran, Syria, to name but a few… We’d have to change all of those names
Does anyone know the ancient name of Germany? It's actually mentioned in the Bible! Genesis 10:2 Gomer. Under the table of nations. No idea what Gomer means. But the first name for Germany.
@@SoniaJbrt I wouldn’t put too much stock in what the Bible says about that subject, given that it was written after the Romans had already made contact with Germanic tribes. There is just no overall term for the region among the Germanic people themselves (that we know of). It has been suggested that “Germani” is an overall description used by the Gauls to describe their eastern neighbors as a whole, but that’s still not confirmed.
Basically, there is no known endonym from that time, and the oldest exonym for that specific region was Germania.
Fun Fact:Montenegro nativ name Crna Gora axually means black forest gora means forest.🇲🇪 And we had two names befor, Duklja which comes from latin I think and zeta.
It is remarkable that most of the countries names in Greek language still are translations of their ancient names. Like Germania (Γερμανία) or Kossovo (Κοσσυφοπέδιο) meaning plain of the black birds. And these names can spotted even in ancient Greek or Medieval Greek documents.
Kossovo, we call it Κόσοβο. Except if that name it's local and I never heard of it.
@@antonisdouropoulos500 αλβανικά: Kosova, σερβικά: Косово, Κοσσυφοπέδιο < μεσαιωνική ελληνική κοσσυφοπέδιον < αρχαία ελληνική κόσσυφος + πεδίον
@Maniatika web in albania we call it Dardani, and kosovo only bcs other countries know it as kosovo, sooo no, Dardania (kosovo for you to understand) it's not the land of blackbirds
@@bledarlala6822 I know very well the word "Δαρδανία" and "Δαρδάνοι", they exist in ancient Greek bibliography and describe an ancient tribe with Thrace origin I think (please check it). However the name - word Kossovo is something different and was created around Middle Ages for a specific field. Both in Slavic and Greek language the land - field that nowadays is State is translated with the same way. (land of blackbirds).
@@maniatikaweb greeks' never existed😂😂😂
It's funny how many countries' names came from or were affected by Greek words. (including Croatia whose name you wrote in Greek but you mentioned it derived from another language).
Scotland traces the origin of its name to the Greek. Scot means "dark" in Greek. Strabo coined the name when he explored the area in 200BCE.
“Scotti” was the Roman name for the Gaelic tribes who raided Britain. When the kingdom of Dal Riada merged with lowland Alba it became known as Scotland.
@@Mugdorna That's interesting. Wiki says the first mention of scotti was in Latin in 312CE. But I know that Strabo called it Scotland, in Greek, in 200BCE.
@Wake No. Holy sk*ta!
Croatia is in english in bulgarian and in others launglage is Harvatiya , or Harvatska and this is the real slavic name !
Interesting *possible* story for the name "Monaco":
In older Latin and Spanish (possibly others too), Munich or München in Germany is called "Monaco". The name of "München" derives from Old Bavarian "Monchen" or German "Mönchen", meaning monks and monastery because of the monastery there. As a result, the name of the modern country could be related to this
München in Italian is still Monaco, so that's most likely true
Das Wort Mönch stammt von dem Substantiv altgriechisch μοναχός monachós, das vom Adjektiv altgriechisch μόνος mónos „allein“, abgeleitet ist. ... Aquila, Symmachus) bezeichnet das Wort eine Person, die „allein“ ist und ein religiöses Leben führt.
Indeed, München is Monaco Tedesco (German Monaco) in Italian.
The term "Ukraine" derives from the prefix ‘u’ - ‘in’, ‘inside’ and the root ‘krai’ - land, thus meaning ‘inland’, ‘inner land’ referring to Kyiv and Pereiaslav compared to its outskirts.
@@vlad22rus First mention of a word "ukraine" was in 12th century where it literally means "all-country".
...а томъ бо поути разболѣсѧ Володимеръ. Глѣбовичь. болѣсть тѧжкою ѥюже скончасѧ. И принесоша и во свои градъ. Переӕславль на носилицахъ. и тоу престависѧ мс̑ца априлѧ. во. и҃ı дн҃ь и положенъ бъıс̑ во црк҃ви ст҃го Михаила. и плакашасѧ по немь вси Переӕславци. бѣ бо любѧ дроужиноу. и злата не сбирашеть. имѣниӕ не щадѧшеть. но даӕшеть дроужинѣ. бѣ бо кнѧзь добръ. и крѣпокъ на рати. и моужьствомъ крѣпкомъ показаӕсѧ. и всѧкими добродѣтелми наполненъ. ѡ нем же Оукраина много постона.
И так как по нику видно что ты узкий, отвечу тебе понятной тебе языкой. Возьми свои имперские стереотипы, засунь их себе поглубже и перестань пудрить людям мозги своей чушью.
@@bestsnitka4688 Обоссышь, то к чему ты отсылаешься (Переяславльская летопись) была написана примерно в 1420 годах о событиях 12 века. Можешь дальше переписывать историю из-за вашего комплекса неполноценности. А сам термин как я и писал означат край страны, в зависимости от периода он менялся. Так, по документам существовала Окская Украйна (сейас эти земли полностью Российские). т.к., границы России проходили по реке Оке. Я могу тебе советовать только подучить нормальную историю, а не высерать вашу украинскую шизу. То что ты написал вообще не опровергает мною сказанное : Окраина - это край Руси (России). И вообще, почему не на фронте?
@@bestsnitka4688 окраинца порвало 😢
@@bestsnitka4688 Пардон, но это не упоминания Украины, а именно что значение "пограничной территории между чем-то", потому что в летописях встречаются обозначения и "псковской «оукраины»" это так обозначали псковские деревни между Русью и Ливонским орденом, к примеру, в Псковской I летописи 1271г и 1348 г. А Добжинская земля, которая была границей между Польшей и Тевтонцами называли "Краиной"(Crayna, Craina), а ведь есть еще словенская Крайна. Так что это никак не может быть первое упоминание Украины, а просто определенная местность пограничная.
@@gadgetest4600самое смешное, что название "украина" как окраина именно что отражает ее историю. В этом нет ничего плохого или позорного, но некоторые упоротые украинцы продолжают изобретать байки про укропитеков и натягивать сову на глобус.
15:22 wow as a Polish i didn't know that we have kalingrad 😏
Well that's good
That's just Russia
You don't. Kaliningrad was once part of Poland, but was taken by Russia (from the Germans) at the end of World War II.
Edit: I get it. It's not depicted on the map.
POLSKA GUROM
Not the only mistake (visually) in this video. Like the slovakian slovenia or moldova stealing sum ukrainian lands
"Lietuva" literaly means "a land where [it] rains". Source: me, Lithuanian
Since when? Yes, I've heard about it before, but I think its justa sarcastic name for the country. The river Lietava hypothesis makes way more sense. And I'm speaking as a native Lithuanian from Kaunas
Name Lietuva originated from Lietuva land (land (žemė) being a government unit of baltic tribes), it before becoming the strongest land in the region was small and it makes sence for it's name to have originated from Lietava river. However, Lietava river is very small and it is very likely that it's name originated from rain (lietus).
Therefore the name of Lithuania does have connection with rain, but from a bit further then it is generally thought.
@@thetrashchannel1217 Yeah, that actually makes sense haha
We use similar word for heavy rain "liják" coming from word "lít" = to pour
@@pracovniucet8173 Is that why people refer to parties as being "lit"? :D
On Sweden;
There is one Roman source from 100 AD, a historian named Tacitus, that mentions Sweden by the name "Suiones". It's still derived from the same meaning , "our own", so while modern Sweden (Sverige) didn't appear until the 1200s AD the name appears to have much older roots.
In the end, countless people are called "us", and their lands "our land".
Hungarian here. So Magyar ( Hungarian) comes from the name of one of the brothers of the pair: Hunor and Magor. They were brothers. Hunor was the forefather of the Huns, Magor was the forefather of the Magyars. This " myth" is written down in our oldest chronicles the Chronicon Pictum ( képes krónika). According to myth, they both chased a magical deer. This deer symbol can be found in old Hungarian burials, and also in pre Hungarian burial grounds of the avars of pannonia..before the Hungarians came to the region. This is why we believe that we are also in connection with avars, and the huns, as they used the very same bows, and artifacts .. such as the magical deer, the turul bird... the bows...just search avar burial deer or hun burial deer, it is the very same artifact. 😅
"Czechia comes from the local name of the country"
"So are you going to tell us where the local name comes from?"
"Haha, no."
its sad how he focused more on western countries, he even represented them first lol
He did detailed a analysis for the local names of western countries. Its discriminatory, but Czechia was at least handled with some dignity. I mean I know that Slovakia is small and insignificant, but the term "Slavs" is used to describe ethnic origin of half the Europe so he could say more than: "The origin of Slavs themselves is seemingly unknown." (Such information is uninteresting, useless and false. Dneper and Tigris?)
😂😂 hell yes that was a good one
Forefather Czech gave his name to his descendants.
@@teodora8811 he started with Portugal cause it's where he's from
Greeks: "Stop calling us Greece!"
Norway: "Got your back, Hellas"
Funny thing is, it's still called the _HELLENIC_ Republic.
That sounds bad ass
@@nandinhocunha440 Hellas, which is how ancient Greeks called themselves(Hellenes) means “land of light”.
Greece comes from Grekos( Grekòs, Γραικός) which was the first Greek tribe the Romans came in contact to. These Greki were a tribe from Epirus, region of Greece. When they met the rest of the Greeks they called them with the same name they used for the first ones they came in contact, because they realised it’s the same people.
Stop calling Montegro, Niger and Nigeria, this hose on s are racist worlds
@@francescocattaneo8256 You gotta change some languages too, how dare they use similar words to say "black".
Or are you a racist and invalidate any language that isn't English?
How many countries can you name?
Greece and Rome : hold my wine
Very well made video, thanks. Only the underlying martial music made me uncomfortable, as it symbolizes the innumerable and still ongoing military conflicts between competing nations.
Great video! A fun fact for you: According to a Greek I once met, we Norwegians are the only other country besides themselves to call Greece "Hellas". And some explanation for why Norway has two official written languages: We have so many very different dialects, not just different accents, but completely different words for the same things and very different sentence structures. Sometime during the 1800s, a guy named Ivar Aasen decided to travel the country to collect all the different words and phrases to collect them into what became Nynorsk (literal translation: New Norwegian). I believe this was to distinguish the 'real Norwegian' from the Danish the people were learning at that time being under Danish influence. So the other official written language of Norway is heavily influenced by older Danish and resembles mostly the dialects you find around our capital Oslo :)
And we two teories on why it is called norway or noreg/norge, the first is the one he explained in the video and the other comes from the word "nór" wich means small or narrow waters/sound.
I'm Greek. Are you claiming that ppl in/around Oslo speak more Old Danish than Norwegian?
@@geogeo2299 No, I'm not. They speak Norwegian for sure. I'm simply saying that Norwegian consists of many different (and some very similar) dialects. How the people in and around the Oslo area speak now, is the Norwegian modernised version of an older Danish I believe. Keep in mind I'm no linguistics professor, this is merely the common conception amongst Norwegians.
Also as a finn: The "Suo" part from the Finnish country name Suomi means swamp. Basically Finland used to be fully swamp. Also our capital was built on a swamp.
"Bohemia from the latin 'Boiohaemum', which means "home of the Boii", this really got me, I actually choked laughing
AAGAHAHAHAHAHWGWHQUQ
Yeeeeah BOIIII!
BOII
HOME OF THE BOII
Boii was a celtic tribe who lived there. Romans called their land "Boiohaemum" (Empire/Kingdom of Boii) from it = Bohemia.. however Bohemia is now 1 of 3 parts of modern Czechia. It's the biggest and most developed one. Moravia and Czech Silesia are other two parts.
First notices about Spain, far before Rome, are related to a Celtiberic town. That town was named "Tartessos" which associated territory would eventually extend frm the actual Gibraltar strait to the portugese Algarve.
The town was known for their metal works. By the way it was, for Mediterranean cultures, (greeks and phoenicians) the western most known land at the time.
So, both meanings, Town at the West and Metal workers" make a lot of sence.
Actually, there was a tribe in viking sweden called the "svea" that later took control over the "göta" tribe, so I think that Sweden/Sverige is from Svea
Yes, but 'svea' means "our own" as mentioned in the video.
does the island gotland get its name from göta?
@@fakename2336 I dont know
@@fakename2336 It is possible that Gutar (Gotland), Götar (Götaland), Goths and Jutes (Jylland) all got their names from the same source, but its uncertain, stretched over millenia and very complicated even if they somehow can be traced back to a common origin. One hypothesis is that the source word means pour, either meaning spill their seeds, as a euphemism for 'man' or pour as in metal casting.
@@fakename2336 No, that is Götaland, a past of mainland Sweden, Gotland comes from the Goths, some traveled south to Italy and Africa to and became Visigoths and Ostrogoths, but some went north to Sweden and thus the name, Gothland, and the old viking name for the area around the current capital was Sviþjod (Svithjod), routhly meaning People of the Svith (Swede)
This is just a video about how influential the Romans were
*The Romans AND the Greeks were
To me, the biggest influlence, that still lasts, is the Roman alphabet. It spread to most countries in Europe. and later other continents.
@@MsGbergh only that, the Roman Alphabet is based on and influenced by, the Greek alphabet. Sooo...
@@chris-ui2mc Graecia capta ferum victorem cepit
@@chris-ui2mc it's sad how few people know that.
Dude, you have slaughtered this map. Poland annexing the Kaliningrad oblast? Moldova having access to the Black Sea and annexing Odessa? What is this weird shape of Macedonia?
East, please, stop fucking maps.
Thank you.
Lol, at this point Poland annexing Kaliningrad is a long-standing tradition represented by no less than Russia during winter Olympics there, so I would cut them some slack with that one.
@@Verbeley Yeah, just as New Zealand not included on maps.
@@ArtificialFertilizer or tasmania
10:40 honestly you spoke deutch out almost perfectly and “Nederlander” was pretty close as well. Could’ve passes as an foreigner who’s been living in the Netherlands for 5/10 years.
21:43 C'mon YOU HAD ONE JOB... Funny how it's almost always Slovenia that gets mistaken for Slovakia, but Slovakia is never Slovenia. Pls people, do your research
Za nas nepojmljivo, ampak tujci, kot da bi vedeli, da smo Slovaki in Slovenci bili nekoč ena etnija, preden so nas Avstrijci in Madžari ločili na dva dela (pred približno 1200 leti).
Oni so bili Panonski Slovenci, mi pa Alpski Slovenci. Zato so to dejstvo uporabili Hrvati, ko so osvojili naše kraje.
Idk, I have seen a lot of people refer to Slovakia as Slovenia ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
@@bojanstare8667 Tak nejak. Sme v podstate jeden národ, lenže pri rôznych migráciách sme sa často delili. Vy používate starší jazyk, my máme mladší. Cudzinci still making the same mistakes, while at the same time not making them.
Haha! When I went to Czecho-Slovakia (pre split, in 1991) someone asked me "When are you going to Czechoslovenia?" Probably Slovenia gets mistaken for Slovakia because it's smaller, although Slovakia is pretty darn small itself. All in all, a very enjoyable video.
@@bojanstare8667 Kto jest dlja vas Novgorodskije Slovene ?
I think that Suomi (Finland) is comes from “suo”, which means “swamp”, because a Finn is “suomalainen”, which pretty much translates as “somebody from the land of the swamps”.
I think you're right I read about Finland have more swamps or rather rivers than all of the continental Europe combined
Nah. that's just me.
shrek
Possible, but unlikely, since Finland is not more swampy than any of the surrounding lands. It’s entirely possible that suomi is a bastardization saami or something similar which might have Saami or even Paleo-European roots. Saami languages replaced the original Paleo-European languages in Finland after all, before being mostly replaced by Proto-Finnish.
Yes! - You are right!
Usein unohdetaan Suomi sanan kohdalla yhteys sen vironkieliseen vastineeseen "Soome". Molemmissa on selkeästi sana "suo" ja erityisesti vironkielisessä pääte "me" joko löytyy myös sanasta "häme". Voisiko olla niin, että "me" on esimerkiksi metsään viittaava lyhenne?
Haha, when talking about Slovenia and the similarity of its name with Slovakia, the title actually says “Slovakia”. Which serves as proof that EVERYONE mixes up the names of these two (which I as a Slovak am particularly happy about 🤣)
not everyone :) i find it rather ignorant actually! but most of the time it’s funny, that I admit
I believe every week Slovakia and Slovenia exchange mail for letters and parcels that mistakenly get sent to each other.
@@Thatguyjack758 Not true, this is just the myth from the internet
It is interesting how similar we are, but we are separated and we have almost no contact. We never talk about Slovakia, we don't listen their music, I never watch their movies, nothing. But we have a lot of same words and almost the same flag. Someday I will go there. Greetings from Slovenia.
@@wgassper hi! :D
Dutch is coming from the people living in the Netherlands, part of northern Germany, Denmark and a small part east of Denmark in Germany. It was a language spoken by them, Dietsch, Deutsch, which became by the Brits naming those people Dutch.
Wales: "Maybe the real country was the friends we made along the way."
Ngl with a name like that, Wales should rule Britain
Poor Wales
Not for long. The idea of independence in Wales is growing rapidly
@@finn4012 Wexit, Scexit, North I-rexit, and last but not least Eexit! Will the sun finally set on the British Empire?! Find out next episode on Dragon Ball Z!
That always confuses me when I see political talks about the UK breaking apart but theyre only ever talking about Scotland and Northern Ireland as if Wales was obviously English? Or maybe its just because many people out of the UK dont even know that Wales exists -.-
there is a ancient story of the brothers lech and czech, who went to the west to found new countries. then they stoped, shot arrows in the sky and asked the gods for a sign. where lechs arrow landed a white eagle rose to the sky. lech settled and took the white eagle a his symbol. czech continued his journey to the west and later founded czechia. the white eagle continues to be the polish emblem and lech still is a very popular name in poland.
I Heard version with 3 brothers, Lech, Czech and Rus ;) but the rest was the same
@@KimJiMi45 Rus? Probably added by the commies. Well, I'm in a joking mood. Never heard the tradition mentioned.
@@michaelalbertson7457 I checked on Wikipedia and it seems that in Poland we have 3 brothers but Chech Republic has version of legend with 2 brothers 😁 but what is interesting, Rus was responsible for founding Ukraine ;) In Wielkopolska Chronicle in 13 century they say that Lech Chech and Rus were sons of Pannonian Prince 😁
By ancient you probably mean old Story. Because "ancient" word you mention and the story of Kronika wielkopolska is absolute two different things.
The word "slav" is probably derived from the proto-Slavic word "slovenin", which in turn is derived from "slovo" meaning "word". "Slovenin" would mean "people who use the same words", or less literally "people who understand each other". In opposition, the non-Slavic people were called "niemcy" - "mute people", as they were people who used understandable words.
According to another theory the word "slav" is derived from Latin "sclavus" meaning "slave", since many slaves in ancient Rome were of Eastern European origin.
Extra fun fact, the Russian word for German (person) is “nemets”, coming from the Slav word for “foreigner” or “outsider”, Germany and the rest of the Western European empires were considered very foreign (as in different from the Russian world) all through medieval and early modern history.
Only the first etymology is correct, while the second is vice versa. Yes, many Slavic pagans were used as slaves in early middle ages, and from their ethnonym "Slavs" derives the word "slave".
It doesn't make sense that Slavs call themselves a latin word which would be offensive to them...
"slava" means "glory" in slavic languages... why should slavs call themselves by a latin word which means "slave"?! that's a totally stupid theory used by people who hate slavic people
@@-ENGEL- true, there is much to say for your explanation
"Sclavus" is a medieval Latin word which didn't exist in "ancient Rome".