karn@eagle.UUCP (Phil Karn) (08/15/83)
Here's a trivia question for you all: I had always thought that it is common practice when translating from one language to another to leave proper names unchanged, except perhaps to transliterate letters when the alphabets are different. Question: why are some country names completely different in certain languages? Excepting literal translations of multi-word names, I which concede make sense (e.g., the French "Les E'tats Unis" and the English "Union of Soviet Socialist Republics") the best example of what I mean is "Germany" vs "Deutschland". Were these names derived independently by two groups of people to describe the same thing? Phil
dave@utcsrgv.UUCP (08/15/83)
A cognate of the name "Germany" is also used in other foreign languages
(e.g., French: Allemagne; Portuguese: Alemanha; Hebrew: Germanyah [hard 'G']).
I suspect it's the "Deutschland" which is an unusual derivation. It's
not surprising considering that for many years Germany was a mixture
of different mini-states rather than one cohesive country. Also, it is
a country name which would have entered any language's common parlance
relatively early and thus become more established in the language.
Fiji, for example, is probably called Fiji in any language.
One common reason for differences in country names, as pointed
out, is translation, or partial translation, of the name. For example,
"England" is "Inglaterra" in Portuguese, where or course "terra" means
land; on the other hand, Finland is "Finlandia". Again, this can likely
be ascribed to the fact that England was a commonly-used word in
Portuguese long before Finland. Many countries such as Hungary (Magyar),
Finland (Suomi), Albania (Shqiperia), Japan (Nippon) were given names
by foreigners somewhere along the line which became more-or-less world
standards. When you think about it, it's not unusual that a people should
think of itself diferrently than does the rest of the world.
This discussion should probably move into net.nlang.
Dave Sherman, Toronto
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{linus,cornell,watmath,ihnp4,floyd,allegra,utzoo,uw-beaver}!utcsrgv!daveix900@sdccsu3.UUCP (David Sewell) (08/18/83)
This should be a more or less definitive answer. Germany goes by
several names for a good reason: the geographical area by that name
originally contained a variety of Germanic tribes with different names.
English "Germany" and French "Allemagne" go back to two Latin names,
Germanii and Alemanii, for two distinct (if I recall correctly) groups.
(I'm doing this without benefit of dictionary, so pardon creative
spelling.) "Deutschland" comes from a root related to English "Teuton."
By the same token, "English," "Anglais," etc. come from the tribe of
Angles who invaded Britain. The Gaelic term for Englishman, however, is
"Sassenach" (again, remembered spelling), from "Saxon," the other
important invading tribe. It's not really a question of "translation"
of country names, but of independent naming conventions.
If you want an example of a *really* bizarre version of the name of
a country, see what your unabridged dictionary says about where "Canada"
comes from.
David Sewell
...{ucbvax!}sdcsvax!sdccsu3!ix900