Why do we translate the names of countries?

I agree. Why Rome instead of Roma?

I thought about this same thing way too much, but just have a guess.

I think it has more to do with how the country is referred to traditionally within a language than what it’s actually been “named”. So it’s the same reason the names of birds or mountain ranges are different between cultures. It’s always been that way and no one wants to learn a universal system because who’s “right”? That’s why they had to come up with the latin naming for animals, something that would transfer.

Now if we could just get that metric system rolled out.

I would think that the country being named would be “right.”

Good question! I have always wondered this myself.

@Judi exactly lol.

@funkdaddy animals and mountain ranges are a bit different than a country though. I mean those things have always been there a country had to have been formed and what not. So they say ok we shall call ourselves this. And then people from other countries decide nah will call ya this instead lol.

Probably because each language has different names for the countries… so we should call each country by whatever they’re named in their native language? That assumes that each country has open communication with all the others, but foreign countries’ names have been established long before a quorum of globalization has occurred.

So, really, it’s just not how language works.

Of course, if you can rename Candlestick Park, I suppose you could rename “Germany”.

Because you see the country from your own perspective. And it has a name in your own language, which may or may not correspond to that of the natives.

For example, Australia means “southern land”. It’s south for the Europeans that discovered it. And “new Zealand” was the name given by the Dutch (who have an area called “Zeeland”, ie “Sealand”). “Germans” just means “people” in ancient German. And “Mediterranean” (or “Mesogeios” in Greek) means “the centre of the world”, because it was the centre for the people who lived there.

Ancient Macedonia was called that by the other Greeks who were shorter (“Makedon” meaning “tall guy”). Today it’s inhabited by Slavs (ie “slaves” of the Greeks) who for some weird reason want to take over the name of their former enemies. Which is just as ridiculous as some black guy wanting to be called Denzel Washington or something.

What I’m trying to illustrate is that the name given to a country by its own people (I’m sure the Aboriginal name for Australia is something like “Earth” or “Land”) does not describe how outsiders may view that same land.

@Jack79 but do all country names have a meaning? I see what your saying with your examples, but does that work for every country?

I suspect it’s an ear and transliteration problem. When an Englishman comes to Espana, he might hear Spain. When he goes to Moskva, he might hear Moscow. Or it could be like the game “telephone.” As we whisper down the line, the person who ultimately writes it down may hear something very different from what was originally said.

This problem is enormous when looking at immigrants to the US, particularly when Ellis Island was the debarkation point. Every customs inspecter heard name differently, and then spelled them even more differently. Some didn’t even bother. They just told the person their name was now Smith.

Anyway, I don’t think there’s any evil intent involved in the differing pronunciations. I think it’s just bad ears and bad spellers.

I wondered that myself. I was amazed to discover that countries call themselves by names that are different from what we use. I always thought the name was the name, and didn’t even realize that the people who live there don’t call it that.

D’ya know in French, the letter Y is known as i grec, or Greek I? The letter I in French is pronounced “eee.”

I always thought that was weird, though it isn’t, really.

@aprilsimnel You should have seen my college roommate and I falling down laughing when she learned the Spanish word for “very”; she was mooey, mooey, mooey all over the place.

@uberbatman All country names have meanings, even if we don’t know what they mean anymore. Some cases are simple, for example “Nederlanden” (the Netherlands) just means “Low Lands” because part of the country is below sea level. Or Argentina which means “land of Silver”, since the first explorers found a lot of silver there.

But I personally don’t know what “Sverige” (Sweden) means, though I’m sure it also derives from some king called Sver, or perhaps Sver is a mountain and “ige” means “land around”, or because people there eat a type of cheese called Erig. I’m sure there’s someone here who knows.

The interesting ones (such as Australia, or South Africa) are the ones whose name was given by someone else.

The International Phonetic Alphabet contains more than 100 letters representing sounds (allophones), but people usually are not able to use more than 50, often far less.

@mattbrowne only because people arent forced to use them.

@uberbatman – Is has to do with the genes that encode the language learning capability of human brains. Making full use of it would mean forcing young children to learn the full range of sounds. I’m not sure how many languages are needed to cover all sounds of the IPA.

@mattbrowne ahhh gotcha. Still though, just seems like if we were taught that’s what they were called from an early age we would pick up on the different sounds and learn them.

Alright, so lets say a group from Mars shows up tomorrow, we would naturally call them Martians, and call their home planet Mars. If they had a different name for themselves, we may switch to that. But I would imagine we would continue to call the planet Mars. Even though they have a greater claim to it.

That’s what I mean when I say who’s “right” when it comes to a name. Our language has naturally evolved to include Martians and Mars as the given names for those things. Theirs would have evolved to use different terms. Germany was Germany to those who spoke English long before the country was established and called itself Deutschland.

To take the example further, if that race had a different name for the sun, which should we use?

Languages evolve from culture while countries are political constructs. Languages will evolve according to the information available to the culture, but the goal is always communication and to be understood by the other party. Espana and Deutschland are confusing, Spain and Germany are almost universally understood by those who speak English.

@funkdaddy i understand what your saying, but i still dont really agree. I mean if a new country was formed tomorrow, we wouldnt already have a name for it, but we would translate its name just as every other country around the world would translate its name to their language.

As for your second example, Espana and Deutschland are confusing compared to Spain and Germany only because we’ve been conditioned to hear Spain and Germany our whole life. If we grew up calling them by their native names there would be no confusion.

Are you looking for a moral justification or an explanation of why things are that way?

If it’s something you want to change, the easiest way is to start educating folks when you’re speaking to them.

Otherwise, it sounds like we’re talking about two different points.

Just an explanation. It just never made sense to me thats all.

A note about perspectives
just something to because I’m bored on a Sunday

I don’t think it’s even translating if you look at it properly. For example, the word “Germany” is an English word. It is the word english-speaking people have given to that particular part of the world. It doesn’t matter what Germans call it. “Germany” is not a translation. Similarly, the German word “Deutschland” is what they call their country in that particular language. And linguistically speaking it’s only a coincidence that the German word “England” (with the “e” pronounced as in “pen”) has the same spelling as the english word “England” (pronounced “ingland”).

My name is Jack for those who use fluther. It is something else for others, depending on circumstances. But when I think of myself, I think of “me”. So in that sense my real name is “me” and everything else is what other people use to describe me from their perspective. And my name is not a translation of the word “me”, but of the word “him” in everybody’s personal language.

@Jack79 i follow what your saying, but it still just seems a bit odd. I understand what your saying as its not really a literal translation, but rather the names we chose to call those places.Where the hell did we get those names from? Whos job was it to decide what we would call them? How was it all agreed on?
As far as your second example about your name, well your name is Jack on here because thats the name you chose to represent yourself as. As such, we refer to you as Jack. But it would be like you saying your names Jack and then me deciding nahhhh i think ill call you Bobaroo instead. I mean from my perspective you seem like a Bobaroo. (doesnt make much sense when looked at like that does it?)

Yes, but if I didn’t pick a name then you would. And similarly, most names are very close to the original one. Italia wants to be called “Italia” and we make an effort and at least call it “Italy”. But still, the word “Italy” is part of the English language. In polish it’s called “Wlochy” which doesn’t even sound close!

Now my polish is not good enough to know where “Wlochy” comes from, but the point is that “wlochy” is a polish word, just like “italy” is an english word. Neither of them is italian, which is our misconception. Of course, often the name of a place is simply our own version of what the locals call it. We’d have no clue what to call it, so we ask people and they tell us. A very interesting example is “Yunanistan” (the Turkish name for “Greece”). The original border between the two countries lay in Ionia, and since the Ionians were the first Greeks they met, the Turks assumed the land was a land of Ionians, hence “Ionia-nistan”. It’s a bit like saying “America” and assuming we mean the USA. Or calling all of America “New York Land”.

Some very interesting examples though now that I think of it :)

Because of your inability to correctly pronounce the native names.