Where did the names of all countries in the world come from

Geographical location of the country

For example, the name "Norway" comes from the Old Norwegian northr and veg (Norðrvegr) - "northern way". Australia is the "unknown southern land" (lat. Terra australis incognita). Austria is the "eastern kingdom". In the 9th century, the country was an extreme eastern territory within the Frankish Empire and, in addition, a border zone of German settlements with Slavic land. Charlemagne called the country Ostmark - "eastern border territory."

Terrain Features

“Costa Rica” in Spanish means “rich coast”. So the country was called at the beginning of the 16th century by Christopher Columbus, who, together with the team, landed on an unfamiliar land and saw that the locals wear heavy gold jewelry. Mariners decided that there was a lot of gold and minerals, but it turned out that they were wrong. But the name is fixed.

Barbados was given the name by the Portuguese explorer Pedro Campos. Los Barbados means bearded. These are the traveler’s fig trees of the island.

Argentina got its name from the Latin word argentum - "silver". The first Spanish conquistadors discovered the Rio de la Plata, which, according to some, was full of silver.

Well, “Sierra Leone” is nothing more than “lion mountains”, possibly due to the fact that the echo in them reminded the Portuguese sailors who arrived here of a lion growl.

The name of the tribe or ethnic group

That is how the name of our country appeared - Russia, initially - Russia. The first mention of the "people grew up" is found in a letter that in 839 the Byzantine emperor Theophilus sent to the Frankish emperor Louis the Pious. This happened before the formation of the Old Russian state, and the Varangians, who were called to Novgorod in 862, were not associated with the Eastern Slavs. According to the assumptions of some scholars, an ancient Viking group was called "dew".

Many other countries also owe their name to the tribes that inhabited their territory. For example, France is the "land of the Franks", and Italy is the "land of calves", which got its name thanks to the people of the vital people who inhabited the current region of Calabria and were engaged in raising calves.

Historical person

The Philippines is named after King Philip, a 16th-century Spanish monarch. The Spaniard Ruy Lopez de Villalobos, who arrived on the islands during the expedition, declared them the possessions of his king.

Bolivia was named in honor of Simon Bolivar, a military figure who fought with the Spaniards, and the first president of the republic after recognizing the country's independence in 1825.

It is believed that America was named after the Florentine traveler Amerigo Vespucci. However, some experts are inclined to believe that this part of the world was named after Richard America (Richard ap Meryk, English Richard Amerike), a merchant from Bristol who financed the second transatlantic expedition of John Cabot. Cabot reached the shores of Labrador two years earlier than Vespucci and named open lands in honor of the main sponsor of the expedition.