Example:
USA 美国 - 美 mean “beautiful” and 国 is “country”
So when my mom told me we were going to move to 美国, I, having never heard of anything about this country ever before, already had a positive impression of this “beautiful country”.
France 法国 - 法 is one of the characters in 法律, law, so my first impression was, that these people probably have very strict rules and are law abiders
Britain/UK 英国 - 英 is one of the characters in 英雄, hero, so I just imagine British people like to help the innocent (this was before I learned about British colonialism lol, but I guess the 英 character still sort of partly relevent, as in they view themselves as “hero”, aka: they interfere with other’s countries bussiness a lot)
Germany 德国 - 德 is one of the characters in 道德, morality, so I had a subconcious belief they were very moral people. I didn’t even know about the holocaust yet. 💀
Mexico 墨西哥 - 墨 is ink, 哥 is brother, so I though these are dark-skinned people that value brotherhood, masculinity.
South Korea 韩国 - 韩 sounds like 寒, so I just assumed it was a very cold country (isn’t it tho?) Oh BTW, I was in South Korea… in the airport waiting for a transfer flight, never actually entered the country for real, that was 15 years go, the closest I’ve ever been to South Korea. Wanna go there someday, see the snow (cuz its a 寒国 “cold country” remember xD)
Japan 日本 - 日 is the sun, so I thought it gets like very sunny or something
These are the few on the top of my head. You can mention any below and I can tell you what my “subconcious feel” about the name is.
Czech Republic?
Edit: And also Czechslovakia, and Slovakia, maybe. I’d love to hear whether there is connection between the names.
If you can separate out the politics, America really is a beautiful country. So is China, I’ve been to both. Everyone should see both at least once.
I’ma hold off till yalls stop it with the outrageous political tourist vetting.
A couple points that media routinely skips right past because the current drama is great for clicks and views.
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The current “escalation” of immigration hostility is only slightly more aggressive than it’s always been. Not counting the performative stunts ICE is doing in cities and neighborhoods, those are also just isolated cases that most people will never see in person, even ones who live in areas that have news reports showing fires and riots and standoffs… these kinds of things are happening in areas like, one square block at the most. Not downplaying it, but I do want people to have an accurate perspective.
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And that percentage of bad cases and horror stories against tourists is very, very small to begin with. At least compared to the HUGE number of people flowing in and out of the country every hour. This is why the whole spectacle being played out by this administration is so ludicrous and pointless. More people were still deported under Biden. More people still stay in the country illegally just by overstaying their permits or travel visas. Most will never be caught or prosecuted.
I’m not a Trump fan. Any review of my socials will reveal some pretty ‘strident criticism’. Do you still recommend I chance losing 5k to 10k of bookings and weeks of leave on the chance I’ll get detained and deported?
I already cancelled my Hawaii trip in Feb and my trip to Miami in April.
Nah fam you should probably wait until Trump dies, which won’t be much longer.
My point was only that a lot of the news is a little hyperbolic, you should check other sources to see exactly what people in your situation are facing, I ain’t passing out financial or travel advice, just providing perspective.
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What’s Bulgaria? This is what translate spits out: 保加利亚
Afaik, some characters do have meanings but are sometimes used for their readings, so their literal meaning is gibberish.
保 — to protect — bǎo
加 — to add — jiā
利 — benefit, profit — lì
亚 — Asia / secondary — yà
I think this is part of why some people end up with weird gibberish tattoos when they translate things literally, because some made up alphabets try to map Western letters to some Chinese characters, but it doesn’t work that way.
Interesting. In Japanese, we have the concept of ateji, where we just put Chinese characters for the sound so we just know not to take the meanings so literally. But we do tend to pick nice or neutral-sounding characters. i.e. we wouldn’t use characters like 死 or 糞 for the sound lol. This is the same for peoples’ names.
Mexico is actually right
Only if you are racist
Racism is when dark skin and strong family values
Racism is believing that race has anything to do with cultural things
It’s you who’s treating “mexican” as a race. To me it’s a nationality, which has everything to do with cultural things.
This is also a huge problem when deciding how to write foreign names into Chinese: imagine the difference in public perspective when reading a news article about some country leader named “Prime Minister Sleepy Swamp Pit” vs “Prime Minister Strong Universe Zephyr” or whatever.
I Remember a decade ago i read a post on blogpost on exactly this
I wasted thirty minutes to search but I didn’t find it, but it was something like Michael Jackson was shocked to learn during his First tour in mainland china that the locals gave him the Hanzi 迈克尔·杰克逊 where the last character means “inferior” or something like that, instead in Taiwan the locals chose 麦可·杰克森 which has a better meaning.
When I studied Chinese our teachers basically took the first two letters of every student’s first & last names and associated it with pinyin & corresponding Chinese characters. So my Chinese name became Horse Angel.
Glorious Leader Tiny Sweat Hands
I’ve always found it mildly xenophobic that basically 0 nations refer to any other nation by what that nation refers to itself as.
Interesting thought
I don’t think the other nations are too bothered by it in most cases.
The country that comes to mind first is Germany. They call it Deutschland. I never looked into why we as English speakers call it “Germany”. I just do it because everyone else does.
I haven’t heard of Germans getting upset about it. If they were legitimately offended, I’d start calling it Deutschland, no problem.
The real issues come in when there’s a historical context. Like, if the name contains a slur for the people in that nation. Or if you mix up the names of neighbouring Balkan countries.
IIRC Germany > Germania > Allemania > Alemanic tribes, people who lived in Germany. France calls them “Allemagne” as well, you can see where that came from.
Germany used to be a collection of tribes and depending on which of these tribes the countries around them had contact with that’s the name that stuck in that language.
- Germans call themselves Deutsche (from diutisc meaning “the people” in Old German)
- In French they are called Allemagne after the Alamanni tribe
- In Italian it’s Germania, same as the English Germany, from the ancient latin Germania with unknown origins
- In Finnish it’s Saksa, after the Saxon tribes
- Most slavic countries use some variant of Niemcy, which means “speechless”, because slavic and germanic languages have hardly anything in common and are thus unintelligible to each other.
Yeah, many Western European maps still refer to it as Alemania, which in beer contexts is quite a hoot :)
It’s been changing a bit with British English in a few places. I remember when the Netherlands was more commonly referred to as Holland, which is no longer that common at all anymore.
Netherlands isn’t exact with the native name being Nederlands and is instead more of a “sound-a-like” translation as if we had it spelled in it’s native way you know the lamen would instead just call it the Nedderlands.
Nether means low in English and Nederlands is mostly below sea level, but I wonder why it’s plural?
The late medieval Burgundians will have been the first to call it the low countries (les pays-bas). They acquired these territories (various duchies and counties in Belgium + Netherlands + bits around it) over time, not as one piece of land. All those different territories had different laws and traditions, different crown laws (HRE or kingdom of France), different local charters, … It wasn’t one country, so plural makes sense.
It used to be the Kingdom of the United Netherlands. I mean, it still is, but now that refers to everything including Curaçao, Saint Martin, etc
Nederland and Netherlands both mean low country? Low as in Lower Rhine. It has an origin in the Roman name “Germania Inferior”.
Hi everyone, I’m from the great nation known as the Central Nation (中国, China) of Asia, known officially as, the Central Hua-People’s Republic (中 华人民 共和国, PRC)
🤣
Actually that kinds sound a bit “Ancient” and cooler.
Or do I use the Pinyin pronunciation instead of translating?
Hi everyone, I’m from Zhōnghuá Rénmín Gònghéguó. (Good luck pronouncing that with the tones correct 😉)
Xenophobic is a bit much. These names were mostly probably formed out of ignorance, and once a name is established it’s hard to change.
Yeah, how is that xenophobic?
I guess foggy there means it’s “mildly” xenophobic when you don’t bother to get someone’s name right.
A lot of names got changed during immigration due to wilful xenophobia last century, for example. Xenakis to Johnson, etc.
Structural linguistic problems like not having notation for foreign pronunciation isn’t necessarily xenophobic, but failure to address the problem might be.
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What about Norway?
The Chinese characters for Norway didn’t have much of a impression, maybe because I first learned of Norway like very late into teenage years when I already used English as primary language. I already have “they treat prisoners very well” and “social welfare” into my mind, before I looked up the characters for Norway.
In China I replied “New Zealand” when someone asked where I was from. Complete blank stare… A friend of mine said something like “Nova Zelandia” which was immediately understood
🇮🇳
I attempted to learn Mandarin in 2019, at first with Duolingo with an aim to find more robust resources along the way. I had to stop because I couldn’t distinguish among the characters. I’ve looked for resources for learning Mandarin in braille but can’t find any.
I really enjoyed what I did learn though. It’s such a laconic language, and I’ve nabbed some grammar here and there for one of my conlangs.
I mean the Mexico one doesn’t sound too terribly far off from reality lol. Neither does Britain, with the the last sentence especially.
In all seriousness, this is a very interesting post. It’s very cool to see what other languages call other countries and what it means.
OP, what do the names for Brazil and Peru mean?
Most of those do make sense from a 19th century or older viewpoint, so I suspect that it’s not just a coincidence that those words were linked to those countries. If it was only one or a few with an ulterior meaning, then I could believe it to be a coincidence, but it’s most of them. I more believe that there were chinese word artists at work who looked for words with both a fitting meaning and the right sound.
When it comes to nature, the USA is a really beautiful country. France gave the world the Code Napoléon, which is one of the most influential evolutions in law systems. Britain’s success in it’s colonies and in the industrial revolution was very often based on the endeavours of individuals, ie heroes. Northern Germans are sticklers for following rules, politeness etc (which was back then viewed very positively by others, but has since become a bit tainted because an attitude of the law is the law will often lead to inhumanity). Mexico: not a clue. Korea: I just have vague guesses. Japan, when seen from northern China, is where the sun rises.
