• Q&A QUIZZES
  • PICTURE QUIZ
  • LIST QUIZZES
  • COOL LINKS
  • FAQS
  • ABOUT US
  •   Index of Lists
  •   50 Random Quiz
  •   Business Lists
  •   Culture Lists
  •   Films Lists
  •   Food Lists
  •   Geography Lists
  •   History Lists
  •   Literature Lists
  •   Miscellaneous Lists
  •   Music Lists
  •   Science Lists
  •   Sports Lists
 Country Name Origins

How did the various countries get their names?

Click here to flip columns.
 
 Theory behind the name Country
67.
From the word meaning "village" or "settlement" in the Saint-Lawrence Iroquoian language spoken by the inhabitants of Stadacona and the neighbouring region in the 16th century.
 
 
AnswerCanada
66.
Spanish for "depths", a reference to the deep waters off the northern coast.
 
 
AnswerHonduras
65.
From the city of Erech/Uruk near the river Euphrates.
 
 
AnswerIraq
64.
From the Latin for "silver". Early Spanish and Portuguese traders used the region's Rio de la Plata or "Silver River" to transport silver and other treasures from Peru to the Atlantic.
 
 
AnswerArgentina.
63.
From Spanish for "Low (Shallow) Sea".
 
 
AnswerBahamas
62.
From the ancient Khmer kingdom of Kambuja (Kambujadesa).
 
 
AnswerCambodia
61.
From the Arabic root expressing the basic meaning of "right";
 
 
AnswerYemen
60.
From the Portuguese for "Lion Mountains".
 
 
AnswerSierra Leone
59.
From the coastal desert whose name means "area where there is nothing" in the Nama language.
 
 
AnswerNamibia
58.
A transliteration from the Russian name meaning "White Russia".
 
 
AnswerBelarus
57.
From the Bornu word tsade for "lake".
 
 
AnswerChad
56.
Germanic for "low lands".
 
 
AnswerNetherlands
55.
The Phoenician settlers found hares in abundance, and mistook them for hyraxes of Africa; thus they named the land in their Canaanite dialect.
 
 
AnswerSpain
54.
The English name of X comes from Chinese pronunciation of the native characters for "sun-origin".
 
 
AnswerJapan
53.
From the biblical patriarch Jacob, later known as X, literally meaning "struggled with God/he struggles with God".
 
 
AnswerIsrael
52.
Named after a tribe whose name, may come from the word which means "castle" in Germanic languages.
 
 
AnswerBulgaria
51.
From the Portuguese for "River of Shrimps", the name given to the Wouri River by Portuguese explorers in the 15th century.
 
 
AnswerCameroon
50.
From the Sanskrit for "Lion City".
 
 
AnswerSingapore
49.
Possibilities include that it comes from a native Mapudungun term meaning "the depths", a reference to the fact that the Andes mountain chain looms over the narrow coastal flatland.
 
 
AnswerChile
48.
From the Latin "Dies X" meaning "Sunday": the day of the week on which Christopher Columbus first landed on the island.
 
 
AnswerDominica
47.
From Portuguese for "Green cape".
 
 
AnswerCape Verde
46.
Christopher Columbus, on discovering a seemingly endless number of islands in the nort-east Caribbean in 1493, named them after Saint Ursula and the 11,000 virgins.
 
 
AnswerBritish Virgin Islands
45.
From the Sanskrit word which means "at the foot of the mountains" or "abode at the foot,".
 
 
AnswerNepal
44.
From Pretani, "painted ones"; perhaps a reference to the use of body-paint and tattoos by early inhabitants of the islands.
 
 
AnswerBritian.
43.
"Beyond the southern border", as referred to by ancient Chinese, or "South Yue", after the Yue peoples of ancient southeast China.
 
 
AnswerVietnam
42.
From the German "Light stone" ("light" as in "bright").
 
 
AnswerLiechtenstein
41.
From local languages, meaning "land of upright people", "land of honest men" or "land of the incorruptible". President Thomas Sankara, who took power in a coup in 1983, changed the name from "Upper Volta" in 1984.
 
 
AnswerBurkina Faso
40.
Originally from Latin terra X incognita - "unknown southern land". Early European explorers, sensing that the landmass far exceeded in size what they had already mapped, gave the area a generic descriptive name.
 
 
AnswerAustralia
39.
From the native name meaning "march (i.e., borderland) of the Danes", the dominant people of the region since ancient times.
 
 
AnswerDenmark
38.
From the Latin for "free", so named from the establishment of the state as a homeland for freed African-American slaves.
 
 
AnswerLiberia
37.
In Arabic terminology it could mean "Palace Islands" as the main island, Malé, held the palace of the islands' Sultan.
 
 
AnswerMaldives
36.
From a local name meaning "land of the Kirundi-speakers."
 
 
AnswerBurundi
35.
From the Arabic for "Land of the blacks".
 
 
AnswerSudan
34.
The Han characters used today mean "Terraced Bay" in Chinese (terraced rice fields typify the landscape), though the older characters have different meanings.
 
 
AnswerTaiwan
33.
Cantonese name for "Fragrant Harbor".
 
 
AnswerHong Kong
32.
From the Latin name for the Red Sea "Mare Erythraeum".
 
 
AnswerEritrea
31.
Possibly based on a native word meaning "flaming water" or "tongues of fire," believed to have derived from the sun's dazzling reflections on Lake X.
 
 
AnswerMalawi
30.
The name, meaning "rich coast" in Spanish, given by the Spanish explorer Gil González Dávila.
 
 
AnswerCosta Rica
29.
From the Turkic: on-ogur, "(people of the) ten arrows" — in other words, "alliance of the ten tribes".
 
 
AnswerHungary
28.
English name given by Eric the Red in 982 to attract settlers.
 
 
AnswerGreenland
27.
From Ancient Greek for "the land below the Aegean sea".
 
 
AnswerEgypt
26.
From Taíno Indian word for "centre place".
 
 
AnswerCuba
25.
From the name of the Spanish sea captain Juan de X who sighted the islands in 1503.
 
 
AnswerBermuda.
24.
From the Persian words for "Land of forty tribes".
 
 
AnswerKyrgyzstan
23.
A corruption of the Arabic words "Jebel Tarik" which means "Tarik's Mountain".
 
 
AnswerGibraltar
22.
From the Susu (Sousou) language meaning 'Women'.
 
 
AnswerGuinea
21.
"Great House of Stone" or "Big House of Stone" in Shona, referring to the stone-built capital city of the ancient trading empire of Great X.
 
 
AnswerZimbabwe
20.
From the indigenous peoples who called the land X, meaning "land of many waters", in reference to large number of rivers in the area.
 
 
AnswerGuyana
19.
An adaptation of "Gilbert", from the former European name the "Gilbert Islands".
 
 
AnswerKiribati
18.
From the modern German 'Österreich' which literally means "empire in the East."
 
 
AnswerAustria
17.
From the Cueva Indian language meaning "place of abundance of fish/place of many fish".
 
 
AnswerPanama
16.
The English name comes from the Qin Dynasty, possibly in a Sanskrit form.
 
 
AnswerChina
15.
From Celtic for "small" (cognate to English "little") and Germanic for "castle".
 
 
AnswerLuxembourg
14.
Named by the Portuguese explorer Pedro A. Campos in 1536 after the appearance of the island's fig trees, whose long roots resemble beards.
 
 
AnswerBarbados
13.
From the dynasty that takes its name from its ancestor whose name means "very happy".
 
 
AnswerSaudi Arabia
12.
"The saviour" in Spanish, named after Jesus.
 
 
AnswerEl Salvador
11.
Named after the Xwood tree, so-named because its reddish wood resembled the color of red-hot embers (X in Portuguese).
 
 
AnswerBrazil
10.
After the river X, the name of which derives from the Hebrew and Canaanite root yrd — "descend" (into the Dead Sea.)
 
 
AnswerJordan
9.
Means "Himself alone", a reference to the Greek demigod Hercules, once worshipped at a shrine on the territory.
 
 
AnswerMonaco
8.
Derived from the Greek word for "copper", in reference to the copper mined on the island.
 
 
AnswerCyprus
7.
From the Arabic diminutive form meaning "fortress built near water".
 
 
AnswerKuwait
6.
The name may be derived from al-Darra, the Arabic word for forest.
 
 
AnswerAndorra
5.
From the Greek word for "of burnt visage".
 
 
AnswerEthiopia
4.
From Arabic for "Two seas".
 
 
AnswerBahrain
3.
From the Mayan word for "land of trees".
 
 
AnswerGuatemala
2.
From the Arabic "Djazair al Qamar" — "Island of the moon."
 
 
AnswerComoros
1.
Said to derive from the Spanish pronunciation of "Wallace", the name of the pirate who set up the first settlement here in 1638. Another possibility relates the name to the Maya word for "muddy water", applied to the X River.
 
 
AnswerBelize
[Top]
   All Rights Reserved. | Source for most of the ideas as well as the text in the quizzes is Wikipedia. | Site is best viewed with IE 6+.
Please send feedback/corrections to TriviaBug AT gmail DOT com. | Also see the FAQS/About Us for information about the site.