# Extension of a tribe/town/region name to a whole country



## franknagy

It is very frequent that such local names are used internally or by other languages to denote a whole county or its official language.
Examples: 

Anglia  

Poland from a Western Polish tribe, but Lengyelország [in Hungarian] from an Eastern Polish tribe.
Magyar = one of the 7 conquering tribes.
Moscow -> Muscovite [inEnglish], muszka [inHungarian].
Alemania [Sp.] from one of the German tribes.


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## ThomasK

*Holland* is only a part (western, near the coast) of the Netherlands.

*"Vlaanderen"* is the name of the the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium now, but historically speaking, "Vlaanderen" referred to the county of Flanders (graafschap), nowadays the two provinces closest to the sea (containing Brugge and Gent).


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## ilocas2

franknagy said:


> 4. Moscow -> Muscovite [inEnglish], muszka [inHungarian].



Is it used for the whole Russia?


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## franknagy

Yes it used to be used for the whole Russia.
It used to be used until the 19th century for the Russian people. The country was named* Muszkaország*.
Those Hungarian traitors who helped Paskievich's invasion against the revolution in 1849 were named as  "_muszkavezetők"="leaders of Muscovites"_.
The nickname of the Russian used in the years 1940-60 used to be "ruszki."
Now the official name is *orosz->Oroszorszá*g.
The name of the capital has not changed: *"Moszkva"*.


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## bibax

Austria (Österreich < lat. Marchia austriaca, _Eastern Mark_) in Czech:

*Rakousko* (also plurale tantum *Rakousy*, esp. in Dolní/Horní Rakousy = Lower/Upper Austria), named after a castel, now Burg Raabs an der Thaya (in Czech Rakuš, Rakús, Rakous < Ratgoz), near the Austrian-Moravian border.


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## franknagy

Interesting. Raabs an der Thaya is a negligible settlement of Austria but it it is indeed near to the Austrian-Moravian border.


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## apmoy70

The Latin name of Greece, Graecia, traces its origin from the *Graeans*, a Boeotian tribe who during the great migration age (8th c. BCE) founded the city of Cumae in southern Italy. The Latins who came in touch with the tribe, named after them the whole Greek nation (Graeci) and their land (Graecia). The etymology of the name of the tribe is unknown.

The Greek endonym for the Greek nation and its land, originates from the ancient tribe of *Selloí* the priestly tribe occupying the area of the Dodona Oracle of Zeus in Epirus, which gave rise to the toponym* Hellopia*; a specific people who migrated and spread to the rest of the Greek peninsula from Hellopia, were the *Hellenes* who produced the toponym *Hellas* (the earliest name of Hellas appears to be given to a Thessalian country which was probably Achilles' kingdom, who with his warriors according to Homer, the Myrmidons, fought in the Trojan War). The etymology of Hellene/Hellas is uncertain, it seems like it's related to the PIE root *swel- _ to burn, scorch _cf Eng. sweal.


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## Stoggler

Not a tribe or town, but Kenya is named after the mountain, Mt Kenya.


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## Armas

Some Finnish names:
Suomi (Finland) was the name of the south-western part of Finland, now Varsinais-Suomi or Finland Proper.
Viro (Estonia), from Virumaa, the northern part of Estonia.
Ruotsi (Sweden), from Roslagen (earlier Rodslag), coastal area near Stockholm. This is also the origin of the word Rus.
Venäjä (Russia), most likely from the Wends, West Slavs in the Medieval era.
Saksa (Germany), from Saxons or Saxony.


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## franknagy

Stoggler said:


> Not a tribe or town, but Kenya is named after the mountain, Mt Kenya.


From which language did the word "Kenya" come to the English?


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## Stoggler

Apparently from Kikuyu - it means White Mountain (kere nyaga).

In the colonial period it was pronounced /ˈkiːnjə/ but that's generally not heard now (due to its colonial associations), it's /ˈkɛːnjə/ these days.


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## Dymn

Portugal, from _Portucale_, modern day Porto.


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## ilocas2

Central African Republic from the centre of Africa. 

edit: ... and South Africa.


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## AndrasBP

Russia is "Krievija" in *Latvian*, and "krievs" in a Russian person.
This comes from the Slavic tribe Krivich, who were the Latvians' neighbours in the Middle Ages.


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## Yendred

*France *took its name from the *Franks,* a germanic people who invaded Roman Gaul in the 5th century.
They were originally living around the Rhine river, that is in the present west region of Germany.

This is not the only French geographic name having an outside origin.
*Normandy* (a region in the north-west of France) took its name from "_Northmen_", that is to say the Vikings from Scandinavia, who invaded this region of France during the first millennium.


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## ThomasK

Just wondering: is there any other reason than (financial) power that accounts for tribenames turning into countrynames?


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## Awwal12

franknagy said:


> Poland from a Western Polish tribe, but Lengyelország [in Hungarian] from an Eastern Polish tribe.


As far as I understand, it is not quite clear if "lędo" and "pole" here meant two opposed things (artificial forest clearing vs. natural open field) or actually the same thing. Either way, the tribal names simply reflect the biomes which those tribes populated (cf. also East Slavic "полiанѣ", which is just the same name, or "дьрьговичи", which may be translated as "children of swampy lands").


Armas said:


> This is also the origin of the word Rus.


Which somehow wasn't mentioned yet. Common Baltic-Finnic *ro:tsi gave Old East Slavic *rusĭ (Old Rus. роусь, русь; the meaning shifted during the centuries, from an ethnonym for local Norse population to the name of the country controlled by Rurikids).


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## Awwal12

ThomasK said:


> Just wondering: is there any other reason than (financial) power that accounts for tribenames turning into countrynames?


The tribe must be somehow characteristic to the land - typically either controlling it (Russia, Bulgaria, France, Sweden etc.) or just being the most numerous and influental in it (like, apparently, it was in the case of England).
To think about it, even geographical adjacency often played a role (certainly Kriviches weren't the largest East Slavic tribe - it was just the tribe which Latgalians mostly contacted with early on, and subsequently it turned into a generic name for all East Slavs).


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## AndrasBP

Yendred said:


> This is not the only French geographic name having an outside origin.
> *Normandy* (a region in the north-west of France) took its name from "_Northmen_",


Same for *Brittany *(Bretagne), settled by British Celts.


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## Yendred

AndrasBP said:


> Same for *Brittany *(Bretagne), settled by British Celts.



True!



ThomasK said:


> Just wondering: is there any other reason than (financial) power that accounts for tribenames turning into countrynames?



Influence, as Awwal12 said, and significant characteristics, like their strengh or some physical trait, that made them stand out from the other tribes. 
This is also where family names often come, from a physical characteristic or a local name.

By the way, one of the accepted etymology for the *Franks *people is from Latin _ferox_, meaning _ferocious _


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## AndrasBP

The *Latvian *name for Estonia is *Igaunija*, which comes from a medieval county called *Ugandi *(not Uganda) in the south-east of Estonia, neighbouring Latvia.


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## ThomasK

Awwal12 said:


> The tribe must be somehow characteristic to the land - typically either controlling it (Russia, Bulgaria, France, Sweden etc.) or just being the most numerous and influental in it (like, apparently, it was in the case of England).
> To think about it, even geographical adjacency often played a role (certainly Kriviches weren't the largest East Slavic tribe - it was just the tribe which Latgalians mostly contacted with early on, and subsequently it turned into a generic name for all East Slavs).


Isn"t number a kind of power as well?


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## Circunflejo

Swaziland. Well, I think that the name says it all, doesn't it? I'll add that this year the country was renamed Eswatini but, literally, that's Swaziland in Swazi.

Somalia from Somali people.

Laos from Lao people.

Mongolia from Mongol people.

Santo Domino is used by some people to refer to all the Dominican Republic.

Talking about official languages, castellano (Castilian, from Castile) is the term used for Spanish in Spain.


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## AndrasBP

The names of Algeria and Tunisia derive from their main cities, Algiers and Tunis.


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## Circunflejo

AndrasBP said:


> The names of Algeria and Tunisia derive from their main cities, Algiers and Tunis.


The same is true for:

El Salvador-San Salvador.
Panama.
Belize.
Mexico is derived from the mexicas (Aztecs).


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## jimquk

We might mention England, widely used to mean Britain/UK, to the extreme annoyance of Scots, Welsh, etc.

Persia derives from the province of Pars, nowadays Fārs.


For the inverse process: Sudan "(land of the) Blacks" originally applied to all the lands along the southern edge of the Sahara, but now only to that part in the Nile basin.

Also Syria, in former times referred to Lebanon, Palestine, Jordan, as well as present day Syria.


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## AndrasBP

Two extreme cases of geographical extension are the names of the continents *Africa *and *Asia*.
Originally, Africa was a Roman province on the North African coast (present-day coastal Tunisia and Libya), while Asia was used in Ancient Greece to refer to Anatolia (present-day Turkey). Today we use "Asia" for places that are thousand of miles away, like Korea or Vietnam.


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## Yendred

What about "*the Earth*", as it is made of 75% water


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## Stoggler

jimquk said:


> We might mention England, widely used to mean Britain/UK, to the extreme annoyance of Scots, Welsh, etc.



As a coda, while the English name for the country is derived from the Angles, in most of the Celtic languages the name for England is derived from the Saxons:

Cornish - Pow Sows
Irish - Sasana
Sc. Gaelic - Sasainn
Manx - Sostyn
Breton - Bro-Saoz

Welsh differs in that name for England is Lloegr, which comes from a word meaning lost lands.  However, the words for English (whether the adjective, the name for the language, or denonyms) all come from the word for Saxon.


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## AndrasBP

I almost forgot about Switzerland.
Its name comes from the town *Schwyz*, of only 15,000 people. Today, the Canton of Schwyz is only one of Switzerland's 26 cantons.


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## Armas

AndrasBP said:


> Originally, Africa was a Roman province on the North African coast (present-day coastal Tunisia and Libya)


If I remember correctly, for the ancient Greeks *Libya *was originally everything west of Egypt. Likewise, *Aethiopia* was everything south of Egypt (but, of course, they had no idea of how far the land expands).


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## Penyafort

*Catalonia*, only if Coromines' theory of it being a metathesis of *Laketania *(the Iberian _Lacetani_) is right.


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## Mahaodeh

AndrasBP said:


> The names of Algeria and Tunisia derive from their main cities, Algiers and Tunis.


Also Kuwait.

Do colloquial usages count? Cairo for example is referred to as Misr (Egypt) colloquially although officially it continues to be Al-Qahira; and Damascus is referred to colloquially as Ash-shaam (the Levant) although officially it is Dimashq.

Edit: I also just realised that this is the other way round, where the name of the region is given to the city.


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## sound shift

Lebanon: From Mount Lebanon, which by no means occupies the whole of the country.


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