# Tunisia / Tunis



## ilocas2

Hello, due to the recent terrorist attack in Tunisia I got an inspiration for this thread.

In Czech Tunisia is *Tunisko* and the capital of Tunisia is *Tunis*.

But *Tunis* is also used colloquialy for the whole country, for example in the context of holidays.

Does it exist in other languages that the name of Tunisia's capital is used incorrectly for the whole country?


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## ger4

In German, the capital is called _*Tunis*_ ['tu:-], the name of the country is _*Tunesien*_ [-'e:-]. I have heard people talking about their holidays _"in Tunis"_, though, and wasn't quite sure whether they meant the city or the whole country but in general both terms are kept apart.


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## Armas

Not in Finnish. The capital is Tunis and the country Tunisia.


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## Dymn

In Catalan we also distinguish between the country (_*Tunísia*_) and the capital (_*Tunis*_). However, I wouldn't be surprised to hear people mixing these terms, especially if we take into account that Spanish uses the same name for both (_*Túnez*_).


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## apmoy70

Armas said:


> Not in Finnish. The capital is Tunis and the country Tunisia.


Neither in Greek, the country is *«Τυνησία»* [tiniˈsi.a] (fem.) and the capital is *«Τύνιδα»* [ˈtiniða] (fem.)


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## ahmedcowon

In Arabic, the same word is used for both: تونس /tounis/


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## Messquito

In Chinese, it's 突尼西亞(Tu ni shi ya), in some occasions, especially in News, when the context makes it clear, we may shorten it to 突國(Country Tu), but never  just 突尼西.


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## Ghabi

In Mainland China, 突尼斯 (transliterated directly from Arabic تونس) is used for both, but the word "city" (市) can be added for disambiguation.


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## cherine

In Arabic, the word العاصمة al-3aaSima (the capital) is usually added -at least in writing- after the name to differentiate between the country and the city. In spoken Arabic, I think people add the word madina مدينة (city) before the name to designate the capital, when there's need to specify which Tunis they're talking about.


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## 810senior

We call them チュニジア_chunizia _and チュニス_chunisu_.


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## DearPrudence

In *French*, they are different:
*Tunisia = Tunisie
Tunis = Tunis*


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## djara

Before the French historians and geographers coined the name Tunisia in the 19th century, Tunis was used for both the capital city and the country. Under Ottoman rule (1500s-1700s), the country was known as Eyalat Tunus translated into French as La Régence de Tunis. Previously, the country was mostly referred to as Ifriqiya, a reference to the Roman province Africa Proconsularis, itself derived from the local Berber Ifre tribe.


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## bigic

Serbian: _Tunis_ is the name of both the country and the capital city.


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## Kotlas

bigic said:


> Serbian: _Tunis_ is the name of both the country and the capital city.


The same in Russian:
Tунис [tu'nis]

And, by the way, I may shock you but we say Бразилия [bra'ziliya] both for Brazil (the country) and Brasília (its federal capital). 
For the city, we can also say Бразилиа. However, its pronunciation [bra'zilia] is practically identical to that of Бразилия.


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## franknagy

In Hungarian
Town: Tunisz  -- country: Tunézia;
like Algír -- Algéria.


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## jazyk

In Portuguese:

Tunisia: Tunísia
Tunis: Túnis (more common in Brazil) or Tunes (more common in Portugal)


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## Olaszinhok

In Italian:
Tunisia, the country
Tunisi, the capital city


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## ilocas2

Thanks for all replies, but I was more interested whether you use at least sometimes the name of the city for the country if you have different names.


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## AndrasBP

Tunisia used to be very popular with Hungarian holidaymakers and I've never heard the city name _Tunisz _used for the whole country, _Tunézia_.


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## elroy

It’s interesting that it’s a single word in the country’s own official language, whereas most other languages use different words.

It’s the same with Algeria and Algiers: one word in Arabic (الجزائر).


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## ThomasK

In Dutch: _*Tunis *is de hoofdstad van *Tunesië*._..


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## djara

elroy said:


> It’s the same with Algeria and Algiers: one word in Arabic (الجزائر).


This was also true for Morocco. Until the 20th century, مراكش referred to both the capital city and the kingdom of Morocco as a whole. This survives in the country's name in European languages (Marruecos, Marrocos, Maroc, Marokko).


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