1294: Exonyms: Ruotsi and Ryssa Jun 26, 2018

While a few places, by historical coincidence, have many exonyms (i.e. what a place is called by other peoples) when the differences are very stark, as with 'Germany', Deutschland', 'Allemagne' and 'Niemcy' all referring to the same place in different languages, there are usually historical reasons. Another example is that the Finnish name for 'Sweden' is 'Ruotsi', but rather than being from Finnish, as you might imagine would be the cause for this difference, it actually just derives from another (Old) Swedish word. 'Ruotsi' comes from 'roþs-' which related to rowing, and even in Old Norse the area was called 'Roþrslandi', which means 'land of rowers', relating to the Vikings. Moreover, this 'roþs-' is where 'Rus'—the base for 'Russia'—derives, which is consistent with the history of many early slavic states being controlled Germanic raiders.

While the history of a region is usually important for understanding exonyms, this is not necessarily the case, as with 'Austria'. Also, many of these vastly different exonyms are centred in Europe, as with 'Switzerland', but it is true of places elsewhere too, like 'Japan', which in Japanese is 'Nihon'.