2642: The Village of Å: Places with Only One Letter Mar 12, 2022

A town in Wales changed its name to have the longest place-name in Europe , but there are many places vying for the spot as the shortest. The French township of Y, over a dozen villages across Norway and Sweden each called Å meaning 'brook', as well as Ö in Sweden meaning 'island'. There are a number of other place names or names of geographic features, especially rivers, with only one letter, each of which is a vowel, though none of these are major settlements and one does have to stretch the definition of a place name in some cases to include them. It is certainly rare.

2634: Regina, a.k.a. Pile-of-Bones Mar 4, 2022

The capital of Saskatchewan, Canada is called 'Regina', named after Queen Victoria, but the name used to be very different. The original name of the settlement in the 19th century was 'Pile-of-Bones', only renamed from 1882 when it was made the capital of the then-territory. This name is from the Cree 'oskana kâ-asatêki' meaning "the place where bones are piled", because this is where the local tribe would leave bison bones on the flat, arid grounds. In fact, the land is so notably barren, and only useful for laying out bones, that at the time of its settlement it was a clear conflict of interest from the Lieutenant Governor who owned a large plot of that land that became the regional capital.

2625: 'Capital' in Asian Capital Cities Feb 22, 2022

As seen in ‘Tokyo‘, mentioned yesterday, It is actually a common tradition to include the word and character for 'capital' (京) in the name of Asian capital cities. This same character is pronounced 'jing' in Chinese and is found in other places around modern China. The former capital of Japan, Kyoto (京都) has this, as does Keijō (京城) in South Korea, both meaning 'capital city' in their respective languages. In China there is Beijing (北京) or 'Northern Capital', Nanjing (南京) or 'Southern Capital', and Xijing (西京) or 'Western Capital'. There are plenty more such examples, but this is just a few.

2624: Kyoto & Tokyo Feb 21, 2022

The fact that a former capital (Kyoto) and current capital of Japan (Tokyo) are anagrams is fun, but not so surprising. The original name for Tokyo was Edo, which means 'estuary', owing to the natural geography. During the Meiji Restoration it was changed to Tokyo (東京) from 東 (east) pronounced 'to' and 京 (capital) pronounced 'kyō'. Therefore, Kyoto means the same thing, but in a different order, and the reason that the characters look different (京都) is because this is older and comes from Middle Chinese.

2593: Rochester Jan 20, 2022

A number of places around the world, especially in the Americas and Oceania, are named for other places in other parts of the globe. Rochester is the name of 2 cities in the state of New York and about 17 other places in the USA; there's one in Canada, and another in Australia. The namesake for all of these is, historically anyway, Rochester in Kent, England, but this no longer exists. It was absorbed into the city of Medway, and lost any status is might have had as a recognized town in the 1990's.

2592: Turkey Changes its Name | Jan 19, 2022

The nation of Turkey stated recently that they plan to officially change the name of the country to 'Turkiye' which is how it is written in Turkish, though without the umlaut for 'Türkiye'. This is not even the only country to change its official, English name in the last decade, as seen with Eswatini and Czechia, but it is certainly the biggest and most important. It may take some time to catch on, if ever, but if anything the term 'Persia' is more ingrained in the mind of an English speaker yet the efforts were successful in changing the name to 'Iran', and likewise with Siam to Thailand etc.. Many have questioned the timing as well, given the severity of the economic crisis going on there, as a way to divert media attention. Only time will tell if this will be widely used, but certainly for official purposes there will be a shift.

2581: Bougainville Jan 7, 2022

The island of Bougainville, now in a transitory period as it gains independence from Papua New Guinea, has a French name, but was never colonized by the French. It was first a German colony, then after WWI it was handed over to Australia before its invasion by Japan. Throughout this, it retained its French-derived name from the first European explorer there, Louis Antoine de Bougainville. In the native creole, this is Bogenvil, but in 1975 they also tried to gain independence under the name Republic of the North Solomons but yet again, it didn't change.

2575: cantaloupe Dec 31, 2021

It is normal for things to be named from where they are from, but this is more complicated in the case of the cantaloupe. Cantaloupe melons, which are the same species as honeydew melons, are from the somewhere between South Asia and Africa, but are named for a place in Italy near Rome. Cantalupo is actually the name of a former Papal summer estate, and while it is not where they were first grown, this is where they were first grown when brought to Europe.

2565: Guinea-Bissau Dec 21, 2021

There are a number of places named for 'Guinea', a historical region of Africa. Among those, Guinea Bissau is notable because 'Bissau' is not an adjective in the same way as found with 'Equatorial Guinea'. Rather, Bissau is the capital and was named from this after formerly being 'Portuguese Guinea' because the nonspecific 'Guinea' was already taken, having itself once been 'French Guinea'.

2526: mediterranean Nov 12, 2021

The name for the Mediterranean is from Latin, but it isn't what the Romans called it. They called it Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) or occasionally Mare Internum (Interior Sea) but never Mediterraneum Mare, which is from Late Latin, after the collapse of the empire. 'Mediterraneus' anyway doesn't specifically refer to water and literally means 'middle of the earth', so if the term was used by the Romans, it could have had a broader understanding. This was adopted into English via French, and beforehand the Old English 'Wendelsæ' was used, named for the Germanic Vandals who occupied the area of the former Western Roman Empire.

2510: etruscan and tuscany Oct 26, 2021

Often, etymologies for English words list that they are from Latin, and end there, but many Latin words had relatively ancient foreign origins of their own. A number of their words entered from the pre-Roman civilization of Etruscan who spoke a totally unrelated, non-Indo-European language, most obviously name of the region of Tuscany. This is from 'Tuscus', earlier 'Truscus', and even earlier 'Etruscus', but that doesn't exactly give the etymology. Rather, this is uncertain, but some surmise it is related to the Ancient Greek Τυρρηνός (Turrhēnós), from τύρρις (túrrhis) meaning 'tower', which itself is not of Indo-European origin. Alternatively, it has been noted among pre-Indo-European groups that they gave themselves names with -sk-, also seen in 'Basque' and 'Vascones', which is believed to mean 'water' and relate to seafaring peoples. Other explanations have traced to Celtic origins, or even to compare it to 'Troy', but these do not hold up as well. It has even been suggested that this was not the endonym, but rather 𐌓𐌀𐌔𐌍𐌀 (rasna) was what they called themselves, meaning 'the people'.

2428: Bahrain Aug 14, 2021

There are some countries with names that are meaningful descriptions and take 'the' in their names like 'the Netherlands' (the lowlands) and 'the Ukraine' (the borderland). This is also true of 'Bahrain', which in Arabic is البحرين‎ (al-Baḥrayn) meaning 'the two seas', as it is in the dual. It is not clear, however, which seas this is referring to. Some suggest that the island's east and west bay may be the source, or even just natural water beneath the ground and above the surface, as there are many notably natural bubbling springs. Either way, in antiquity and in the Quran this name simply referred to all of eastern Arabia, and it's not clear when the islands took on this name exclusively.

2411: Language-Specific Names for Germany Jul 28, 2021

There are a number of etymologically distinct names for Germany around the world—far more than other countries—that are shared by at least a few languages, but others too went another way. Particularly North American native tribes made these names, like Lakota's Iyášiča Makȟóčhe (Bad Speaker Land), Navajo's Béésh Bich’ahii Bikéyah (Metal Cap-wearer Land); Cree has two different names both meaning roughly the same as those. Other languages like Sorbian, Silesian, and Medieval Greek took their names from different Germanic states, not so dissimilar to the practice of ancient languages taking their names from tribes. Kinyarwanda, the language of Rwanda, uses 'Ubudage' or just 'dage' thought to derive from the 'guten Tag' greeting during the days of the German colonial presence. Old Norse used the term 'Suðrvegr' literally 'South Way', which is effectively opposite to 'Norway' (Norþweg). Medieval Hebrew went another way and used the biblical name אשכנז‎ (Ashkenaz), thought to be the ancestor of the Germans.

2410: Standard Etymologies for Germany Around the World Jul 27, 2021

Around the world, there are roughly 7 etymologies for the country of Germany where various languages derive their exonyms, along with a few exceptional cases. Those would be:

•From Latin 'Germania' as seen in English and Russian

•From 'Alamanni' tribe as in French (Allemagne) and Arabic

•From Germanic ‘Diutisc’ as in German (Deutschland) or Chinese

•From the Saxon tribe, as in Finnish (Saksa) and Romani.

•From Slavic němьcь as in Polish (Niemcy) and Hungarian

•From Prussia, as in Tahitian (Purutia) or Silesian

•A root found in Baltic states without clear origin, like Lithuanian (Vokietija) or Latvian (Vācija)

Some of these roots have applied to different Germanic states too, like Austria or the Holy Roman Empire in various languages. Notably this list means the term used in Romantic French and Spanish is Germanic, and the term used in Germanic English is Romance based. More on the exceptional cases next.

2406: palace & palatine Jul 23, 2021

The term 'palace' may connote certain specific architectural images, but technically it doesn't have to be any sort of building, so long as the head of state is established there. The term originates with the Latin 'Palatium', the name for the Palatine hill of Rome, which is here the emperor happened to live. This is also where the English name of the German Palatine region (today the state of Rhineland-Palatinate) arose, since this was the title of the ruling family during the days of the Holy Roman Empire. In German those this state is known as Rheinland-Pfalz.

2396: Countries without Long-Form Names Jul 11, 2021

Most countries have an official long-form name such as 'Venezuela' and 'The Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela', 'Micronesia' to the 'Federated States of Micronesia', and 'Luxembourg' to 'Grand Duchy of Luxembourg'. Indeed, countries like Japan, Hungary, Tuvalu, and Ireland are some of the few countries with no distinctions between common names and official names, sort of. In the case of Japan, the official name is Nippon, even in English, but this is very rarely used and since it is simply the endonym rather than an expanded name this is not considered to be long-form. Conversely, Ireland is often referred to as the Republic of Ireland, especially to disambiguate this with Northern Ireland or the island as a whole, despite the fact that this is not officially used by the country itself. Some others like Hungary used to have official long-forms but removed them, as in that case in 2012.

2394: Verrazzano & Verrazano Jul 9, 2021

Plenty of things around New York are named for Giovanni da Verrazzano. Many of these if not all however are mispelt. It is not entirely clear as to how things ended up this way, but major construction projects such as the Verrazano Bridge are only spelt with one Z. Likewise, the Maryland's Verrazano Bridge has this same error.

2392: New Angoulême Jul 7, 2021

Old New York was once New Amsterdam, but before then even it was known as New Angoulême. While officially taken by a French voyage, the man who commanded the ship was Italian. Still, he wished to curry favor with the French king and Giovanni da Verrazzano named it after the place the king was born. In fact, Francis I was from the house of Valois, but of those there were 3 dynasties: the House of Valois, Valois-Orléans, Valois-Angoulême, the latter of which King, Francis I was the first monarch.

2390: Traboules and Snickelways Jul 5, 2021

While terms for common architectural and city-planning phenomena do not tend toward regionality, there are some exceptions. For instance, the French city of Lyon is famous for what are known as a 'traboule', which literally means like 'crossway' but refers to a city-specific system of passageways and alleys that often cross into private property, and were once used to move silks to the river to be sold when it was given a near monopoly on the French silk trade. Likewise, the city of York is famous for its so-called 'snickelways', a term derived for its narrow, winding alleys coined in the 1980's. These are only a couple examples of city-specific terminology, partly because of the unique way that they sprang into being, but many other cities have similar reasons for their own unique, or at least particular terms.

2389: Eritrea & Eretria Jul 3, 2021

Eritrea is a country, and Eretria is a Greek city. These are not as connected as one might falsely conclude however, even though the country 'Eritrea' gets its name from Greek, specifically Ἐρυθρὰ Θάλασσα (Erythra Thalassa) meaning 'Red Sea'. This name was given over by the Italians who colonized the land in 1890, but even when it was under the British or later Ethiopian control the name was retained. The nation has a number of different linguistic groups with no official language either from which to take another name. The Greek city is named Ερέτρια from the word ἐρέτης, (erétēs) meaning 'rower', giving the city the name translating as 'city of rowers'.