Funny part is so many folks get Greece wrong it actually tells you what major geopolitical influence they have.
Greece comes from the Romans calling them “Graeci” or “Like Graia” because the first greeks they had significant contact with were Graian colonists in Cumae.
But everyone from Turkey to India calls them something along the lines of “Yunan”, because that’s how the Persians started refering to them, because the major greek city state they first had significant contact with was Ionia.
This is the kind of treasure I love to find in map-post comments—thank you.
So very similar to Germany then. Every language refers to the country by the name of the tribe that was closest to them when Germany wasn’t a thing yet.
It’s probably already well known, but “Zongguo” is like “Middle Earth” or “center of the world”, depending on how mean the transcriber is.
Surprisingly it’s not the only one. Dubai is honestly the center of (what remains of) the hub-and-spoke air travel network because it’s the closest point to every other landmass on Earth. Middle Earth was supposed to be Tolkien’s locale for a hypothetical creation myth of modern (well, then-modern) Britain. Alkebulan (the native name for Africa) is the cradle of humanity and the only continent where everyone there agreed what said continent was called for all of recorded/known history. I’d say being in a geopolitically central location, even if that’s really just dumb luck, is something cultures have taken pride in for a very long time.
It’s true, why wouldn’t you want to be in the center of the world? I wonder if the Persians had similar thoughts about themselves, being at the center point of the silk road. The other option is to take pride in being at an extreme, which a few cultures do, but I don’t know how common that is in relation.
Dubai is pretty central for the inhabited old world. IIRC the centerpoint of land on earth ends up in France, because of the Americas, and the higher landmass in the northern hemisphere, but nobody thinks of it as a global crossroads. Ice caps, mountains, the rough Atlantic and the world’s largest desert make sure of that.
Alkebulan (the native name for Africa) is the cradle of humanity and the only continent where everyone there agreed what said continent was called for all of recorded/known history.
I’m sorry, you otherwise have interesting points but that’s nutty. Africa has seen more languages and cultures than anywhere else, what with being our home continent, and there’s no way they all coordinated their name for the continent - which maybe nobody know the extent of until the invention of proper seafaring.
…
You’re right. My fault, I looked it up and don’t know where that came from but the evidence doesn’t seem to exist at all and I’m not sure why I remembered that as being a thing.
Oh, phew! I thought I was about to get bombarded by hate replies from Black Israelites or something (no relation to the actual country). Thanks for the grace.
I’m pretty sure Alkebulan was actually a name given to Africa by Islamic settlers. There are thousands of indigenous names for Africa. In the words of the African man who told me about it, “we had thousands of names for Africa because we didn’t know we were supposed to only have one. Each person had their own name for it.”
That seems to be the actual case, yes.
The idea that each person had their own name for Africa is interesting to learn, thank you!
Literally Middle Kingdom or middle country
Good to know.
Morocco being “al-Maghrib” is suprising to me, since I know al-Maghrib as the Maghreb region, aka the part of north Africa that speaks Maghreb Arabic (al-Maġrib al-ʿArabī).
Wikipedia says it’s المملكة المغربية which is “al-Mamlakah al-Maghribiyah” but I don’t know if the map’s version is an acceptable shorthand.
Korea is called Korea because of Goryeo, which was one of the historical unifying states that brought together the Later Three Kingdoms…
It’s a little hard to explain because the kingdoms would often “unify” (aka conquer) the other kingdoms, eventually fall, and the later kingdoms would often adopt those previous names. Would be here all day trying to explain it.
But yeah, Goguryeo, one of the Kingdoms, romanized their name to “Koryo” which was later also used by Goryeo. Goryeo was named as an adaptation of Goguryeo so… yeah. Confusing.
Was there someplace called Silla or similar?
Yes, Silla was a kingdom, and then it became the main ruling kingdom for a while, and then it fragmented again, but one of the fragments was still called Silla… :)
Damn I feel pretty dumb for not knowing some of these.
Like Algiers almost!