Question: which country’s name translates literally as “In the Navel of the Moon”?
I recently came across this fascinating map which gives the literal translation of every country name. Some are very pedestrian, but some are fascinating. (I’m not sure why it’s on a site dedicated to comparing credit cards, but other places I’ve found it give them the credit. If this is an SEO thing, I’m happy to reward them for producing decent content…) Most appropriately, Canada apparently means “The Village”…
I bought this similar one a while ago, with more than just country names: http://i.imgur.com/fKHlK.jpg :-)
http://www.omnimap.com/catalog/int/kalimedia.htm has ones for the world, Europe, Britain, USA, and Canada.
There was a Heritage Minute about the origin of “Canada” that used to air regularly when I was young. Pretty amusing. :)
https://www.historicacanada.ca/content/heritage-minutes/jacques-cartier
According to this map, Greece comes from Land of Hellas. In greek, the name of the country is ‘Hellenic Republic’ or ‘Hellas’, which is indeed Land of Hellenes. Hellenes are the descendants of Hellen, which according to greek mythology is the son of the only survivor of a great cataclysm and the father of all greeks. Etymologically, his name means ‘the bright one’.
Interesting map, although it would help if they said which language they were referring to. To take a couple of examples that I know about, for Wales they are referring to the English name, while for New Zealand they are referring to the Māori name. Given that Wales has a higher proportion of Welsh speakers than NZ does of Māori speakers (although in both cases English dominates), there is no obvious logic here.