yes it is also the name of a bar. if you google this, it will appear first, so instead add state to the end. second, All Hail the BIG BLUE BUG, It is a NATIONAL monument
he could do it for way more than 24 minutes, walk up to him and ask him to explain the history of Australia and I reckon he will have so many tangents he could keep talking for at least 3 hours.
@@Liggliluff It's usually the People's Democratic Republic of X, so you'd have the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the People's Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Imagine if there's a civil war in Timor-Leste, and then a new country is formed on the East of Timor-Leste. And then when a person travel to the east of East Timor-Leste, they can say they're in eastern East East East
@@andknuckles101 Française is the feminine of français, which means "French", as in, someone that is french. It doesn't apply to the country of France itself. Source: I'm french.
To be fair he is talking about the names of countries in his language. Why should I as an native English speaker be expected to call Germany Deutschland? It's not that we dislike the culture or anything it is just easier to call it Germany in English. You can call it Deutschland in German if you want but I should not be required to.
@@thebasileus4793 not to say you *should* call it ðat, but "Deutschland" is not even remotely more difficult to pronounce in English ðan Germany. In fact, it seems easier to me, given it has fewer syllables. And for ðat matter, ðe country wasn't referred to as "Germany" in English until surprisingly recently, being usually called Alemania/Alemany prior to ðat.
@@oyoo3323 Yeah but no American is taught to call it that thus it would be harder to make people call it that. Also the spelling in English makes no sense with how it sounds which would only add to the problem.
@@thebasileus4793 given English usually retains ðe original spelling of all vocabulary it takes in, ðe spelling makes perfect sense. As for ðe first part, who cares? We weren't talking about yankees specifically to begin wið, so why focus in on ðem exactly?
@@oyoo3323 Well as a native English speaker I can say for certain that if I showed most English speakers 'Deutschland' they would have no idea how to pronounce it and also I was talking about Yanks as I am one. I suppose I cant speak for other English speakers who are not Americans but I can assure you that very few Americans would know how to pronounce Deutschland. I imagine they would pronounce more like De-utchs-land and not like how its actually pronounced.
“Let’s talk about the one country with new in their name.” - Moves around New Zealand & Papua New Guinea several times. New Caledonia! - That... That’s not even an independant country.
Guinea. Now that's a terrible confusing name of a country. There is The Guinea, there's the Equatorial Guinea, there is Guinea-Bissau, there is Papua New Guinea. Just how many Gunieas you need?
@@whoeverest_the_whateverest Guinea pig which isn't a pig and isn't from Guinea. It's a rabbit from Peru, so it should be called PERU RABBIT instead of GUINEA PIG
Technically that applies to any "North -" or "South -". Two things that were previously one thing. And just to piss of the Scots, I'll call them North British, becase they were two things that became one things.
Except that he starts out talking about a country that was named about ten years ago, then one that changed its name two years ago, and then one named by the Portuguese. He doesn't get into stuff named by the British for quite a while.
@@Veroxzes It's "Tschad" in German, but that's because you need the "t" at the beginning to mark the "t" sound, different from English, where it's all included in "ch". But I guess it might be just for the same reason that Swedish has the "t" in front.
Chinese characters are rich in a way that the English alphabet can't compare, so I'm sure Jinan mean a totally different thing than Ji'nan. The same with Shanxi and Shaanxi. Depending on the character u pick, even if they have the same sound, the meaning is totally different.
Did this guy just completely forget about the existence of words like southern and eastern? Using them correctly would completely eradicate the direction based confusion he described!
@@kushtalin9180 thing is people in Northern Ireland often refers to itself as the North of Ireland... So Northern North of Ireland? North of the Republic of Ireland??
@@liandrysanguishinshin7955 well, i guess if you want to say that you just gotta change the usual "north of ireland" thing. But only when you talk about the northern part of it.
@@kushtalin9180 I'd do that, it's just that Northern Ireland is associated with British Imperialism. Either way, people refer to the north of the north of ireland by its county, not by... well that normally, so it doesn't matter too much.
Fun fact, we don’t call ourselves the “Hungarian republic” anymore (we only did it before in formal language anyways) that road sign must be old because we’re simply Hungary (Magyarország) now
Honestly, I have never heard of someone referring to the southern part of Africa as south Africa. It's southern Africa and South Africa for the country. No confusion there
The Maori party in New Zealand are petitioning to have the name officially named to Aotearoa, which is New Zealand's name in te reo Maori. As a kiwi support it, even though it would mean I would be worried about mispronouncing my own country's name cause my Maori pronunciation has gotten kinda bad since moving to Australia.
Yeah if they do that no one is gonna be able to pronounce it and they will just call it new Zealand Some people might even confuse it with Eritrea in africa
we don't like to call ourselves "North Korea" and the same for the Koreans down south because we view ourselves as one nation, two governments. So we prefer our official names
@@AnimeReference Canada Bay has always been amusing to me. The stolen British names I get but it's a mystery how we managed to steal any from Canada. There's a suburb in Newcastle called Toronto, too. Very weird.
I was kinda surprised you didn't mention Austria and Australia for having names that sound too similar, but I suppose if any two countries can get an exception for being far enough apart it's those. People definitely do still manage to get them mixed up, though.
To be fair, "Macedonia" refers to a geographic region including North Macedonia, Northern Greece, and parts of western Bulgaria. Calling it North Macedonia is a decent compromise that no longer associates it with part of Greece
In South Africa's defense, according to the MLA Grammar Script (the book they use in colleges), if you want to refer to a directional part of a country or region, you say SOUTHERN Africa, not SOUTH Africa. So to refer to the region consisting of Namibia, Lesotho, Eswatini, South Africa, Botswana, etc., you would say "Southern Africa" and not "South Africa" which is the name of the country.
I picked up on this just living in North America. There are states named North Carolina and South Carolina, North Dakota and South Dakota, and West Virginia. “Western Canada” means the region consisting of British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba. Australia, meanwhile, is terribly inconsistent with the names of its states and territories.
@Rede Emitel Apparently "New New City". Cartagena from Carthago Nova from Carthago which is the Latin form of the Phoenician Qart Hadasht which means "New Town"... But Cartagena, Colombia is only called Cartagena (de Indias) and not Nuova Cartagena so the fun stops there.
Actually, Slovenia and Slovakia get even more confusing when you're refering to them in their native languages. Slovaks call their country Slovenska Republika or Slovensko, while slovenska (in female gender) and slovensko (neuter) are adjectives that mean Slovenian in Slovene language. Also, let's make it even more confusing and sum up everything we can: 1. Slovakia is in Slovak language called Slovensko or Slovenska Republika, while Slovenia is called Slovinsko or Slovinska republika. 2. Slovenia is in Slovene language named Slovenija, while Slovakia is named Slovaška. OK, this is the least confusing part. 3. Slovene language is in Slovenian called slovenščina, and Slovak is called slovaščina. 4. Slovakian language is in Slovakia called slovenčina, and Slovene is called slovinčina. 5. Search for all the variants in the languages of neighbouring countries (Czech, Croatian, Serbian, Hungarian, Italian, etc.) to get even more confused. 6. Nearly 20% of Croatian territory and population is situated in the region called Slavonia. Feel free to add that to previously mentioned parameters.
from any video from this channel I learn that this guy, randomly browsing internet, then make a video about it. he doesn't need to be informative as long as he can keep talking about nothing for nearly half hour. He doesn't need to fact checking or proofreading the facts and dig the facts deeper, just randomly browse on internet and take whatever he like and called it a day.
He is just having fun exploring the world through the internet. No harm in that. He doesn’t claim to be some reputable source that should be cited in academic papers
"The United Kingdom of relatively large Britain which includes Wales, England, scotland, some northern parts of ireland but not the most northern part, isle of man, guernsey, jersey, and you know the Rest, falklands i guess"
@@nevize6660 well jersey, Guernsey and the isle of man are not part of the UK, they are crown dependencies, therefore they can't be included in the name of the Kingdom.
I'm kinda confused as to why most other languages call us "The Netherlands", when we just say Nederland. There's no plural in Nederland, but in English, German and French there is. There used to be a 'republic of the seven united Netherlands', but that's ages ago xD I guess other countries are kinda slow to understand...
@@nullValo Maybe it's because centuries ago, we were called 'the republic of the seven united Netherlands', but that was between 1588 and 1795, so it's been a while
@@Sebbir Holland is the name of our two most populated and I suppose richest provinces. Most boats from the Netherlands came from Holland, so that might be it? I was looking up if Danish cities was ever part of the Hanseatic leagion, but apparently, they were at war, so that's a kind of relationship too I suppose xD
@@ortherner Well, that could easily be used to describe the northern half of North Korea, as opposed to the northern half of the Korean peninsula, thereby eliminating the issue with having cardinal directions in the name of a nation.
But the British Northern Ireland still calls itself Northern Ireland and not North Ireland. They should call themselves "British country of northern Ireland" which is like Northern Cyprus calls itself
Fun fact: the eastern point of West Virginia is further east than most of Virginia, and the furthest western point of Virginia is further west than all of West Virginia.
It's more of a north-south split. It occurred during the civil war, and everyone was just happy to survive that. West Virginia went over to the North and helped elect Lincoln to a second term in 1864. The rest of Virginia led the southern rebellion.
@@AndyZach And now they've completely changed places because Virginia became Democrat while West Virginia became Republican. The only reason West Virginia broke away was because the rest of Virginia at the time was wayy too conservative and supportive of slavery, and now the conservative ones are West Virginians lol. How the tables have turned.
I think the "New" in certain territories' names is relative the the old territory with the original name,like York and New York. New York was founded more recently the Old York.
To be fair, Mexico underwent different regimes in the course of its history. So, pretty much the labels 'Mexico' and 'Mexican' can encompass all of them. ...and you can call it as the 'Mexican Republic', if you're not satisfied with UMS, anyways.
One of the unofficial names of Mexico before independence and which was proposed and popular to be name of the country was Northern America, in Spanish "América Septentrional" (it was the northernmost part of Spanish America)
Yeah I'm Mexican and we almost never call it The United Mexican States, we just use it on important documents like your ID, passport etc. We either say Mexico or Mexican Republic
Geographical qualifiers are only confusing in the English language, because it's so synthetic (and ambiguous). In Portuguese, Irlanda do Norte and norte da Irlanda are very clear as to what is a noun and what is adjective. And you can compound and still not be ambiguous at all. Although we always use the qualifiers setentrional and meridional, oriental and ocidental, to refer to geographical regions within a geographical entity (country, continent...). What sounds ridiculous to me is the english-centrism of the argument. A good name for a country is one that helps Anglophones to talk about it?
It’s not English-centric, it applies to every language. It’s like when Chinese calls America “Meiguo”, or whatever the other European countries call Germany. Nobody’s forcing them to use the name “USA” or “Deutschland”, so an English speaker should also be allowed to use the English version of their names instead of the local name.
How is the "english-centrism of the argument" ridiculous when he's specifically talking about the english names of the countries? Is a British man supposed to talk about Portuguese names of countries? What are you on about?
@@Fragum19 Country names are not arbitrary. The formation of compound names follow the grammar of the language they are being formed in. Some names are "bad" more because of the instrinsic structure of the English language than because of any "naming process". This relationship between grammar and name labelling is what he totally misses. He is not conscious of how that is determined by his mother tongue.
@@Fragum19 Portuguese is just a counter-example. Some languages compound names like English, some do not. And those that do not differ in more than one way. He is not aware of this because is studied more Geography than History or Linguistics. Which is fine, because he is so young.
Toycat: *complains about how confusing South Sudan, South Africa and Timor-Leste's names are* Also Toycat: *doesn't see a problem with the name "America", even tho there's already a South America and a North America (and a whole bunch of other names that have almost nothing to do with the US, like Mesoamerica, Latin America, Hispanic America, etc.)*
Also that in latin (America) countries it's only 1 continent which is America and it's only divided by regions and not continents ( North America is the northern part of America from Mexico); Central America, from Panamá to Guatemala and South America going from Colombia to Chile/Argentina. Also calling the civilians of USA "Americans" is more confusing because that makes it sound that if you're not from the USA you're not from the continent, confusing stuff. In spanish and other romance languages, I think, there's a word for their citizens which is "Estadounidenses", which makes a little bit of sense because it's called United States, and besides some other countries like The United States of Mexico, there's a bast majority calling it "US" or United States. I guess they can change the name like Prussia did with the title of king, from "King of Prussia" to "King in Prussia (Region)" it was for certain reasons and when they were united it was changed back to King in Prussia but it's not the . Maybe it won't change anything but it would solve some problems when refering to something, just like "region countries" (South Sudan / South Africa)
@@kikeruiz539 It gets more complicated than that. Basically, for anglos and pretty much all of Europe except some countries, there are only 2 Americas: South and North. However, for Latinos, there are 3: South, Central, and North
He didn't say there wasn't a problem. North America & South America are entire continents, so comparing 2 massive land bodies to 2 smaller countries is much different. I don't know if you've looked at a map, but South America is a pretty massive place... so if someone says they're from South America in English, literally EVERYONE knows what you're referring to & would NOT be confused. I've lived all over the US, and never once in 30 years has someone ever told me they lived in "South America" and meant Florida or Arizona. In fact, if you're referring to people living in the US specifically, they would say they lived in "the South" (if for some reason they didn't just say their specific state). Trying to mess with semantics that don't work in real life situations doesn't really work.
@@anti-spiral159 No, that's a new attempt at revising geography. "The Americas" refers to both continents. Being barely attached by a small sliver of land does not make it "one continent." Unless you want to say Africa, Europe & Asia are all "one continent," then sure. In that case, Latin countries believe there are only 4 continents on the planet: 1) America, 2) Eurasica, 3) Oceania, 4) Antarctica. Tectonic plates give a pretty good indication of land masses, and guess what... North & South America are distinctly divided! Being barely attached by a small land area doesn't make you "one continent." That depends on ocean levels, in which case Asia & North America would be one continent any time the Bering Land Bridge attached Russia to Alaska.
11:10 Before Belgium became an independant country there was actually one big Luxombourg but Belgium wanted to claim it as part of its territory so they settled by splitting it up in two halves.
Yeah, honestly a lot of this video seems to like to ignore the politics and history that goes into some of these, particularly when it comes to the "similar name" category. Like, the fact that the two Koreas have similar names, when from the point of view of each of them, the other should not exist, as the fact there is the two of them is, in essence, an unresolved civil war.
Fun fact: Did you know that the official name of Uruguay is the Oriental Republic of Uruguay? It's has the Oriental geographic qualifier because it's the country east of the River Plate.
@@helloahla239 there's a river called Uruguay which my country is located at the east. They teach us at school that the name Uruguay stands for 'river of the colored birds'. And indeed it all comes from the indigenous language of the natives so as Paraguay.
People from Uruguay in Spanish are technically called "Orientales" (Easterns) formally, which kinda sounds more like if they were in East Asia, but in common speech anybody call them ever like that and instead they are said "Uruguayos" (Uruguayans). Before being an independent country, Uruguay was called Banda Oriental ("Eastern Side" I think, banda has many meanings that can fit to name a territory or polity while awkward to be in a placename and I don't know which exactly is here) and Provincia Oriental (Eastern Province).
There was a global atlas published by the Onion like a decade ago that basically portrayed Central African Republic as a generic store-brand country where everything is labelled with what it is. Like people wear shirts that say "Person" and the capital city was "Capital City" and it was the funniest shit to me.
"Western Sahara" is a name for a region, as there is no full government control. The "Sahrawi Democratic Republic" claims this land as well as Morocco. It's not a name dispute/ confusion, it's a territorial dispute between two governments.
I'm pretty sure that the part of the Luxembourg area outside the country of Luxembourg was just land stolen from the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, so if someone should rename something, it would be France, Germany and Belgium.
I would go with "Congo-Brazzaville" and "DR Congo." In "Casablanca," Renault mentions the "Free French garrison in Brazzaville." So it's in the pop culture canon.
That’s why I’m so happy that my country is called the same in all languages 😁 Greetings from Peru! PS. No mention of Austria and Australia? Or Georgia (the country) which is actually called Sakartvelo?
@@unslaadkrosis9435 just to make it clear: * Turkey the country in Portuguese is "Turquia" * Peru the country is Peru * but the word "Peru" in Portuguese means Turkey the bird =P
With towns, sometimes when they expand they call the new part “New-XYZ”. There is Breisach (am Rhein) und Neuf-Brisach, which is just French for New Breisach. There is Neu-Ulm, though that was created when somebody thought having a river as a clean border was worth splitting up a city into two. Then there is Neu-Kölln, created when the town of Kölln expanded in 1662 (now all part of Berlin). Then there are plenty of new city quarters called “Neustadt” (German for “new town”) as opposed to the old part of town. There are over 50 municipalities or parts of municipalities called “Neustadt” in Germany.
Yep or the “State of Hungary” if pressed. Same as several other communist/socialist countries who dropped “republic” after returning to classicalism, going by just the name in most official contests and “State of” if pressed; off the top of my head Romania and Ukraine are two other examples in Europe. Interestingly the Commonwealth realms are not officially kingdoms, they also try to go by only their name, and go by “Commonwealth realm of” if pressed. The exceptions off the top of my head are Canada, which used to be the British Dominion of Canada and never dropped the “Dominion of” when they fully dropped the British (besides the monarch) in 1982, Australia, which is just “Commonwealth of Australia”, a name that predates its independent status as a Commonwealth realm in 1986, as it its full name historically was the British Dominion of the Commonwealth of Australia, so that title had always been in there and Australia kept it when it gained full independence as a Commonwealth realm. The other exception I can think of is New Zealand, which is basically the same story as Australia except it was called the “British Dominion of the Realm of New Zealand” and is now simply the Realm of New Zealand. But all the other Commonwealth realm countries try to mainly just use their name, a la the post-Communist countries like Hungary, and only use “Commonwealth realm of” when pressed
There is a region in Germany called Ostwestfalen, literally ‘East-West-Falen’. More than a thousand years ago, Saxons called the western part of their area “Westfalei” and their eastern part “Ostfalen”. The name for the former stuck around long after the name for the latter fell in disuse. At some point the region called “Westfalen” got administrative subdivisions, the eastern one got the label “Ostwestfalen”. The UK has their own Saxon- and cardinal-direction-based province names in the form of Sussex and Essex. The former even got divided into West Sussex and East Sussex.
@@bloomingapril7547 well El Salvador doesen't even have an english name, the literal translation is "The Savior" so I think it's better to keep it that way, same with Sao Tome and Principe.
@@C003 In polish we do have a name for sao tome and principe "Wyspy Świętego Tomasza i Książęca" Which translates to "Islands of Saint Thomas and princely" The last part doesnt really make sense
South Africa has 9 provinces, 3 of which has Cape in their name (Western Cape, Northern Cape and Eastern Cape) these 3 provinces cover nearly half of the entire country's territory So nearly half the country is called Cape even though the actual cape it was named after only makes up like 0.1% of the country in the Western Cape
"United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland" - Dissect that one Also I think you're conflating political territories and cultural ones. Some nations (a people group who see themselves as part of the same community based on language, ethnicity, religion, etc) have part or half of their land and people in another state (a political territory where the state has a monopoly of control), while the rest of that nation has their own state named after themselves. This is why we have North Macedonia, Timor Lest, Papua New Guinea (East Papua) and Indonesian West Papua, North and South Korea, Chinese Mongolia, Belgian Luxembourg, and many many others. Also, the names of countries on the map is based on what the country presents as internationally. This has been dominated with what English speakers have called the countries as an international convention, and some countries feel that maybe anglo dominion isn't cool.
United Kingdom in Swedish is called Storbritannien*, meaning Great Britain, and Great Britain is also called the same. So you got Great Britain inside Great Britain. *In Finland-Swedish, it's called Förenade konungariket, meaning United Kingdom. So this only applies to Standard Swedish.
Well, I guess he perfectly knows it, but if he acknowledged that in the video, it would sound much less funny... North Macedonia is an interesting case, because for many, many years they were in a conflict with Greece, which wanted Macedonia monopoly and was therefore opposing very strongly to Macedonia the country (now North Macedonia) calling themselves Macedonia... This way they were probably the only country in the world with no internationally established and accepted name, and had to be referred to by a long description (the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia). But finally, they recently gave up and renamed themselves to North Macedonia.
I see no problem in Slovakia and Slovenia names, they're just different enough. Unless one reads only the first 3 letters of every name, but in that case I would call it "idiocy"
It’s more fun in Slovak language. Slovensko - Slovakia Slovinsko - Slovenia Compared to that English translations are quite distinct. But when I think about it, that’s probably source of confusion. If someone writes on postcard Slovakia in Slovak language (Slovensko), some foreign post office worker might get quite confused, since they probably will see first 6 letters identical to Slovenia only with different suffix.
@@zayan1018 Indeed it does. In Sweden we litteraly called it White Russia (Vitryssland ~ Vit = White | Ryssland = Russia) until 2020 when the media (and some normal people) started calling it Belarus because not using the countries own name is apparently racist or something like that.
@@kristoffer-2614 Yeah Same In Russian Too White In russian Is Called Beylo And Russia Is Rusya. Actually When Belrus First Became Independent It was Used to be called Bylorossya. But since then they have changed it to Belarus.
@@zayan1018 well, Belarus means white Russia too. Rus is an old name for Russia and 'bela' is a short form of adjective that means white. But the short form of adjective is sometimes used as a verb (russian language you know, weird). So Belarus is literally 'Russia that is white'
We should break out the thesaurus and replace 'new' and geographical qualifiers with synonyms. For example, New Mexico could be The Most Recent Mexico, New Zealand could be Modern Zealand, New South Wales could be Current Portside Wales, and Timor-Leste could be Timor-Gerontogeous.
One of my favourite local names for countries that's different in English is Croatia, which we call Croazia in Italian (still close, would make sense the original name's also similar right?), and then you go there and find out it's called Hrvatska!
The Sweden-Switzerland thing is really confusing in Spanish since they are called Suecia y Suiza. It’s very common to hear people confusing them and then be like “or are we talking about that other one”
@@sigma_is_op7970 Bulgarian (and Macedonian) are different from the rest, and that is one of the differences. Other differences are mainly lack of noun cases and existence of articles (Eng: a, an, the)
I did know it was named after Zeeland you threw me off because i thought i was under the common misconception. good video 7.3/10 would watch again love this map stuff
TC: ”Rule 1: No geographical qualifiers” East Timor: ”My name is Timor-Leste which means East-East” TC: ”understandable” TC internaly: *listen here you little sh-t*
I'm from Northern Ireland and I have always felt that we should have our name changed to Ulster. We constantly refer to ourselves as that and it isn't politically controversial AND we're literally the province of Ulster.
As far as official/diplomatic uses go, they want to be called Côte d'Ivoire and Timor-Leste (same goes for Czechia, as they do not want to called "Czech Republic" in international relations), but that doesn't mean the hoi polloi can't use old/local language names.
South Australia is the most central Australian state. There are inland states that are more southern than the most southern part of South Australia. There is a Western Australia, South Australia, Northern Territory, but no Eastern Australia. There is a territory called "Australian capital territory". Northern Territory (basically a state) is the 2nd most northern inland territory/state, second to Queensland which is closer to New Guinea than many realize. Jervis bay is quite literally just a bay with almost no one living there that is a whole territory. The AUS islands of Wednesday Thursday and Friday were found on the same day.
As a South African in my experience we generally refer to the South of the African continent as Southern Africa to differentiate from South Africa. Still kind of confusing but it is what it is.
In Poland we dealt with that in quite a pretty way. We just never called the country just South Africa, always Republic of South Africa, very often shorted to a three-letter acronym: RPA. Although for some reason recently the Polish officials changed it and now the recommendation of our government is to call is just South Africa... And unfortunately Polish does not give this possibility to distinguish between "South Africa" and "Southern Africa" - it's all the same.
That's so true. Even in Greece, the agreement was only approved by a communist corrupt government put in place by German lobbying. They literally said they were continuing in the footsteps of the communists who fought for an independent Macedonia. Literal madness, pure propaganda.