On Worldbuilding: Place Names - countries, cities, places 

I’ve got so many countries which I should actually name, rather than “the kingdom of ____” errrrrrrr........ well it’s an excuse to watch your video, I guess 🤷‍♀️

Hey Tim, I really love your videos and wonder whether you could also make a video about Joseph Campbell 's monomyth/the hero's journey?

There's way too many Springfield's in the US. Where's that elaboration nooch? There's usually just one Springfield per state that has one, so it's kind of hard to blame.

@@theshamanite There are a lot of city names in the USA that occur almost one per state. What this says about the USA is the historic emphasis on state governments and thier once greater autonomy. It demonstrates the focus of the power and that the federal government was a unifying force to it's subordinate regions but not an oppressive one. This does not mean it was perfect in this regard but that there was an overarching theme and value placed on it. In contrast, too many Alexandrias in the ancient world was because one guy named a bunch of places he conquered after himself. Both tell you a lot about the culture.

Hello Future Me 👌

but there's Earth under the ocean. Maybe the planet should be called "Magma".

Goes to the rule of power. The people writing the history books live on the land parts. If someday the dolphins or octopi take over the world they'll probably call it ocean or something.

Water covers the earth... but if you take away the earth, there is no planet... on the other hand, take away the Ocean and you still have the planet... barren... but still the planet.. it's like how a bucket filled with water has more water than bucket, but the item is still called a bucket... it's just holding the water...

Only the majority of us don't live on the ocean, we named the place after the bits we live on.

@@Mr.Nichan I vote for Magma. That sounds pretty badass!

and Chad is one of the least lake-like nations I can think of

Chad is most likely chaud - french for hot

@@Justsevensi Chad is named after Lake Chad which means Lake in an African dialect. That's the actual origin

Lake lake in the country of lake.

all these "lakes" and "Chad's". is it weird that I have a customer at the place I work named Chad Lake?

This information literally made my day. :D

I'm mexican and i didnt know this

@@carso1500 Same and I lived in Cancun for 20 years lmao

Allegedly, that's the same reason for the name of Kangaroos in Australia lol (supposedly "Kanaguruu" meant "i dont understand you" in the language of the locals they met)

@@unsuspiciousdweller8967 That's a completely untrue myth lol

@@slevinchannel7589 link?

@@abdoalrahmansabeha977 I gave you all the names! You find i in 5 Sec's.

You don't. Especially when other languages already exist and can just take or add in letters.

@@RavenCloak13 ??

@@slevinchannel7589 You can just look up another language and take or add letters to that language to make it "new" or "alien" without making a whole new language is what I meant.

Actually, I prefer Sediment.

I suspect its only called Dirt in a few languages.

@@mrhed0nist yeah that probably, I just dont know which ones. Hell I think theres also a few that might still not have a name for the planet

EXCEPT ITS CALLED TELLUS! No, wait, that's just dirt in Latin...

Having done some looking around... most languages just use dirt or ground or earth ball so it's all basically the same. Sometimes they're named after gods of earth and stuff, which is the same thing.

Then we need to reclassify what we consider a name. For example, if aliens were to call me Lokesh Human, does Human become part of my name of is it just a classifier added to a name? If we seriously consider classifiers to not be part of the name, then there's less instances of river rivers, because we know that the name is Avon, and it's a river. Part of the problem comes from our tendency to include classifiers as part of the name. Why am I talking to a cat again?

@@lokeshchandak3660 .... ???? I'm going based on current classifications of names, without making up random things for no reason.

@@ThrottleKitty Chaos my friend. Make of it what you will.

@Insignatious The difference being, Most rivers actually have different names than "River river". I was doing some research for this for an RPG based on going back to the root meanings. So, for example, the Nile means "Great", Mississippi means "Long water", Amazon means "One breast" (named supposedly by the Portuguese commemorating a battle with a group of female native warriors near the mouth of said river), Missouri means "Muddy", Thames means "Wide", etc etc. There are, of course, differences even among deserts. While the general meaning of the names usually will boil down to "Desert desert" (Sahara, as you noted, literally is "Desert"), there are variations. "Gobi", for example, means literally "No Water", while Kalahari means "Thirsty place", Sinai means "Hated or Cursed place", while the Mojave desert was named after the Mojave people who lived there... "Beside the Water". The Namibian desert, of course, just means "Big". So there are actual exceptions to the rule

@Insignatious hrrrmmmm someone here is definitely speaks English as a first language... possibly the only.

@@lsmith3557 same, they have some very cavy caves ngl

The caves are so cavy

Yes, and I love them.

Same.

Yeah this is exactly what I did. I named my world Forwent then later came up with a legendary king named Forwent that the world was named in honor of.

I just try to be brutally on the nose with a couple of names I can joke around. Like a southern trade route being guarded by two towers called "The Hands" why? I have no idea but the locals in my world have a good explanation "because there's always an asshole keeping his hands open." As the towers function both as garrison and toll booths. The eastern tower regulates incoming wares and taxes the western outgoing.

@@keenakeet3792 thanks- I name most stuff on the nose like that.or at least in a very simplistic fashion. A "green mountain" for a volcano would probably be a bit counter intuitive but if it is what makes an agricultural region flourish? why not? I use names like that for natural landmarks and cities/villages that evolved naturally and a bit stranger less fitting names for defensive structures. (defensive structures are named after the elements. like Seahold or stormwind. Just because it is former empire with an almost druidic state religion. Meaning symbols of strength are always taken from nature, (plus everything that has to do with storms just sounds cool but you gotta justify that within the storx^^) )

i just play around with random letters that I think fit together well, and the same fore character names.

The sonic gene is one of my favourites.

I think the physicists lost it when naming quark “flavours”

I like how the plants and animal names sometimes contrast with the common names. Take the Douglas Fir, named for a botanist. The scientific name, pseudotsuga menziesii, is named for a rival botanist: Menzies. One rival won the recognition of the scientific community, and the other entered the average man's lexicon. "Pseudotsuga" is interesting in itself in that it combines Greek "false" and Japanese "hemlock". False Hemlock, which is apt since the Douglas Fir is neither a hemlock nor a true fir tree.

just learn latin and science gets a lot easier

Certain scientific names reveal a lot about the average maturity level of biologists.

Link to the Wikipedia page?

@@croquemaster314 en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tautological_place_names

@@DolusVulpes Thanks, this’ll be a fun read

There are also places where due to significant language changes it gets repeated (e.g. Bredon Hill (and Breedon Hill) "Brez" is Celtic, "Dun" is old English)

@@fatrobin72 hill hill hill is my favorite hill.

Thats immensely clever and completely believable and its really cool how that name will now outlive the sign

Same with "Arefu" from Fallout 3, which came from a Highway Sign that once read "Careful, Lanes Merging" or something like that

@@repubblesmcglonky8990 or river city, heck for all its logical faults megaton has a pretty good name as well.

@@jonahulichny9874 I assume this was a typo since it's a Rivet City and it's clever since it's on a beached ship that has lots of rivets.

@@oz_jones yea it was auto correct.

That's beautiful

Moon Moon involved into River River, which bowed to its master of Hill Hill on the Hill

Heh. Breed on hill

Hilly McHillface

I can see the name became shorter in the future and they drop "on the" to be just "Breedonhill" or Hill hill hill

I feel terrible for laughing at that

"No flag, no country, you cant have one!"- Eddie Izzard.

@@ObligedUniform This is the comment I was looking for. For anyone unfamiliar, I offer you this. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-_9W1zTEuKLY.html

@@ObligedUniform This guy gets the reference.

@@ObligedUniform I loved that Eddie Izzard bit, thank you for the memory.

Daí isso se resulta em certos nomes que nem Ipanema = Lugar feio e Tapuia = Não gente/humano lol

@Facepalm Full O' Napalm the Iroquois aren’t even a tribe. It’s a nation of several tribes who banded together because they spoke similar languages and all lived in longhouses. Their name is the haudenosaunee (the people of the longhouse).

This reminds me of a one story where colonizers tried to talk to natives. The natives replied with a word, which in their language means "i dont understand what youre saying." Because the colonizers didnt understand either, they named that place after the word the natives used lmao. I cant remember the specifics though

That is a very dope fun fact

São Paulo was a jesuitic village, this the paulistas (from São Paulo) were indigenous descendants, and probably all spoke Língua Geral, meaning they were just naming things after their common language.

Second largest country in the world. "Ah yes, that one village."

I heard they named it by pulling letters out of a hat. "C, eh? N, eh? D, eh?"

another example would be yucatan; when the spanish arrived there, they asked the natives who, since they obviously didn't know spanish, replied with "we don't understand"

There is a joke in Germany, why Canada/Kanada is called so... The first european settlers saw no indigenous people and said: " Kaana da!" (Keiner da! = Nobody there!)

So Welsh names are a GPS/map of the location?? Wild

Why does that look like a keyboard smash I'm concerned--

This wasn't naturally named though - falls into the power category - it was renamed when it got a railway station attract tourism. It's generally referred to as Llanfair or Llanfair PG. So i guess that's another part of the naming at work.

Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateaturipukakapikimaungahoronukupokai: Am I a joke to you?

Why not call it "Hazel Cave Church"

Also Budapest. Was once two cities: Buda and Pest.

@@ecthelion1735 wasn't Budapest also called Pestbuda in history?

@@jeannebouwman1970 It's like how it took people a while to agree that AppleDash just sounds better than RainbowJack.

Imagine naming a city "kataang"

@@jeannebouwman1970 i guess budapest stuck because buda was a higher class town than pest

Longing?

Grief

@@scalkin but you can also feel "saudade" for things and people you know you're going to see again. Grief is different, the overall meaning is heavier, idk

@@julystrauss idk man just sounds like grief to me

​no wait i figured it out, it's depression

In Portugal we still call Singapura cause it’s easier to say it in our language. I think it’s because of how we pronounce vowels. It’s closer to our Latin origins

Actually that 'g' was pronounced as 'h' nearly 400 years ago

lion roars are known for being very dissapointing so its very likely, in my opinion, that they heard a tiger roar and just mistook it for a lion

Funny that in portuguese, it is actually refered to as Singapura.

​@@metrifiko_magsingapura or singha pura comes from Sanskrit.

I nevee thought about that...

Is everyone ignoring the fact that Sahara literally means desert.

@@QualityPen Genius!

@Joshua N. Ajang yeah. Belgrad for example. I can guess it means "white city" in Serbian. In Russia there is Belgorod and it means that

@@KateeAngel Belgrade in Serbian is *Beograd* (Beo-white Grad-city)

Panda means bear so a Panda Bear is a bear bear.

The best census story I heard is about weird fiction writer E.T.A. Hoffman, who worked in Warsaw as an office worker in the beginning of the XIXth century, when modern naming custom of using first name and family name was enforced. Allegedly, he made quite a business of giving names to the Jews, aking them to pay for "expensive" names like Goldstein or Rubinstein.

Nome I love it. It’s like saying name and no at the same time

A census taker once tried to test me...

It is a late legend though, and the problem with it is that Sava is a male Ukrainian name. Wars (Varsh) is legit, and originally the name meant just "a village of Wars/owned by Wars"

​@@pawelkoziol9544I doubt mermaids care much about what gender human names have 😅 Just take the legend and stop picking it apart. It's a legend and not historical fact for a reason.

Never did I know this… Fascinating Hi from ukrainian!

Honestly the name Warsaw is super badass

Or just follow in the footsteps of the founders of London, Ontario and don't change the original name at all!

New Orleans 😂

Combine it with prefix and you could name a city new new, like New Novolondon. Or maybe even postfix, though I don't know if any language make new words this way.

@@mytiliss682 Well in my country of Malaysia, when the southern state of Johor made a new state's capital they called it "Johor Bahru". They added "Bahru" which mean new in our language so that people could distinct the name of the state's capital and the state itself. This mean Johor Bahru mean New Johor. It was how our language work like for example Bukit Nenas mean Pineapple Hill but a realy straight up direct translation would be Hill Pineapple (Hill of Pineapple) since Bukit mean Hill and Nenas mean Pineapple. We also have one state in the east coast of the peninsular called Kelantan which was a simplification of it's original long name which came from the old form of the local dialect (as the local dialect there also continue evolved) and at one point on it's history the tragedy fall the rullling dynasty which end up dividing the state and a warlord from Pattani came to unified the state and established a new rulling dynasty the Kelantan. Since the old capital of the Kelantan was destroyed alongside the fall of the old dynasty, a new capital was established and it was simply name "Kota Bharu" mean new fort or new city which the name remain until nowaday and it was still the capital of the state of Kelantan. Well if you noticed the different spelling of Bharu and Bahru, both name appear at different time which mean the spelling evolved.

Just steal names.

I love that

More accurately given that logic it be more likely the name would change to Hivenfalls (or just Hiven) as the people would not know what that word means but do know Polm means water, a element that no longer exists.

But if they don't know what Hivenfalls means why would they remove it when the waterfall is destroyed?

*capital

And then it gets taken over by a group of people who cannot pronounce the letter L and substitutes all Ls with Rs so the city is now known as "Porn" lololololololololol

After the mixed Portuguese, Galician, Xhosa, Dutch, and Zulu population rejected Portuguese rule, they then tried to emulate and attract the then-Dutch Republic. So they decided rename their capital city of Santa Isabela. They fused Latin tempesta with -stad (or -stadt).

Yo dawg, I heard you liked battles.

Yeah i was thinking the same thing when he said it, their is litterally a place called battle near hastings lol

The Battle of Battle

"Batalha", Battle in Portuguese, is a town founded after and around a Monastery that was built to give thanks for a victory in a very important battle.

In the region of Veneto in Italy there are many towns which have "della battaglia" after their name. It means "of the battle" and it was added after WW1 and the battles of the Piave river.

Thats interesting! In Dutch the translation of 'Kauterwelsch' is 'koeterwaals'. Waals is also the language people speak in the Frech part of Belgium: Wallon.

and the word 'barbarian' comes from Greeks writing off foreigners speaking their language as just saying "barbarbarbar"

"Wallachia" also derives from this same root, as does 'Vlach'

"Und ob mein Hertz im tote bricht wirst du och drum ein welscher nicht. "

Wow so wales is literally named for speaking incomprehensibly

I love the sound of it! Although that must have been a pain to work out

That's so cool you put in the effort for this.

@@QualityPen yes, it meants both, i think it goes something like this chico =small Children= are small Chico= children

Slavik Chukhlebov yes is one of the many words with more than one meaning it all depends of the context chico could mean small, boy, budy, and probably more things that I’m not remembering now

Norte chicoooooooooo

@@vaiyt Middle east is getting complicated,maybe it's because it's in the middle of the east?

in Stall even crazier space dust

Sci-fi is a complicated can of worms since you've basically got the entire set of steps, across an entire world, and it's already happened, and it's spread out beyond their home The scope is positively ludicrous and it's incredibly hard to go down into step-by-step creation for a space-age society beyond the critical points because of how much culture is represented by an entire planet. You gotta remember, you could host an entire campaign on just one island on that entire world, let alone a continent, *let alone the world* and that's assuming it even *has* continents. It can help to do it for some things but trying to do it overall is an exercise in insanity lol

Me who just gets a idea then searches up baby names that had its meaning: HOW

You could literally just name each planet whatever the word for Dirt, Ocean or Home is in the dominant cultures home. Or if it's mostly uninhabited you could simply just copy an actual planets name, for instance: HD 224693 b. That's a planet name and is unlikely to change, or if the planet is a hot spot for mining or something, it could have a colloquial name, such as "Herdee Twenty Two B" or something that rolls off the tongue a lot easier than HD 224693 b

Maybe name it 2nd earth in your language and then have descriptors as the rest

You can also play around with vowel shifts. literally just draw a couple lines on the IPA chart from a naming lang (devolve by bringing some towards a "centre", diverge to evolve). Can do the same thing with consonants, just shift them around on the chart to where they make sense (following general conlang rules).

Of all the places named in this comments section, I hadn't thought I would stumble over my neighboring towns :D

@@christinaVennegerts 8D. I happen to live in the region, too. Also, fun fact: virologist Christian Drosten is a Groß Hesepe native.

what's the meaning of burg? i saw some of places have burg in their names end

@@presidentialsystemenjoyer9194 It means "stronghold", or "city" if you look up the etymology of the suffix. It's present in several Germanic languages, including Anglo-Saxon and Old High German.

In England, we have lots of 'Greater' and 'Lesser'/'Little' places too.

Some call him... Tim.

@@patrickardagh-walter6609 Others also might call him... Tim

Tim's a beautiful name for a beautiful good boy, I don't know what you're talking about.

But Tim is an abbreviation of his first name

@@elpretender1357 Timopher? Tim-tim? Timmy? Timathan? I give up.

i think the name Holland (which is a province and not the name of the country btw) comes from "Hol" meaning low(?) same goes for the countries name "Nederland" Neder literally meaning Low so its "Lowland"

@@dutchdoggo Dat weet ik, is'n scherts 😋 aber wirklich het heet Holt-land (het hout). Ik kom uit Hamburg, wij praaten Platt. Ich kenn auf jeden Fall Nederland :). Aber ja, Holland wirklich heißt Holt-land (het hout) dat is zieker. nl.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holland

@Platypus haha ne, neder is ook duits (nieder). Holland is Synekdoche, dat heet een deel geeft ook het geheel aan. Bijv. brood voor maaltijd.

hollywood = woodwood?

@@Jack-rk7jc hollen is old germanic meaning to prick. Holly bushes (prevalent in the area, the origin of the name) are prickly. So Hollywood is prickly wood/bushes.

I mean, i would prefer a waterfall of blood, but that's why i pray to the blood god.

He said "Auckland in New Zealand" not "Orcland and New Zealand"

@Eidolon Ooooooh, so I just heard HORRIFICALLY wrong. Noted and I thank you for the correction!

@@Eidolon1andOnly But that was indeed the joke he was going for, so Pageturner was half right.

It’s mostly the Midwest/Central part of the US

@@blurdrawsart From what I've seen, only really the south calls soft drinks coke. The Midwest mostly refers to it as pop, but weirdly enough I've only heard soda used when the drink is like a fruit flavor, like it would be "Can I have an orange soda?" Instead of "Can I have an orange pop?" That's just my experience though.

@Danzard There's also two kinds of Midwesterners. You have the more northern midwest and the more southern midwest.

As a Midwesterner from Indiana, it’s mostly just 40+ year olds who say pop. The rest of us mostly just say soda.

Yeah, Brits dont know crap

lmao

That's an elite reference

The only thing I'll ever thank school for is making read that story (I watched the movie as well) so I can understand this reference

A+ reference

How about "The City"? Which actually happens in real life? People living close to NYC just call it "the city", I'm sure this happens in the vicinity of other big cities too

@@jebatman756 true, I'm more talking about when you literally hear no other name

Tokyo: East capital. Kyoto: Capital city.

Julianne Stingray well alright I guess, I didn’t know that was actually something that happened in real life

@@elliart7432 It does happen, yeah. It's just that there are so many different languages that what seems like a fancy, neat name could be the simplest, most plain thing you can imagine.

Yes, they are closer linguistically and genetically to the Bretons than the Gauls.

underrat

I recommend looking into real life names and their meaning. They tend to be phrases in certain languages like tons of names in the Bible. A lot of languages also name children after virtues (Beauty, hope, Strength etc). Or perhaps something that is consider to embody a virtue (I have a warrior culture that likes the name Kuda meaning snake because they admire how quickly snakes strike their enemies). And finally you also have names that spread from different languages and changed pronunciation as it came over and lost common knowledge of meaning (or older names that lost meaning over time). Also worth considering naming conventions, such as order of names, do they have family names or are they given a second after where they are from, or who their father is. Do they ever rename themselves as part of their religion? Sorry this comment is so long, but this is something I find interesting.

@@Rainbowthewindsage Please don't apologize! I find naming extremely interesting and I really appreciate your comment!

Heyyy let's already do a part of the work for him then. Naming convention also depends on ruling power, most Ghanaians seem to have a Biblical first name, a second first name that indicates the day of the week they were born on, and then a last name (and I think I'm forgetting one, it's been a long time since I looked that up). In the Netherlands and Spain you have regions with separate languages and their own names that follow conventions of those languages, so if you have a Frisian or Catalan name, everyone's gonna know where you're from - which might cause you trouble if you ever try to find a job outside of that specific section of your country, so people might actually name their children more traditional names the whole country recognizes for that reason. On the other hand there's people who use traditional local names as an act of rebellion against 'the man' (see Catalonia right now). It's the same reason people from all regions of China might decide to only teach their children Mandarin Chinese (instead of for example Kantonese) and there's a political struggle going on on the island of Aruba, a former Dutch colony, about whether or not Dutch should still be taught in schools, because Aruba isn't a rich place and parents want their children to have the best possible chance at getting a job, possibly in the Netherlands if they manage to go there, and thus also parents who will give their children traditionally Dutch names... which some believe is slowly killing traditional Aruban culture. I've known Dominicans named George even though they knew no word of English for the same reason. Colonialism and wealth are big driving factors. There's a channel here on youtube called Say It Loud that explores black American culture that also has a video on where their names tend to come from (which is kind of surprising in some aspects).

@@trishapellis I completely forgot about day of the week names. Similarly, there are places ( I don't remember specifically where) where your middle name is a Saint based off of what day you were born on, so you have guys with their middle name Maria. Speaking of Middle names and gender specific names, my real life middle name is Michelle and I find it interesting that in english that name is considered female because it sounds feminine in our language, while in French it is a man's name, basically their version of the name Michael. There are other names like Ariel and Lindsey, which were once men's names but now mostly women's, and I am sure there are names that have done the opposite transformation but I can't think of an example off the top of my head.

@Quantum Last names can also come from where one's ancestors lived! For example, my own last name has two parts, one which means "small village" and the other which is a suffix meaning "small." I usually take it to mean that my last name means "really tiny village" or "puny village."

I wish I had your creativity, lol.

Hey if you have a time or power change it could be Jaidaris If there's anything humans are known for: laziness lol

Maybe call it Jaider, names usually change, like a home 🏠 used to be called a ham

@@spaghetto9836 I think the issue is being too creative. When coming up with names I often get way too caught up in my own head trying to think of a smart name for it, when in reality I should be thinking "this town has been here for a while so the people would call it Old Town"

I named the main world of my story "Araltor", after the god who created it. I'm still working on why it has the name of its creator

Also Great Britain (small Britain being Brittany peninsula of France), Lesser and Greater Poland regions of Poland, and also lots of Islands/Archipelagos are called lesser/greater something (Antilles come to mind). Some branch rivers are called "Small 'name of the main river'". Also thanks for saying that Istanbul is actually a Greek name. A lot of people don't know that or the fact that the name Constantinople stayed official until the Republic. New Amsterdam - New York would have been better. Or Tsaristyn - Stalingrad - Volgagrad. Königsberg - Kaliningrad, Pressburg - Bratislava, Leningrad - St. Petersburg. Really there are many much better examples.

There is also the Big Bend and Little Bend areas in South Dekota.

@@gokbay3057 Isn't it just called great Britain because it's the largest of the British Isles?

Switzerland has two towns, one called Polliez-le-Grand (Polliez the big) and Polliez-le-Petit (Polliez the small).

@@gokbay3057 Wasn't it Brittania Magna (or something like that) and Brittania Hybernia? For Bigger Island and Ireland?

Emperor Pepe Flavius Memus it is the duty of whoever is the next dominant language to do that

Pendlehill Hill

@S S Oh gosh

@@eelsemaj99 yes, for the meme

Sahara means desert. Desert Desert.

Auckland = Orcland if you pronounce correctly.

@@kazikmajster5650 I come from Auckland haha it does sound the same.

@@kazikmajster5650 That indeed was the joke.

Hey look a good idea , not sarcastic , Good on you

That good idea but i think if russia build Moon/mars Colonies they will the placed after Yuri Gagarin

Sojourner City

Good luck!

Lettukana thanks! I’m finding it really difficult to find a name that is disconnected from all of my worlds cultures and different languages. 😞

@@moistslippers9726 Maybe let different cultures have their own names for the continent?

lilpeach101 huh... that’s actually a really interesting idea. Thanks for that!

@@moistslippers9726 ulfricar (northerners) amataria (southerners) a-cranius (outsiders) these are just examples, or maybe something simpler ulari amunt a-crian and so forth, you know what, fuck it, make a whole new language.

@@BobDavies1 Slight correction: The first published Bible in Welsh was printed under Elizabeth I. This encouraged people to leave the Catholic Church in droves as they could finally understand the Bible in their own language.

@Fflur Efa As someone that speaks English as their first (and only) language, I agree that it is absolute nonsense. Most of the rules only work half the time, nothing is spelled the way it sounds, words can sound the same but be spelled three different ways with their own meanings, and a lot of it is just words we stole from the French and then seemingly decided to pronounce incorrectly just to spite them.

@@cjs4247 What's the saying, "English beats up other languages in dark alleys and rifles through their pockets for loose syntax"?

@@michaelbryant3640 Yeah that seems about right

"Lets be honest, who does understand Welsh". About half a million of us, including me, coc oen digywilydd.

Another one would be Lake Chiemsee in Bavaria. Translated it means "lake lake lake"

@@theholyinquisition389 But In German you only say, Chiemsee and drop the Lake at be beginning

Portugal comes from Portu - Port in Latin and Cale - Port in Gallaecian Celtic Therefore, Portugal means PortPort

Portugal=Port port

You could just drop the first "on" and end up with 'Breed-on-the-hill'. That should screw with some peoples heads.

Greater Poland and Lesser Poland exist as well. Also Veliky Novgorod (not sure about the exact spelling but it means Great Novgorod, distinguishing it from Nizhy Novgorod)

Near my city there is "Mellösa". Some Miles away? "Stora (Big) Mellösa"

@@gokbay3057 Funny thing about Novgorods is it means NewCity so Velikiy Novgorod is basically Great NewCity)

He mentioned “greater” and “lesser”, he meant specifically “bigger” and “smaller”. Like, Bigger Chelsea or Smaller New Zealand

I think he was asking specifically about a place using the _word_ “Bigger” or “Smaller” in its name, rather than “Great/Greater” or “Lesser.”

You see that in several places in North America too. Washington has at least a dozen large cities (including the three largest) named after either a Native American place or people. Seattle is the botched and misspelled version of Chief Si'ahl/Sealth. Tacoma is named for Mt. Tahoma, the original name of Mt. Rainier. Spokane and Puyallup are both named after local tribes. Tons and tons of examples. I don't know if that makes them good guy invaders or if it was just easier to trade and negotiate with the people already there when they used recognizable names.

There are loads of places like this in Canada too. Our national capital, our nation's name itself, and almost half of the provinces' names are Anglicised forms of Indigenous names. There's a section of the Trans-Canada Highway called the Yellowhead, which is a translation of an Indigenous nickname for a white explorer who had blonde hair.

There are many places like that in the Midwest as well. And I'm sure there are all over the county, too, but most of my knowledge is of the Midwestern place names. Hell, over half of the state names come from Native American roots! 26 states in the US have names taken from or derived from Native American languages (and there's also Hawaii, which comes from, of course, the Hawaiian language, which is in the Polynesian family of languages).

@@BonaparteBardithion Yeah, there's loads of this in America. More than half of the state names have a Native American origin.

I'm from Chicago, a place that still somewhat keeps its Native American name, "Chicagoa" (something like that). 😊 It means "stinky onion", I believe. 😂😂😂⚰⚰

I did not notice anything wrong with it. Your English is fine.

Seems all good to me. Although I think ‘Polin’ just means to the city in general, not Constantinople specifically; and if Istanbul means going to the city, then the phrase: I am going to the city of Istanbul kinda means I am going to the city of going to the city. ;)

@@machaiarcanum Yes, the word "πόλιν"(polin) means city but Constantinople was often referred to as "Η Πόλη"(The City).

@@chestermc9954 Huh. Well I guess you learn something every day. Cheers. I find it hilarious that the city was so well known that people didn’t even name it, if you talked about ‘The City’ everyone knew what you meant.

@@machaiarcanum there are regional cities like that all over. It's pretty common if there's one major city in a rural area for example. "I'm going to the city today", no one is going to ask which one. If you're going somewhere else you'd use the name alone, probably.

I had a suspicion that it wasn't that simple, since someone had to _make_ that choice. According to Wikipedia, apparently the first real use was a description of the Holy Roman Empire, in an attempt to mark it as the Western Roman Empire reborn. Previously, the earliest historians were simply using the term to mark part of Thrace, the shoreline west of the Aegean Sea, so it's not clear why Anaximander/Hecataeus suddenly decided it was an adequate term to describe everything west of the Phasis. But it's _modern_ usage appears to simply be, "That which Charlemagne was allowed to claim according to the Church."

That's why I use notebook.ai instead of World Anvil, I don't want all of my stuff public

Get 'local by flywheel' and make your own local wordpress encyclopaedia

@@lifeontheledgerlines8394 is notebook.ai free? Sounds interesting and I need a way to note down all my outlines and ideas

@@lesteryaytrippy7282 Yeah, the basic things are free, and they're basically all you need. The forums are also pretty cool. There's a premium version, but it's not really worth it imo. But yes, free

TiddlyWiki shill here to also recommend TiddlyWiki :D

Is that actually part of the batman lore?

Kind of doubt it

@@Rainbowthewindsage Not broadly. There are a great many Batman stories that retcon how or why Gotham got its name, but the general one is that Gotham is called that...because that's that the founders decided to call it and that "Arkham" is literally just the name of the family that founded the Asylum, and the ISLAND was renamed due to the asylum being the only thing of note. Gotham, however, is, IRL, stealing an old name for New York...which in turn is stealing from a town in England...which IS named for that reason. "Gotham" in Old English is "Goat-home", and is a small town in England that supposedly, centuries ago, learned the king wanted to build a hunting lodge in the region, and (not wanting a royal highway made through their town/to have to deal with a king all the time) all pretended to be idiots when the royal surveyor came to see the town. This started a bunch of jokes about "the Mad/"wise" men of Gotham", which was later used as an insult for other big cities: To call a place "Gotham" was to call the people in it crazy. Washington Irving (the guy who wrote Ichabod Crane) used the joke as a dig at the Mayor of New York, and it kinda stuck. So Gotham City in Batman is meant to be a crazier New York full of madmen and darkness, KIND OF based on the idea of "Goat Hamlet".

@@AllWIllFall2Me I see. I was just curious, although I did know that Gotham is to some degree based off of New York, I didn't know it was also an older name for it.

@@Rainbowthewindsage Nah, it was just something I made up. Thanks for asking. :)

Half the US states.

@@DaDunge ehhh

What it means canada?

*Groans in America*

confused Canadian here?

As a Midwesterner, the correct term is "pop."

I think it's only common in Georgia, where coke was invented. I've never heard this usage of coke instead of soda or pop anywhere else in the country.

@@lutilda it's fairly common across the South, even here in Texas.

Midwesterners scorn at you when you say soda instead of pop. I am a born midwesterner and I call it soda because a kid in my high school class transferred from the South, and in the South, where my grandfather was from, pop means a punch to the face.

@@slusheewolf2143 and don't forget what a holler actually is

A similar thing happens in the UK, just with rivers instead of regions. So for example, Newcastle-Upon-Tyne and Newcastle-under-Lyme

@@girv98 And in Germany: Frankfurt am Main and Frankfurt an der Oder.

Yeah, Germany does this too, we do it with Rivers. So there's Frankfurt (Main) and Frankfurt (Oder), but also Nienburg (Weser) and Nienburg (Saale). etc. You either write it and say it like 'Frankfurt Main' or 'Frankfurt am Main'.

That's also common in the US, you have Springfield, Massachusetts, Springfield, Missouri, Springfield Illinois, ect. And you have things like Quincy, Illinois and Quincy, Massachusetts

@@cosmicostrich3657 We do the same in Norway. A lot of old names based on natural features are repeated, and are usually referred to by the administrative area they're in, though this is not a part of the official name.

I wonder how well Tim and a few other youtubers would do as editors or proof readers

Yeah that was my bad research there. Slipped under my radar and added a correction. ~ Tim

Also, cool fact that i learned from my grandfather, Instanbul also comes from Greek believe it or not. Because Greeks used to say "ης την πόλιν" or "Is tin poli" meaning, into or entering the city. This stems from the fact that Greeks sometimes called Constantinople "The City", due to the mere fact that everybody knew that they were referring to Constantinople.

Yuh! Thats what i was thinking too.

@@greekswaglord-dathistoryla201 That's super interesting, thanks for sharing!

Thank you

Old germs really be placing town centers next to forage bushes.