Not something I thought of a lot when I was back in US since USA is… a pretty bureaucratic name by all means. But I just realized that some countries have really fascinating names in their local language

Like how China names itself Central/Middle country in a very grandiose way (as in, we are the center of the world), or Japan being “land of the rising sun”

  • AlexLost@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    Canada, or ‘Canada’ in French, was derived from “Kanata” the Iroquois word for Village. Not sure there ever was a local world for the country known as Canada though? Would love to be enlightened if so.

    • garbagebagel@lemmy.world
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      12 hours ago

      I’m not sure what you mean by local as each indigenous nation presumably had their own way of referring to the land.

      ‘Turtle Island’ is the common translation for the ways that many Algonquian- and Iroquoian-speaking refer to North America.

      Where I live (Lekwungen territory) means “place of the smoked herring”.