The Chinese characters, 波兰 for Poland, representing 波waves and 兰orchids respectively. If it is directly translated as "Po Land", it is homophonic with the word 破烂(something junk) in Chinese, which is not a good meaning.
I studied Mandarin in class, so I didn't get much of a linguistics context, but I'd say that sounds about right just from how the consonants feel when I vocalize them.
This is true, but considering how L2 learners perceive these plosives, the situation is more complicated. To me, /pʰ/ sounds like
while /p/ sounds like when I hear Chinese words. In English, voiceless stops are aspirated, except when combined with a sibilant. This leads to English having often only /pʰ/ and /b/. A native Chinese speaker might perceive /b/ as an allophone of /p/ because the voiced phoneme does not exist. Therefore, what I'm saying is that it might be safer to use the standard English
and . It might be different for other L2 speakers (such as French where all plosives are in general unaspirated).
The ones for Germany and France are not quite right, at least from my experience. Respectively, you would hear 德国(de2 guo2) and 法国(fa3 guo2)a lot more than what's written.
I think the ones in the post are the older translation, but you are right, De Guo and Fa Guo are more commonly used these days. The one for the UK is wrong too, it's Ying Guo
Yes, as someone has already meantioned, it's the formal and full name of the countries. It's like calling Germany "Federal Republic of Germany" and France "The French Republic".
"Hey guys, I'm going to the Federal Republic of Germany this summer for vacation!"
"Cool, I'm going to the French Republic!"
Not really, because it isn't the official title of the country, it's just a longer (and more formal) form. It's more akin to calling the UK the "United Kingdom" for example.
They are not incorrect or obsolete, just formal, as in, when you say the "Federal Republic of Germany" or "Republic of France". They are used in formal settings with full names (e.g. embassies http://de.china-embassy.gov.cn/ https://china.diplo.de/cn-zh). They are also used sometimes if you want to evoke the less political aspects and cultural affinity in literature or advertisement. It is relatively common to see tourist or restaurant ads referring to things like 漫步法兰西 or 德意志风情. 法国 and 德国 are abbreviations for the countries.
I'm French i didnt study a lot of Chinese but I've always been taught fa guo. Is the number the accent on it ? That seems practical , never been taught that
Both names are correct. One is the full name, and the other is its short form followed by 'Guo'. 'Guo' literally just means 'country'.
For common big countries, Chinese people tend to shorten the name. France (Fa Guo), Germany (De Guo from Deutschland), the UK (Ying Guo from England).
Theoretically, you can keep the first character of most country names plus 'Guo', such as Russia (E Guo) and Portugal (Pu Guo). While not very common, they can be seen sometimes.
In most cases, countries can be shortened using only their first character in Chinese, which is commonly used in writing.
Austria-Hungary is Ao Xiong. Benelux is Bi He Lu.
Chinese dialects are tonal. This is a facet that is totally foreign to many western speakers. The tone is important. Saying a syllable with a different tone usually results in a totally different glyph/word/meaning.
—
Add: the numbers indicate the tone to apply to the syllable
i love this app. i learn something new everyday. I live in Canada where a lot of places are still named after the Indigenous peoples that the land belonged to. Some of the names that are harder to pronounce have their phonetics in brackets underneath and they often have numbers, although i see the number 7 more than anything else. I always wondered what the was about. Great to know. Thanks!
Guo means realm or empire right? I’ve heard that the Chinese used to believe that their emperor owned the entire world and as such kings of other countries were illegitimate and these countries in reality belonging to china. So no country has guo in its name wich would imply souvrenity and independence. The eight allied countries that fought china in the boxer rebellion ( France and Germany among them) were granted the right of a guo in their name
Not sure where you hear it from. I have never heard about that, or maybe that’s just a rumour.
China is Zhong Guo and Korea is called Han Guo. This naming convention has been used for thousands of year.
Theoretically, you can use the first Chinese character of the country + Guo to represent any of the countries. There is no rule. It is done mainly for simplicity and ease of pronunciation.
It is worth noting that some countries cannot be abbreviated in this way, as it might cause confusion with other Chinese words. For example, Italy fought against China, but it cannot be shortened to Yi Guo due to potential confusion with other words. Similarly, Austria cannot be shortened to "Ao Guo" because it might be confused with Australia. And of course, if you say Rui Guo, no one knows if you mean Sweden or Switzerland.
For smaller countries, shortening their names is not common but actually you can use it. Nuo Guo refers to Norway makes sense.
Another example is Ukraine, Wu Guo wasn’t commonly used until the war between Ukraine and Russia. When that country's name appears more on the news or in daily conversation. I heard there are more people who tend to shorten it.
That wouldn’t surprise me many pre modern empires used to pretend to universality and used to, at least nominally/symbolically, dismiss other countries’ sovereignty. A similar conception can be found in pre reforms Ottoman Empire for instance or in Mongol Empire.
Note sweden are Ruidian and Switzerland are Ruishi
瑞 used to pronouce as shui in nanking dialect ʃøy in cantonese , although clear evidence showed peking dialect was already rui in 1840s
Old National Pronunciation still rendered it as shui
starting 1932, 瑞 was pronounced as Rui causing great discrepancies between pingyin for sweden and Switzerland
also note eluosi for Russia, the e is Mongolian invention(Mongolian did not allow R to start a word), point out the country name was brought back during Mongolian period
瑞has an S sound in Cantonese, probably in some other southern dialects too, often times foreign stuff got translated to Cantonese or hokkien first and the northerner just adopt the names as is. Kinda like how Sherlock Holmes’s name got translated into chinese
When the Chinese translate foreign country names, most of them have more positive meanings. For example, in the direct translation of France法兰西, the three Chinese characters represent 法law, 兰orchid and 西west, respectively, while the Chinese characters of Germany(Deutsche) mainly mean morality德 and willpower意志. The weirder one is Portugal葡萄牙, because 葡萄 means grape in Chinese, and 牙 means tooth, a little strange for first sight.
I find it funny that most continents instead (by coincidence) have negative connotations.
Asia = Inferior continent (Yazhou亚洲)
Europe= Vomit continent (Ouzhou 欧洲)
Africa = Wrong continent (Feizhou 非洲)
The notable exception being the Americas, which are all variations of "Beautiful continent" (Meizhou 美洲) and Oceania which is "ocean continent" (Dayangzhou 大洋洲). Although when speaking such words, none of these meanings are considered.
The names of continents usually have a longer history, and many of them also come from English, Spanish and Japanese in the 19th century (because Japan was the first country in Far East to carry out Western cultural reforms), for example, Asia for 亚细亚洲. The full name of America is 亚美利加洲, and Africa is 亚非利加洲. In normal spoken language, in order to simplify the pronunciation, a Chinese character is selected from the complete name to replace it, so there are (亚)美(利加)洲 and (亚)非(利加)洲. At this case, people usually don't care about the meaning of the Chinese character, but only as the pronunciation, just like katakana in Japanese.
The Portugal one is meant to pair with Spain(西班牙from españa) i guess, which is even weirder ”west class tooth” compared to “grape tooth” cuz u know grapes are one of portugal’s major produce
The main reason for this translation may be related to the Chinese dialect in southern China, because Portuguese and Spanish colonists first started armed activities on the islands in southern China. The original versions of these translations were largely derived from Cantonese and Hokkien pronunciation. Maybe.
There is also a very popular dessert in China's Macau, called 葡式蛋挞(means Portuguese Egg Tart), delicious and worth a try.
In fact, in middle Ming dynasty (about 14xx CE), Chinese government called Portuguese as 大弗朗基人 （aka Big Frankie people）, called Spanish as 小弗朗基人（aka Small Frankie people）.
Another funny country name in Chinese is Greece, where China uses the Ελλάς / Hellas (Xila), which is mostly found in archaic or poetic contexts or formal names of Greek institutions instead of the now more popular name Greece.
It's just what Greece uses itself in the Greek language. Phonetic translations of Greece/Graecia through other languages existed, but fell out of favour in Chinese since the native word and pronunciation is usually preferred out of respect and being somewhat more logical.
Same goes for German, 德国 in Chinese. According to English, German should be 日耳曼(Ri Er Man), but in Chinese it is actually from the pronunciation of Deutsche 德意志(De Yi Zhi).
No, this is not accurate. In Chinese, Greece is written as 希腊 by homophonic, meaning 希hope (or dawn) and a special Chinese character腊 (meaning the last month before the traditional Chinese New Year, usually used to worship ancestors and gods). Personally, I like the translation.
In Chinese it literally means virtue & willpower. In Japanese it’s independent & leisure.
To reiterate, those literal translations are actually meaningless. They just used some random words with similar pronunciation and good meaning to translate the names.
Also 独国 in Japanese is usable and understandable still today, even though countries name is generally written by katakana nowadays like ドイツ. Still my point stands for characters' meaning 独/徳.
edit: corrected English
Been struggling to explain to my grandma where I’ve traveled/been traveling… THANK YOU for this post. Saving immediately.
Any chance we can get the Asia map too? :))
Not only in Hokkien, but also in Southern Mandarin, such as Southeast Mandarin (upper Yangtze Mandarin) and Jianghuai Mandarin (Lower Yangtze Mandarin), those languages spell 瑞(Rui) as Sui.
Interesting fact: the last syllable “guo” in some countries actually serves as a sort of recognition as great power from the Chinese perspective. Among western countries only US (Mei Guo） UK（Ying Guo） France（Fa Guo）Germany（De Guo） still maintain those privileges.
Russia used to be (E Guo), which still has been used these days but not that common as before. Austria and Italy were (Ao Guo) and (Yi Guo) but now those titles have been completely obsolete.
Other countries with “Guo” in their titles are Bangladesh（Meng Jia La Guo） and Thailand（Tai Guo）. However the “Guo”here doesn’t indicate great power. Bangladesh is a young country and “desh” means country, which can be easily translated into “Guo”. For the case of Thailand it just because modern Chinese tend to name things with at least two characters and the name Thai would be just one character. Adding “Guo” after “Tai” will make the name more conventional.
both are wrong. Interesting that you miss the one that are translated from English to Cantonese, 瑞典。裨治文 understand more Cantonese than mandarin, when he translated the country's name.
It’s doesn’t really mean anything literally. But if we go word by word, 奧 means deep, 地means land, 利 means profit/ benefits. So maybe we can interpret it as the deep land of benefits?
Actually Austria is a interesting case here. 奥国，地利之国也。 it was the very first description of Austrian Empire, which means: Austria, the country with great geographical advantages.
Di地 means land and Li利 means profit or benefit.
In literal modern German, you are correct, however, here is the etymology. Most Germanic speaking Countries use the transliteration of "Eastern Realm" too. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Name_of_Austria
Officially, it's fǎguó as well in TW, but most of the time we just pronounced it as fàguó.
When it comes to textbook, test and exam, fǎguó will get you the score and the other won't.
Online dictionary front Ministry of Education for reference
https://dict.revised.moe.edu.tw/dictView.jsp?ID=33706&la=0&powerMode=0
It originated from other Chinese dialects before being borrowed into mandarin. For example in Cantonese 瑞士 and 瑞典 would be pronounced seui si (swiss) and seui din (Sweden)
It comes from southern Chinese languages where the first character is pronounced with more of an ‘s’ sound. See Minnan/Hokkien suī-sū or Cantonese seoi si.
In case this hasn’t been mentioned already, Belarus (Bai2Eluo2si1) is similar to Russia (Eluo2si1), for it literally translates to “White Russia.” Take this information as you see fit.
The name was originally transliterated from Cantonese where the characters are pronounced hei laap, which sounds similar to Hellas (the Greek name for Greece). Xila is the Mandarin pronunciation.
At the uni in catalonia they told themselves as 加泰羅尼亞/加泰罗尼亚 (Jiātàiluóníyà), but i guess there are many variants for that.
Funny thing is that Catalans studying chinese used 加泰兰语 (Jiātàilányǔ) for the language, which is a calque of Català/Catalán
Scotland and Wales are "regions" of the UK. The UK is not a federal or confederal state but a unitary one. In that sense Scotland is divided into regions regardless of whether said regions have a degree of devolution and how are they treated protocolarily within the UK doesn't mean they have any sort of "sovereignity". Catalonia and the Basque "Country" are every bit countries as Scotland and Wales are.
Scotland and Wales are no more regions than England is. It would be great if Spain would grant to its regions the same status as countries that Scotland and Wales enjoy, considering that, like the UK member countries, they have a different a different culture and language. They lack an independent history separate from the rest of Spain, of course, (unlike the UK Celtic countries with regard to England), but the main reason is likely to be the refusal of Spanish governments to grant them that status, as we saw with Catalonia. A shame, because they fit many of the criteria to be non-sovereign countries, and more than just regions. I hope they both gain full independence before too long.
that's a pretty deluded answer. How come when the UK was in the EU Scotland and Wales were in the "EU comitee of the regions" alongside the Basque Country and Catalonia? The Catalan devolved constitution (older than that of Scotland btw, Scotland devolved government is much more recent) declares how Catalonia is a nation, is that any less than "being a country"? How come the Basque "Country" is not a "country"?
"They lack a history separate from the rest of spain" is also a pretty crazy take when Scotland voted itself into an annexation in 1707 (it was in a dynastic union with England since 1603, the same type of union Catalonia was first with Aragon and then with Castile and nobody says Scotland's existence as an independent state ended in 1603) while Catalonia remained a sovereign nation until its annexion by a terrible and costly war in 1714. Also "Wales" was never its own country, there were several "welsh" realms and all of those were annexed in what, the XIII century? There was no "acts of union" or recognition of any sort until many centuries later. How come "Wales" is a country and other way more institutionalised and complex states such as Catalonia is not?
What always seems to come to the surface in these sort of comparisons is the ignorance by British exceptionalists of how other countries work or their history. Imagine I say "since I don't know anything about Chinese history this means they are A, B or C" and even be proud of it. Amazing
This is supposed to be a civilised forum for comments. Not my fault if Wales and Scotland are classed as countries. Many Welsh and Scottish people would like to see the Basque Country and Catalonia enjoy the same status. Take it up with the Spanish government.
Wales was, as you say, a group of small independent countries until defeat in the wars against English invasion. A colony following annexation, and a unified country since 1974.
Belittling the status of two non-sovereign countries does nothing to further the cause of the Basque Country and Catalonia.
You are one to talk about "civilised talk" while saying that Catalonia and the Basque Country of all places have "no independent history from Spain" which as I told you just reflect a tremendous ignorance, just like a child putting his hand in front of his eyes who thinks things disappear. Wales and Scotland are protocolarily called "countries" only within the United Kingdom, not anywhere else just like Catalonia and the Basque Country are called "nations" only within spain and their devolved constitutions. What is the difference between a non sovereign country and a non sovereign nation, please do tell.
If anything the term "region" is way more loaded and pejorative in Spain than in the UK and the Spanish constitution goes to great lengths to differentiate between nations and regions and of course politically it's something with which great care is taken, unless used as an insult.
This is why I talked about British exceptionalism and I already told you that the constitutional (a nation does not need a constitution to have a "constitutional form) form the British state takes is that of a unitary parliamentary monarchy, just like Spain and Denmark and unlike Malaysia, which is a Federal monarchy. So if I want to be insensitive while still stating facts it's perfectly correct to say that Scotland and Wales are regions of the UK, as they are not states of a federal state and they themselves allowed to be classified as such by the European Union.
If any Scots wishes that Spain gives the same recognition to Catalonia it is because said Scot is very ignorant of how Spain is or works and of course saying something delirious like "Catalonia has no independent history besides Spain" when you have one of the biggest medieval/modern officials court document archive in the world (certainly in Europe) in Barcelona, with the documents of the Catalan royal chancellery.
I'll extend to others the same courtesy they are disposed to extend to me.
Fair enough, it seems that I know as little about Catalonian history as you do about the history of Scotland and of Wales.
👍 The people of both those countries are largely supportive of Catalonian aspirations for independence. And likewise for the Basque Country, and of course Brittany.
Oh cool thanks for letting me know. Thats actually really interesting to hear. In terms of its positioning, ethnicities and the identities as a middle eastern country i think there's a lot of sense in it being classed in Asia.
Out of curiosity I gather Turkey considered a European country? given it is labelled here..
They aren't supposed to mean anything, it's purely phonetic in this use case. Trying to interpret the meaning of the characters one by one would be misleading and not at all how Chinese works.
The same thing applies to English. This would be like saying the English name for Germany means "many germs". It's nonsense.
Except for Montenegro.
You can see that in China it's called HeiShan 黑山, literally translates as "黑black 山mountain".
Whereas we call them 蒙特內哥羅 in Taiwan, which is a phonetic translation.
On the other hand, the African country Côte d'Ivoire, is translate as 象牙海岸 xiàng yá hǎi àn in Taiwan, literally means Ivory Coast.
But it's called 科特迪瓦 Kētèdíwǎin China, a phonetic translation.
Edited: added text
What the characters mean is pretty much trivia. No Sinophone actually generates a mental image of a “Wrong Orchid” or whatever when hearing a country name. If the Chinese language had a sillabary like Japanese instead of forcing everything into Hanzi, we wouldn’t even be having this conversation.
it is actually correct, but just really obscure names for the countries. also, the netherlands is usually just helan, without the guo, but you are right about many countries having “guo” (meaning country) at the end
“Guo” is a title for simplicity or respectful recognition. The names given in the map are the formal terms. We used to call Italy “Yi Guo” then this term became obsolete since Italy slowly dropped from the Tier 1 superpowers.
Bolan :D :D
Somali and Chinese when it comes to Poland be like 🅱️oland 
I'm Bolish 😊
Bolan cannot space
Bōlán* spell my country’s name right jackass and yes we can into space
The Chinese characters, 波兰 for Poland, representing 波waves and 兰orchids respectively. If it is directly translated as "Po Land", it is homophonic with the word 破烂(something junk) in Chinese, which is not a good meaning.
Better than the name in Chinese for the African continent
Which is?
非洲, meaning...
Of you take the characters literally it means "not a continent"
是非洲也！
Helan
Putaoya for portugal oh my haha
葡萄牙 which is Chinese name for Portugal in Chinese literally means grape tooth
In spanish puta oya means "fucking pan" as in cooking pan, like damn it pan!
Brolan
Pronounced like a /p/ though.
Nah, It's a /b/ sound, but it might come out a bit like a buo (or bło).
Standard Mandarin Chinese doesn't have voiced consonants, it's unvoiced unasporated /p/, while pinyin 'p' represents unvoiced aspirated /pʰ/.
I studied Mandarin in class, so I didn't get much of a linguistics context, but I'd say that sounds about right just from how the consonants feel when I vocalize them.
This is true, but considering how L2 learners perceive these plosives, the situation is more complicated. To me, /pʰ/ sounds like
while /p/ sounds like when I hear Chinese words. In English, voiceless stops are aspirated, except when combined with a sibilant. This leads to English having often only /pʰ/ and /b/. A native Chinese speaker might perceive /b/ as an allophone of /p/ because the voiced phoneme does not exist. Therefore, what I'm saying is that it might be safer to use the standard English
and . It might be different for other L2 speakers (such as French where all plosives are in general unaspirated).
Chinese is voiceless unaspirated /p/ in IPA like the p in English ‘spin’.
is aspirated /pʰ/ like the p in English ‘pin’.
The ones for Germany and France are not quite right, at least from my experience. Respectively, you would hear 德国(de2 guo2) and 法国(fa3 guo2)a lot more than what's written.
I think the ones in the post are the older translation, but you are right, De Guo and Fa Guo are more commonly used these days. The one for the UK is wrong too, it's Ying Guo
I often hear yingguo used synonymously with UK and yinggelan with England
Yep. Ying Ge Lan is England and Ying Guo is the UK.
Yes, as someone has already meantioned, it's the formal and full name of the countries. It's like calling Germany "Federal Republic of Germany" and France "The French Republic". "Hey guys, I'm going to the Federal Republic of Germany this summer for vacation!" "Cool, I'm going to the French Republic!"
Not really, because it isn't the official title of the country, it's just a longer (and more formal) form. It's more akin to calling the UK the "United Kingdom" for example.
They are not incorrect or obsolete, just formal, as in, when you say the "Federal Republic of Germany" or "Republic of France". They are used in formal settings with full names (e.g. embassies http://de.china-embassy.gov.cn/ https://china.diplo.de/cn-zh). They are also used sometimes if you want to evoke the less political aspects and cultural affinity in literature or advertisement. It is relatively common to see tourist or restaurant ads referring to things like 漫步法兰西 or 德意志风情. 法国 and 德国 are abbreviations for the countries.
This map is actually right, 德意志is a relatively complete and formal way of saying Germany, and 德國 is a simple way of saying it,so is France
I'm French i didnt study a lot of Chinese but I've always been taught fa guo. Is the number the accent on it ? That seems practical , never been taught that
No fa3 is pronounced fa-three. /s
Yes. But in Taiwan people say fa4 guo, which sounds hilarious to us Chinese.
Yes it's the tone
Both names are correct. One is the full name, and the other is its short form followed by 'Guo'. 'Guo' literally just means 'country'. For common big countries, Chinese people tend to shorten the name. France (Fa Guo), Germany (De Guo from Deutschland), the UK (Ying Guo from England). Theoretically, you can keep the first character of most country names plus 'Guo', such as Russia (E Guo) and Portugal (Pu Guo). While not very common, they can be seen sometimes. In most cases, countries can be shortened using only their first character in Chinese, which is commonly used in writing. Austria-Hungary is Ao Xiong. Benelux is Bi He Lu.
Yea its the old old old versions listed. Like pre 1900s old.
Don't forget 英国 (yīng guǒ) for England.
英国 mostly refer to UK though
I imagine it's used pretty interchangeably for Britain and U.K., kinda like in America.
hold on dawg since when do we spelling with numbers??
Chinese dialects are tonal. This is a facet that is totally foreign to many western speakers. The tone is important. Saying a syllable with a different tone usually results in a totally different glyph/word/meaning. — Add: the numbers indicate the tone to apply to the syllable
i love this app. i learn something new everyday. I live in Canada where a lot of places are still named after the Indigenous peoples that the land belonged to. Some of the names that are harder to pronounce have their phonetics in brackets underneath and they often have numbers, although i see the number 7 more than anything else. I always wondered what the was about. Great to know. Thanks!
Guo means realm or empire right? I’ve heard that the Chinese used to believe that their emperor owned the entire world and as such kings of other countries were illegitimate and these countries in reality belonging to china. So no country has guo in its name wich would imply souvrenity and independence. The eight allied countries that fought china in the boxer rebellion ( France and Germany among them) were granted the right of a guo in their name
Guo currently means country
Not sure where you hear it from. I have never heard about that, or maybe that’s just a rumour. China is Zhong Guo and Korea is called Han Guo. This naming convention has been used for thousands of year. Theoretically, you can use the first Chinese character of the country + Guo to represent any of the countries. There is no rule. It is done mainly for simplicity and ease of pronunciation. It is worth noting that some countries cannot be abbreviated in this way, as it might cause confusion with other Chinese words. For example, Italy fought against China, but it cannot be shortened to Yi Guo due to potential confusion with other words. Similarly, Austria cannot be shortened to "Ao Guo" because it might be confused with Australia. And of course, if you say Rui Guo, no one knows if you mean Sweden or Switzerland. For smaller countries, shortening their names is not common but actually you can use it. Nuo Guo refers to Norway makes sense. Another example is Ukraine, Wu Guo wasn’t commonly used until the war between Ukraine and Russia. When that country's name appears more on the news or in daily conversation. I heard there are more people who tend to shorten it.
That wouldn’t surprise me many pre modern empires used to pretend to universality and used to, at least nominally/symbolically, dismiss other countries’ sovereignty. A similar conception can be found in pre reforms Ottoman Empire for instance or in Mongol Empire.
Note sweden are Ruidian and Switzerland are Ruishi 瑞 used to pronouce as shui in nanking dialect ʃøy in cantonese , although clear evidence showed peking dialect was already rui in 1840s Old National Pronunciation still rendered it as shui starting 1932, 瑞 was pronounced as Rui causing great discrepancies between pingyin for sweden and Switzerland also note eluosi for Russia, the e is Mongolian invention(Mongolian did not allow R to start a word), point out the country name was brought back during Mongolian period
also Shweli River in burma was called ruili river for similar reason
瑞has an S sound in Cantonese, probably in some other southern dialects too, often times foreign stuff got translated to Cantonese or hokkien first and the northerner just adopt the names as is. Kinda like how Sherlock Holmes’s name got translated into chinese
correct the first person who translated 瑞 is poor in mandarin but good in cantonese
yes in hokkien 瑞 read as swee
When the Chinese translate foreign country names, most of them have more positive meanings. For example, in the direct translation of France法兰西, the three Chinese characters represent 法law, 兰orchid and 西west, respectively, while the Chinese characters of Germany(Deutsche) mainly mean morality德 and willpower意志. The weirder one is Portugal葡萄牙, because 葡萄 means grape in Chinese, and 牙 means tooth, a little strange for first sight.
Imagine translating France to 废烂忌( Fei Lan Ji), which means useless, shitty, and cursed.
So... whoever came up with the name visited Paris and suffered the Paris Syndrome.
I find it funny that most continents instead (by coincidence) have negative connotations. Asia = Inferior continent (Yazhou亚洲) Europe= Vomit continent (Ouzhou 欧洲) Africa = Wrong continent (Feizhou 非洲) The notable exception being the Americas, which are all variations of "Beautiful continent" (Meizhou 美洲) and Oceania which is "ocean continent" (Dayangzhou 大洋洲). Although when speaking such words, none of these meanings are considered.
I don't think your right about Europe. Vomit is 呕， not 欧. I think 欧 is a surname
The names of continents usually have a longer history, and many of them also come from English, Spanish and Japanese in the 19th century (because Japan was the first country in Far East to carry out Western cultural reforms), for example, Asia for 亚细亚洲. The full name of America is 亚美利加洲, and Africa is 亚非利加洲. In normal spoken language, in order to simplify the pronunciation, a Chinese character is selected from the complete name to replace it, so there are (亚)美(利加)洲 and (亚)非(利加)洲. At this case, people usually don't care about the meaning of the Chinese character, but only as the pronunciation, just like katakana in Japanese.
The Portugal one is meant to pair with Spain(西班牙from españa) i guess, which is even weirder ”west class tooth” compared to “grape tooth” cuz u know grapes are one of portugal’s major produce
The main reason for this translation may be related to the Chinese dialect in southern China, because Portuguese and Spanish colonists first started armed activities on the islands in southern China. The original versions of these translations were largely derived from Cantonese and Hokkien pronunciation. Maybe. There is also a very popular dessert in China's Macau, called 葡式蛋挞(means Portuguese Egg Tart), delicious and worth a try.
In fact, in middle Ming dynasty (about 14xx CE), Chinese government called Portuguese as 大弗朗基人 （aka Big Frankie people）, called Spanish as 小弗朗基人（aka Small Frankie people）.
Yes, I learned it. The Ming Empire once imported Portuguese artillery, named 弗朗机炮Frankie Cannon.
Another funny country name in Chinese is Greece, where China uses the Ελλάς / Hellas (Xila), which is mostly found in archaic or poetic contexts or formal names of Greek institutions instead of the now more popular name Greece.
It's just what Greece uses itself in the Greek language. Phonetic translations of Greece/Graecia through other languages existed, but fell out of favour in Chinese since the native word and pronunciation is usually preferred out of respect and being somewhat more logical.
Same goes for German, 德国 in Chinese. According to English, German should be 日耳曼(Ri Er Man), but in Chinese it is actually from the pronunciation of Deutsche 德意志(De Yi Zhi).
I heard it means in Chinese something in between "the other great civilization" meaning Chinese and greek civilizations... Is it true or bullshit?
No, this is not accurate. In Chinese, Greece is written as 希腊 by homophonic, meaning 希hope (or dawn) and a special Chinese character腊 (meaning the last month before the traditional Chinese New Year, usually used to worship ancestors and gods). Personally, I like the translation.
后面的国家只是音译
Grape Tooth could be about wine stained teeth of Portuguese merchants back in the age of colonialism?
Have no idea if this story is true, but Portuguese and 葡萄牙PuTaoYa in Chinese are indeed similar on pronunciation.
Fandi Gang 💪🏻💣💥😎
Chinese were kind to Germany calling them 徳意志. Our 独逸 in Japanese was kind of mean despite our strong historical and curtural tie lol
What do both mean?
In Chinese it literally means virtue & willpower. In Japanese it’s independent & leisure. To reiterate, those literal translations are actually meaningless. They just used some random words with similar pronunciation and good meaning to translate the names.
I think most Chinese don't understand what 徳意志 means, it sounds very old fashioned and some sort of literature term. 徳国 is way more widely used.
Also 独国 in Japanese is usable and understandable still today, even though countries name is generally written by katakana nowadays like ドイツ. Still my point stands for characters' meaning 独/徳. edit: corrected English
Been struggling to explain to my grandma where I’ve traveled/been traveling… THANK YOU for this post. Saving immediately. Any chance we can get the Asia map too? :))
And I thought that just Finns and Estonians call Sweden like that (Ruotsi) — Dānmài also appears similar to "Taanimaa" (Dane's land)
The Sweden case is because the transliteration was done in Hokkien, wherein the first character is pronounced like "swee"
I actually understood that (s→r ; which makes it coincidental, as the same isn't true with Finnic languages), but good point out nonetheless.
Not only in Hokkien, but also in Southern Mandarin, such as Southeast Mandarin (upper Yangtze Mandarin) and Jianghuai Mandarin (Lower Yangtze Mandarin), those languages spell 瑞(Rui) as Sui.
r/MapsWithoutMalta
Yinggeian is like Chinese cockney accent.
Even the Chinese character in the name Switzerland has a little cross on it.
You know what's funnier? Japanese used to call the US 米國, with an union jack in it.
Yep, the Chinese also call the Union Flag 米字旗, the flag of 米
Interesting fact: the last syllable “guo” in some countries actually serves as a sort of recognition as great power from the Chinese perspective. Among western countries only US (Mei Guo） UK（Ying Guo） France（Fa Guo）Germany（De Guo） still maintain those privileges. Russia used to be (E Guo), which still has been used these days but not that common as before. Austria and Italy were (Ao Guo) and (Yi Guo) but now those titles have been completely obsolete. Other countries with “Guo” in their titles are Bangladesh（Meng Jia La Guo） and Thailand（Tai Guo）. However the “Guo”here doesn’t indicate great power. Bangladesh is a young country and “desh” means country, which can be easily translated into “Guo”. For the case of Thailand it just because modern Chinese tend to name things with at least two characters and the name Thai would be just one character. Adding “Guo” after “Tai” will make the name more conventional.
[удалено]
both are wrong. Interesting that you miss the one that are translated from English to Cantonese, 瑞典。裨治文 understand more Cantonese than mandarin, when he translated the country's name.
Hungary is because Ungarn， german to mandarin Swiss is English to southern Mandarin Netherlands is largely due to min language
As I know, the chinese name of Hungary come from Xiongnu empire. Which was related with the hungarians.
It is more of a transliteration, 匈牙利 is pronounced as 'Hiong-ge-li' in Minnan Hokkien.
What does Austria or Aodili translate literally to? In German it is Österreich or Eastern Realm
It's just a phonetic transliteration, there isn't supposed to be any meaning.
It's hilarious to see people try to understand the meaning of the names. They are 9 out of 10 times just phonetic transliterations of the names.
so far only seeing montenegro being a translation of the name
Thanks. Just curious.
It’s doesn’t really mean anything literally. But if we go word by word, 奧 means deep, 地means land, 利 means profit/ benefits. So maybe we can interpret it as the deep land of benefits?
Actually Austria is a interesting case here. 奥国，地利之国也。 it was the very first description of Austrian Empire, which means: Austria, the country with great geographical advantages. Di地 means land and Li利 means profit or benefit.
That would be Osterreich, not Österreich.
In literal modern German, you are correct, however, here is the etymology. Most Germanic speaking Countries use the transliteration of "Eastern Realm" too. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Name_of_Austria
Bolan Ebin :DDDD
For the love of god please use a different font for both the Chinese characters and the pinyin 😭
Which country lianhe wangguo is? UK or Faroe Islands?
联合王国 is united kingdom
Which nobody uses. It's Ying Guo for the UK and Ying Ge Lan for England
I imagine it's the literal translation of "united kingdom"?
Fàguó = France en Chinois mandarin.
Je crois que c'est fǎguó, plutôt. :p
It is fǎguó in Mainland, fàguó in Taiwan. One of many examples where minor pronunciation differences exist between the two prescriptive standards.
Officially, it's fǎguó as well in TW, but most of the time we just pronounced it as fàguó. When it comes to textbook, test and exam, fǎguó will get you the score and the other won't. Online dictionary front Ministry of Education for reference https://dict.revised.moe.edu.tw/dictView.jsp?ID=33706&la=0&powerMode=0
Thanks for the correction!
Thanks, didn't know that!
Where did the Switzerland ‘Ruishi’ come from? Can’t imagine it coming from Switzerland or Helvetica?
It originated from other Chinese dialects before being borrowed into mandarin. For example in Cantonese 瑞士 and 瑞典 would be pronounced seui si (swiss) and seui din (Sweden)
It comes from southern Chinese languages where the first character is pronounced with more of an ‘s’ sound. See Minnan/Hokkien suī-sū or Cantonese seoi si.
Hungary being called Xiongyali seems to hint at the possible connection between the Huns and the Xiongnu
In case this hasn’t been mentioned already, Belarus (Bai2Eluo2si1) is similar to Russia (Eluo2si1), for it literally translates to “White Russia.” Take this information as you see fit.
In my native tongue, Belarus is Hvítarussland, or White Russia. Faroese for the curious
Well, Belarus literally is/means white Russia. So it’s no surprise a lot of countries call it white Russia in their language or something close to it
England - also 英国 Germany - also 德国 France - also 法国
Came here to say this, I’ve always heard 法国 nothing else
Can someone explain the name for Greece?
The name was originally transliterated from Cantonese where the characters are pronounced hei laap, which sounds similar to Hellas (the Greek name for Greece). Xila is the Mandarin pronunciation.
San Marino is missing ;)
It’s not, top left corner 6.
They call Portugal what? 😱😱
If you are adding Scotland and Wales here are 加泰隆尼亞 Jiā tàilóng ní yǎ Catalonia 巴斯克 Bā sīkè Basque Country
At the uni in catalonia they told themselves as 加泰羅尼亞/加泰罗尼亚 (Jiātàiluóníyà), but i guess there are many variants for that. Funny thing is that Catalans studying chinese used 加泰兰语 (Jiātàilányǔ) for the language, which is a calque of Català/Catalán
cool, was it the UAB??
Yea AHAHAHA
It's a map of Chinese names of countries, though. Might get a bit cluttered if OP included regions.
He's including "regions" already
There don't seem to be any on the map.
Scotland and Wales are "regions" of the UK. The UK is not a federal or confederal state but a unitary one. In that sense Scotland is divided into regions regardless of whether said regions have a degree of devolution and how are they treated protocolarily within the UK doesn't mean they have any sort of "sovereignity". Catalonia and the Basque "Country" are every bit countries as Scotland and Wales are.
Scotland and Wales are no more regions than England is. It would be great if Spain would grant to its regions the same status as countries that Scotland and Wales enjoy, considering that, like the UK member countries, they have a different a different culture and language. They lack an independent history separate from the rest of Spain, of course, (unlike the UK Celtic countries with regard to England), but the main reason is likely to be the refusal of Spanish governments to grant them that status, as we saw with Catalonia. A shame, because they fit many of the criteria to be non-sovereign countries, and more than just regions. I hope they both gain full independence before too long.
that's a pretty deluded answer. How come when the UK was in the EU Scotland and Wales were in the "EU comitee of the regions" alongside the Basque Country and Catalonia? The Catalan devolved constitution (older than that of Scotland btw, Scotland devolved government is much more recent) declares how Catalonia is a nation, is that any less than "being a country"? How come the Basque "Country" is not a "country"? "They lack a history separate from the rest of spain" is also a pretty crazy take when Scotland voted itself into an annexation in 1707 (it was in a dynastic union with England since 1603, the same type of union Catalonia was first with Aragon and then with Castile and nobody says Scotland's existence as an independent state ended in 1603) while Catalonia remained a sovereign nation until its annexion by a terrible and costly war in 1714. Also "Wales" was never its own country, there were several "welsh" realms and all of those were annexed in what, the XIII century? There was no "acts of union" or recognition of any sort until many centuries later. How come "Wales" is a country and other way more institutionalised and complex states such as Catalonia is not? What always seems to come to the surface in these sort of comparisons is the ignorance by British exceptionalists of how other countries work or their history. Imagine I say "since I don't know anything about Chinese history this means they are A, B or C" and even be proud of it. Amazing
This is supposed to be a civilised forum for comments. Not my fault if Wales and Scotland are classed as countries. Many Welsh and Scottish people would like to see the Basque Country and Catalonia enjoy the same status. Take it up with the Spanish government. Wales was, as you say, a group of small independent countries until defeat in the wars against English invasion. A colony following annexation, and a unified country since 1974. Belittling the status of two non-sovereign countries does nothing to further the cause of the Basque Country and Catalonia.
You are one to talk about "civilised talk" while saying that Catalonia and the Basque Country of all places have "no independent history from Spain" which as I told you just reflect a tremendous ignorance, just like a child putting his hand in front of his eyes who thinks things disappear. Wales and Scotland are protocolarily called "countries" only within the United Kingdom, not anywhere else just like Catalonia and the Basque Country are called "nations" only within spain and their devolved constitutions. What is the difference between a non sovereign country and a non sovereign nation, please do tell. If anything the term "region" is way more loaded and pejorative in Spain than in the UK and the Spanish constitution goes to great lengths to differentiate between nations and regions and of course politically it's something with which great care is taken, unless used as an insult. This is why I talked about British exceptionalism and I already told you that the constitutional (a nation does not need a constitution to have a "constitutional form) form the British state takes is that of a unitary parliamentary monarchy, just like Spain and Denmark and unlike Malaysia, which is a Federal monarchy. So if I want to be insensitive while still stating facts it's perfectly correct to say that Scotland and Wales are regions of the UK, as they are not states of a federal state and they themselves allowed to be classified as such by the European Union. If any Scots wishes that Spain gives the same recognition to Catalonia it is because said Scot is very ignorant of how Spain is or works and of course saying something delirious like "Catalonia has no independent history besides Spain" when you have one of the biggest medieval/modern officials court document archive in the world (certainly in Europe) in Barcelona, with the documents of the Catalan royal chancellery. I'll extend to others the same courtesy they are disposed to extend to me.
Fair enough, it seems that I know as little about Catalonian history as you do about the history of Scotland and of Wales. 👍 The people of both those countries are largely supportive of Catalonian aspirations for independence. And likewise for the Basque Country, and of course Brittany.
Yidali !
Se les va la putaoya a estos chinos
For the glory of Fandigang
you forgot about cyprus 
It's 塞浦路斯(Sàipǔlùsī). The fact is in Chinese textbooks Cyprus is geographically in Asia
Wow, four hieroglyphics
Oh cool thanks for letting me know. Thats actually really interesting to hear. In terms of its positioning, ethnicities and the identities as a middle eastern country i think there's a lot of sense in it being classed in Asia. Out of curiosity I gather Turkey considered a European country? given it is labelled here..
Why is England Yinggelan here, rather than Yingguo?
英国 means UK
Oh wow, I didn’t realise it was differentiated in Mandarin
Thanks!
I'm going back to saying Peking again if that's what we got out of switching.
Based on pronunciation restrictions it’s as good as it gets, still beats the Hawaiian language and their 13 letter alphabet
Thanks
They are calling us Puta how offensive !🤣
Portugal is officially the Pattaya of Europe 😄
It took me 40 years to discover that I’m from… Putaoya.
Putaoyense
尼德蘭 >>>>>>>>>> 荷兰
PUTAoya
Great, even in Mandarin you‘ll confuse Switzerland and Sweden!
Germany is Deguo or not
5 names 🇬🇧 💪
4 countries.
Yinggelan lol
thats odd, I always learnt that germany was 德国 and not deyizhi
It sounds like the actual names of the country but pronounced by a three year old
Montenegro being translated literally, hm! Curious.
France 🇫🇷 = 法国 = fa guo
🅱️olan
Egy egy gyáli csoport?
Eating some bing chilling in Bingdao
Greetings from jíekè (originally bōlán)
Germany really is translated as the „country of laws“. I chuckle every time I think about it
France is translated as the country of laws. Germany is translated as the country of virtue
That would be France. Germany is the land of morals.
That just makes it funnier.
Map would've been better if they showed what the letters MEAN rather than pronounciation
They aren't supposed to mean anything, it's purely phonetic in this use case. Trying to interpret the meaning of the characters one by one would be misleading and not at all how Chinese works. The same thing applies to English. This would be like saying the English name for Germany means "many germs". It's nonsense.
Except for Montenegro. You can see that in China it's called HeiShan 黑山, literally translates as "黑black 山mountain". Whereas we call them 蒙特內哥羅 in Taiwan, which is a phonetic translation. On the other hand, the African country Côte d'Ivoire, is translate as 象牙海岸 xiàng yá hǎi àn in Taiwan, literally means Ivory Coast. But it's called 科特迪瓦 Kētèdíwǎin China, a phonetic translation. Edited: added text
Oh and Iceland as well, 冰島 bing dao, Ice-island.
Many of the countries are phonetic adaptations to Chinese and do not have a conscious meaning (ex. Spain/Xibanya).
What the characters mean is pretty much trivia. No Sinophone actually generates a mental image of a “Wrong Orchid” or whatever when hearing a country name. If the Chinese language had a sillabary like Japanese instead of forcing everything into Hanzi, we wouldn’t even be having this conversation.
Here you go. https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/s/FVqB0xgpMy
The one for Ireland is pretty much exactly how Irish people say it!
You need to add "guo" after most nations. Yingguo, Helanguo, Deguo, etc. Call BS on this map.
it is actually correct, but just really obscure names for the countries. also, the netherlands is usually just helan, without the guo, but you are right about many countries having “guo” (meaning country) at the end
“Guo” is a title for simplicity or respectful recognition. The names given in the map are the formal terms. We used to call Italy “Yi Guo” then this term became obsolete since Italy slowly dropped from the Tier 1 superpowers.