How Did Each European Country Get Its Name? - General Knowledge Reaction
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- Опубліковано 20 вер 2023
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Valeu General! Os seus vídeos são incríveis e fico feliz em saber que você gosta de reações, especialmente como as do Chris, que adicionam bastante conteúdo. Amo os dois canais.
P.S: Descobri com o vídeo do Kurzgesagt que você é Português, fiquei bastante feliz! Saudações brasileiras!
Ah there he is
Hey, thanks for doing the video
One *minor* correction, however.
The native pronunciation of the country of Wales is NOT "Simru", it's "Kumri"
Welsh is a tricky language haha
why is montenegro censored?
@General.Knowledge buddy you are so biased and make so many poor assumptions, your history teaching is as bad as any propaganda video with surface level research and perspective twisting
About your question of Montenegro. He abbreviated it on purpose because General Knowledge has had his videos demonetized because the youtube profanity detector detects that the way he pronounces the country name sounds like he is saying Monte, the n-word, -o due to his accent. Because of this he now just uses a shortened version to refer to it to avoid his videos being demonetized.
There wasnt a name change, just the algorithm being stupid.
I mean the country name contains that exact same word (with just its original meaning of "the color black", and no problematic connotations), so it's not really about his accent so much as it getting taken out of context.
@@hawk_7000correct which is even more stupid since he’s from Portugal so you’d think the algorithm would understand that in the native tongue of his country it’s just a word that refers to the color black.
@@UltimateInnerSpiritthe problem with that would be that the algorithm doesn't look for context, it seems to look for frequency and rudeness of certain words that it individually detects within the audio, and automatically flags it for demonitkzation. I believe he also avoids naming Niger and Nigeria in his videos for the same reason (and there have been several other content creators who have started doing the same for the same reason)
We've seen the same thing on a previous video that VTH reacted to about a year ago. Was actually curious if this one was gonna leave Montenegro untouched.
A few years ago a Romanian football referee was suspended and a mach stopped because the whole stadium thought he was calling a player "negro" when in he was talking in romanian and used the word for black which is "negru". So no it's not just the algorithm being stupid, sadly it is a lot more then that.
Pretty sure he used Monten. to avoid being demonetised, he put a . to signify he's abbreviating the name, I imagine having the last part of the name in text would flag UA-cam algorithm.
That's what I was thinking too
He got video demonitised for having the word Niger on screen in a video about African country name origins...
@@VillaFanDan92 UA-cam algorithm is a trip, it's probably just botted
Port Port is actually highly probable. Britain (as a great example of where names in one language met another language) has tons of places that translate to hill hill or valley valley or river river. River river is a pretty common construction in the states too. This is actually a very common phenomenon where the incoming culture asks what a place is called, doesn't bother getting a translation and then appends their descriptive name to it. So, from the incoming culture's point of view it's "Port [native name]" but they don't realize the native name is just their word for Port.
Not to mention, it comes from the same people who creatively called one of their colonies "east east".
You are correct. Finnish and Estonian are closely related Finnic languages. Hungarian is distantly related to them. The language family is called Uralic, with main branches of Finno-Ugric and Samoyedic. There are many languages like Karelian, Vepsian, Sami languages, Mari, Erzyan, Moksha, Udmurt, Komi, Khanty, Mansi, Nenets, Nganasan and so on in Northern Europe and Russia, all the way to Siberia.
no... finns (eestis are not closely related -no genetical connection... see eupedia .. my result from this is just fonetically close languages ... hungarians are not related tu Huns... they are Magyars (madyars) ... they came to Pannonia around y1000 and they changed they lineage vector to turkic nations
Correction on the etymology of the Slavs, we very much know where the word Slav comes from. It's related to the words slava (glory) and slovo (word), as in "those who speak in a way that we can understand". Contrast this to the Slavic word for Germans, Nijemci, meaning "mutes", or "those whose speech we cannot understand".
Thank you, was about to write that. I don't really understand how the author of the video never stumbled upon this widely known etymology but managed to find some other obscure ones for other countries lol
That's a theory among others.
Doesn't slovo mean letter?
@@kalu4065 No, it means "a word".
@@samrevlej9331 Everything in this video are 'theories among others'. This one is very, VERY probable tho. Notice Slovene (ppl of words) vs Niemcy (the mute/mumblibg ones)
In Swedish, France is called "Frankrike", literally meaning "Realm of Franks".
Similar in German where it’s Frankreich.
In Finnish language France is Ranska, because Franska would be difficult for Finns to pronounce so losing the F letter would make Finns much easier to pronounce it.
Frankrijk in Dutch, Realm of the Franks
@@FinnishDragon,
I like that.
If Finns drop the 'F,' Finnland becomes Innland, and there is nothing more quaint than a land of Inns and saunas.
@@fuferito Just don't mix them. Drunks in a sauna is typically a bad combo XD
When he called Montenegro as Khrna Gora insted of Tsrna (Crna-Black) Gora (Mountain or Forest) i almost died. 🤣
Montenegro 🤝 Crna Gora
Two names, same translation
It's worth noting that "Cymru" in Welsh is not pronounced like "simru" but "kummri".
Also the term "Scotland" is (or was originally) an exonym. The name for Scotland in Scottish Gaelic is "Alba", which derives from Old Irish "Albu" or "Albain", which is believed to have been used to describe the lands of the Picts and and other Celtic territory of what is now Scotland.
Funny story you might find interesting: I once went to Berlin, and had a conversation with someone in basic Dutch, while that person spoke back to me in basic German. We both could understand each other and.. kind of have a conversation? Even though not the most efficient, I found this sooo interesting and I think about that moment a lot. Aren't languages and cultures just so damn fascinating? :)
I am busy with doing some historical research of my home village in Drenthe Netherlands. And I read in a book that a lot of workers came from Germany (that technically did not exist than). I wondered if language would not be a problem until i realised that they al spoke the same dialect. The dialect in Drenthe is called plat. And the dialect on the german border is also plat-duits.
I was in Sweden once, and if we both spoke slowly and clearly, we could get basic meanings across between Swedish and German. Nothing complex, but we got the gist.
same thing with speaking spanish when in italy. I was able to get by pretty damn well that way.
@@walkir2662 I was in Germany once trying to pay for a parkinglot and we just couldnt understand each other speaking english. Eventually he got irritated and started to speak in german and then i finally understood what he ment and he understood when i replyed in swedish :)
Dutch and German are very closely related. As a German who also speaks English I can basically figure out about 80% of Dutch since most of it is for me either a derivation of a German or English word, I just have to figure out which it is :D And it took me some time to get used to it since the first time I heard it, I had to fight the giggles since it sounded like funny German to me! (sorry Dutch people!)
I think it’s very interesting to see that sometimes exonyms become adopted and loved by their people but some countries grow to resent their exonyms.
😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊
😊😊😊😊😊
See, that's one interesting idea, yes. Another is when an endonym becomes a slur in another language. So while Polak is the Polish endonym for a Pole, the word P*lack is a slur in not just English but also German (in the form P*lacke). Likewise, the Albanian word for an Albanian is shqiptar, however, in Serbo-Croatian (or Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian, and Montenegrin), the word Š*ptar is derogatory if not a full on slur. I added asterisks for the first vowel because I don't know how strict YT is about these things. And yes, I know that by mentioning these terms I may start a flame war but as a linguist I find the developments of these terms to be wildly fascinating.
What’s an exonym?
Names coined by people from outside the country/place@@Nenshokaze
Interesting to hear you point out the hard C in Latin, I remember learning about how the language was actually pronounced from Fallout New Vegas, learning of the connection of "Caesar" to "Kaiser" and "Tsar" blew my mind
Ave true to Ceasar
I get happy hearing any mentions of that game, i love it
We French say "César".
"Gallia" (in Greek)
Our Motherland "Gallus" (Latin Roman Empire) ➡️ West Frankia (under the Germanic Empire) ➡️ Now, France 🟦⬜🟥🇫🇷🐓
There are actually two pronunciations that are both correct just dependant on the timeframe, "the classical", which is the one you refer to and is more akin to the ancient Greek pronunciation, and "the ecclesiastical", which is the one used in late antiquity (mainly in church, hence the name) and in Italy to this day (I learned that one in Croatia twenty years ago). The Classical would read Caesar as Kaiser (Kaisar), while the ecclesiastical would read it as César or in Croatian "Cezar" - they all mean the same thing, "the emperor", impressively derived from Caesar's family name.
Cæsar not kaiser
When I went to school in Denmark almost 25 years ago, our teacher told us a story about an ancient Viking King, who had two sons who one day would share his kingdom equally. One day, one of the sons went on an expedition and discovered an island filled with green hills and birds and stuff. He continued on the journey and then found another place covered in snow and ice and seemingly incredible uninhabitable. As he was going home, he knew that when he presented his father with these new places, his brother would get to choose which Island he wanted, and so the guy came up with the idea to name the beautiful green place ICELAND, and the horrible frost covered place GREENLAND. Thereby when he would come home, his brother would obviously choose Greenland, as it sounded much better than Iceland, and the first brother would get to keep Iceland for him self. And that is supposedly why those two countries have their names. (It’s probably BS but I will never forget that story, and it does kinda seem just a little plausible)
Amazing story, although bs as you say. But the best tales are tall, right?
Yeah it's BS, also Iceland wasn't derived from Snæland, and Naddoddur named it that because it was snowing over some mountains during the summer he stayed there, but when Hrafnaflóki landed there and spent a winter there, he was woefully unprepared because they spent most of their time fishing in the fjords because there were so many fish, this led to all his livestock dying in the cold as they didn't harvest enough hay. As spring came along, he went up a mountain, and saw a fjord still full of ice, and so decided to call it Iceland, and tried to go back home to Norway, but didn't get enough wind in their sails so they got delayed by another winter.
Supposedly he spoke ill of Iceland after getting back, but he did eventually go back to Iceland and settled down, having two kids there.
It's definitely false because Denmark didn't have anything to to with Greenland or Iceland or even the Faroe Islands originally, those were Norwegian in the beginning, Denmark only have them now because of the Kalmar Union.
@@shitbraker I didn’t say that its was a Danish Viking, just said I went to school in Denmark. And back then there weren’t really any countries, they were just different Viking tribes.
he didn't write his teacher said the Viking was Danish -we all know Erik the red was Norwegian and later lived in Iceland , all Danes know that, that said the story is still false as Iceland was populated at the time when Erik went to Greenland and he only named Greenland , in Denmark we also know Norway populated Iceland more or less as they are a mix of celts also @@shitbraker
The comments section is almost as good as the video. So many knowledgeable people in this audience. I learned so much more, thank you everyone.
Yeah for me thats the best part of youtube other than the content itself, is reading the comments and learning or understanding the different experiences/knowledge people have to share from around the world,especially considering i didn't learn alot of this stuff in school.
Like i used to believe Portugal was in South America.
VTH is pretty good. It seems to encourage learning skills over terminally online viewpoints.
Often why i kinda have lost much interest in history is people try to insert sort of a "Oh wow this guy thinks like me, and blends it into modern day" which makes it so boring to listen to often.
With VTH i usually get a very fair basis of learning history and thats the entire focus that i am happy with
Not only are your videos informative, but they are also medicinal. Watching your videos is helping me get through recovery from surgery. Seriously, thank you for helping me take my mind off the pain.
Best wishes on your continued recovery! Glad to help in some small way.
Yea, us Finns and Estonians can almost communicate to each other eventhough we don't actually know each others languages, there are several differences in words and for example Estonian has a lot of missing letters that normally Finnish words would have.
Emphasis on almost 😂
This sort of relationship between Finnish and Estonian is akin to the one between Spanish and Portuguese. I know much more Spanish than Portuguese. I can kind of pick out bits and pieces of Portuguese, but I struggle with that language.
Amazingly, Romanian seems vaguely familiar, even though I don't know a word of Romanian. Gotta love Romance languages.
Brutally conquers the Aztec Empire.
Aztec: “You are strong. Where you from”
Spaniard: “The Land of Rabbits”
About Francia, it's hard to say in Latin it was pronounced this or that way. Latin was spoken for hundreds of years by many different people over a vast area. It's very likely that multiple pronunciations of the same word existed simultaneously
PS. In Welsh, "Cymru" is pronounced more like "cum-ree"
I think he referred to the Classical and Late Latin pronunciation of Francia
Fun fact: The german word for tie is Krawatte which derives from the french a la cravate which means in croatian style. Croatian cavallry used it and made popular in France first in the 17th century. So things can also be named after countries.
Coming from the word Hrvatska which is the name of Croatia in Croatian.
Just to add on to the origin of France's name, they called themselves "franc" because if you weren't a slave in the region you were therefore free, or literally "franc." This meaning of the word lives on in modern English as the word "frank" meaning to be sincere and honest, as well as the term "franchise," which historically meant you were free to participate in society. Adam Ragusea did a podcast recently on the topic of the word and how it developed into the modern concept of restaurant franchises, but it also goes into a nice bit of history of the Franks.
What you say is generally correct, except the beginning. It was the other way around. They already had the name Francs for centuries before it was associated with the word free for the first time. Originally the name of the Francs has German roots and has nothing to do with the word free. It's not entirely sure what it meant back then, there are multiple theories. At the end of the sixth century, you then find this connection for the very first time, which falls at a time when the Francs started to rule over other people while forming a ruling class, mainly in France, which was not their native country. Funnily enough, from there the connection spreads over the whole world basically. You can find it in English, in Latin, but also in medieval German.
It's Franks. As French, the right term is "Franks"
"Franc" is our Old French Currency before 200. The Euro
Lithuanian here. I watch your content regularly so, I’ll just add this: yeah we ourselves don’t a good amount of word origins ourselves. Like in a case of countries there is Prancūzija (France) or Vokietija (Germany). For the last one we have joke about it’s origin, if you are interested. There are other words used to name everyday things, however I am not gonna write due to limits, but most local linguistics just usually hand unclear word origins to being from Sanskrit (It’s a real thing, look it up). Anyway, great video, keep uploading.
Out of curiosity what is your name for the Netherlands?
@@lordInquisitor “Nyderlandai”, although we call a Netherlander a “olandas” (which means Hollander). Some people here are trying to call them “nyderlandietis”, but for most this word just sounds wrong.
Edit.: Nice WH40k logo.
@@xenamorphwinner7931 good to know and thanks appreciate it.
Kinda curious if you guys have names for each US state or if it's just the english word more or less? Like my home state Alabama. I'm guessing there probably wouldn't be a good translation since its a Native American word adapted to english.
@@jacobb17 as a foreigner we in south africa mostly just say " Alabama " but with our accent effecting it is pronounced.
I know it’s been brought up before so it may already be on your list, but before your trip to Vienna you have to react to the Armchair Historian’s “Formation of the Holy Roman Empire”.
It’s one of his best videos, showing the direct lineage (and interregnum periods) from the classical Roman Empire to Charlemagne’s empire to the Holy Roman Empire and the crown last worn by the Habsburgs in 1918.
He should watch Ramaboo ramblings video on the HRE being Holy, Roman and an Empire.
oh and while switzerland is indeed named after the canton of Schwyz, the canton of Schwyz is named after the town of Schwyz, which is the capitol of Schwyz.
and in swiss german, the country is still pronounced like Schwyz.
btw: you brought up the font "helvetica". that font is in fact named after switzerland, because it was introduced by the swiss typeface designers max miedinger and eduard hoffmann.
The funny thing about Liechtenstein is that castle Liechtenstein is not in Liechtenstein itself but in Austria. It's a really nice castle south of Vienna (and if I remember they shot parts of the 1993 Three Musketeer movie there). Also the Liechtensteins before WWII owned property in (then) Czechoslovakia which was ten times the size of the country they rule...
I believe the family seat of the Liechtensteins was Moravsky Krumlov. Only when they lost their Czech lands did they bother to live in Liechtenstein.
38:00 I think he is censoring last 5 letters from Montenegro because it could be controversial
Probably, but it is so stupid, it's the name of the country, not an offense lol
@@maciomoiadoIt's UA-cam's fault.
@@maciomoiado Yeah, because it simply means the color black in Spanish.
@@coxmosia1 Yes, in portuguese as well! (Black people are called exactly that word in Brazil, without any racist connotation)
@@blindphilosopher Yeah, other languages suffer because of UA-cam focus on English terms (it does make sense, but it's annoying)
37:50 I think he was scared of the word 'negro' being in his video? Not sure, though!
Yeah I thought that might be the reason 😂
He had a right to be scared as my brother told me of a youtube who also calls the country "Monte" because one of his videos was demontized because the full name
Can confirm there are two written languages in Norway. Bokmål which is normally used, and Nynorsk.
Dono if I'd use the word normally, think "most" people is more correct since it depends more on where you are from. We both speak a form of it and write nynorsk in western Norway
@@Bubajumba that’s true, probably should’ve been more accurate with the wording.
Port port actually makes sense particularly if the words are in two different languages.
It happens a lot a vistor who doesnt speak the local language turns up and tries to find out the name and doesnt realise the locals have given them the genric name.
There are a bunch of mountains called mount and similarly with lakes.
Yep, Timor-leste means East-East or Eastern-East.
Yeah, like the Sahara Desert, the Gobi Desert and the Kalahari Desert, terms which all literally mean Desert Desert. It also sometimes happens with people whose names straddle several cultures, like the medieval Turkish ruler Malik Shah, whose name literally means King King. Or the Mughal Indian ruler Akbar Al-Azam, which literally means Greater the Great.
He sadly called it 'Monten' because of youtube issues with the latter part of the name being flagged as offensive.
On the game Mr historian! Hugely informative and fun!
As someone who was ridiculed for taking 4 years of Latin in high school, thank you for pointing out the pronunciation for Francia. So many modern people want to make it sound too Italian with the Ecclesiastical Church pronunciation vs the Classical which is what I mostly studied in.
By the time Francia was named it is doubtful that anyone used classical pronunciation.
@drs-xj3pb well I'm not sure what you're trying to say. As long as the Romans knew about its existence, it was referred to as Francia. The Germanic people there were Franks which the Romans spelled Francia sounding like Frank-ee-uh. The people living there wouldn't have spoken Latin at the time. But the people who named it, the Romans, did, and France as we know it gets its name from the Latin. Francia was the name of the area for a long time. Ecclesiastical Latin pronunciation was introduced by Charlemagne and didn't get standardized across Europe that quickly. The day to day conversations of the commoners would've been speaking some kind of Frankish.
My great-grandparents emigrated to the United States in the early 1900s but because of how maps and countries have changed, I was never sure exactly where to place Bohemia, the location listed as my great-grandmother’s country of origin. Great-grandfather listed his home country as Hungary so that was easier. Thank you for this tidbit!
Bohemia (Čechy in Czech) is still where it was for the last 1000 years, +/- the same borders. Greetings from Central Bohemia.
is your origin g-gradfa slavic? if yes it was actualy Slovakia part of Hungary those times...
Hey Chris, you should definitely visit Denmark someday too, I recently visited Copenhagen and it’s a gorgeous city full of amazing history dating back to the Stone Age. I think you’d love it there and there’s so much to do too
I would normally disagree with you and say that you should visit Sweden or Norway before my native Denmark because the other two have much more beautiful and dramatic nature, but if you are into archaeology, it's honestly a bit of a goldmine because it's so small, so marshy and so easily navigable. Just last month they found the remains of a bronze age house on the football field of my local school, and instead of being excited most people just said "not again..." because now they had to play somewhere else while the archaeological team work xD
So the word Slav has contested etymology. Some say it has something to do with "slave" which I find unlikely, some say it comes from "slava" which means glory, but to me, a native Russian speaker, the most likely origin is from "slovo", which means word. Thus to the Slavs, the word they used for themselves would mean something like "those who use words". This would also connect to how Germany is called Niemcy in Polish and why German people are called Niemtzy in Russian, which comes from the word for mute - the Slavs would call them "those who can't speak" in contrast with themselves because they didn't speak the same language.
As Polish, I can agree to all you say.
As for the Slav/slave connection: the word "slave" most definitely comes from the Slavic people, and not the other way around. The original Latin name for "slave" was "servus", but then after a few centuries the term "sclavus" replaced it. "Sclavus" originally meant "Slav", an ethnic group.
In antiquity and early medieval times many Slavs were captured and sold by the surrounding nations into slavery (or sometimes simply sold by their own leaders for goods).
@@Gwynbleidd66 I didn't know there was a connection there in reverse, very cool!
Slav and Slave do be related, Slave comes from Slav as in rome they became popular slaves
In (I believe) all of the nordic countries the word "slav" translates to "slave". From what I have learned many slavs where taken by the vikings and thus this became a valid term for "slaves". At least in Swedish we have a different, native, very old, word for slaves as well: "Träl", which translates to "thrall" in English.
Love your content! Thank you for your videos really helps me with learning.
Cymru is said "kumree" and does NOT mean friend, it comes from the welsh word cymro meaning welshman and that comes from the brittonic word combrogos which means fellow countryman/compatriot i get we're small but we've got some of the deepest history more people need to learn about our country!
The narrator is Portuguese, we can forgive him for not being able to pronounce Cymru. I am sure there are Portuguese words we wouldn't be able to pronounce, too.
But yes, Cymru does mean countryman. So that's a worthy correction.
@@Runningthroughhistory of course I just wanted to share the correct pronunciation in case others haven't heard it before :)
Compatriot and friend sound pretty close in meaning though, so not that far off.
I think he said Monten. because of youtube censorship?
I’m currently researching my great-great grandfather Avram Temelcoff Stamatoff (anglicized Albert Thomas) who was born in the village of Bouf, now Florina in West Macedonia, which changed hands between Turkey, Greece, Macedonia and the Ottoman Empire between his birth and emigration, and his wife was either Bulgarian or Hungarian so finding records of theirs has been a nightmare - funny to hear you mention that!
I am from Austria and speak German and to me the dutch language sounds like a mix of English and German.
I had no idea you are going to Austria. There are a lot of historic sites to visit in the city. As a fellow history nerd I especially recommend you to go to the Military History Museum of Vienna.
I wish you a pleasant trip!
Fun fact about Vienna: Although it was elected as on of the most liveable city, it was also elected as the unfriendliest. And I would say that people from Vienna are generally indeed a little bit grumpy and unfriendly. So, maybe the customer service won't be the same you would expect in restaurants in the US.
And last thing: I wonder what you will think of the southern german Dialects that are spoken in Bavaria and Austria. German Dialects can be very difficult to understand to foreigners. Though nowdays most of the young people don't speak in heavy Dialect.
I wonder whether that is because Dutch tend to use a lot of English now-a-days mixed in. We are certainly not as protective of our language as for example the French. Still, Dutch is the easiest language to learn by a native English speaker, but I think that has more to do with grammar than words.
As a native English speaker I find Dutch so much easier to follow than German. Dutch and German do not sound very similar to me. Dutch sounding mid-way between English and German makes a lot of sense to me.
@@pietersleijpen3662 Well Dutch also has a much more simplified grammar just like English because it doesn't really use the case system anymore (though still more than English does). Dutch and English also did not undergo the German consonant shift, which could make Dutch sound less foreign. On top of that English is of course in large part descended from Saxon, which was also close to the ancestor of Dutch, Frankish
For Russians Ukrainian language sounds like mix of Russian and Polish. And Belorussian is mis of Russian and Lithuanian languages.
My wife and I just got back from Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Amazing how far the three countries have come since 1991. Definitely worth a trip. For a historian a visit to the War Museum in Riga is a must. There is very little about wars that were fought BY Latvia. Most of the museum is dedicated to wars fought by others IN Latvia: Poles vs. Germans, Poles and Swedes, Russians and Swedes, French and Russians, Germans and Russians (twice).
Some VTH to start the day
In greek, France is called Γαλλία ( Gallia), meaning it still derives from ancient Gaul.
10:01 It would be a hard 'k' sound in the times of Caesar and Augustus, but not in the time of the Frankish Empire itself. By that period, we may already speak of Proto-West-Romance languages emerging and even splitting into Old French, Old Spanish and others
I know you mentioned a few countries you plan on visiting, but you HAVE to make it to Czechia and visit Prague one day. It’s one of the most beautiful cities I’ve ever seen and the people there are just the nicest. And if you time it right and not go during peak tourist season you can legit walk around the castle grounds in the evening practically by yourself! Can’t recommend it enough!
I'd like to say thank you Epic History TV, along with Historia Civilis, Vlogging Through History, and Oversimplified; for pulling me through the darkest year of my life and giving me well written, interesting, and highly educational content to sink my teeth into whenever life was too much to bear.
Weird how Finns call Germany «Saksa» thats like refering to the whole United States as «Florida»
It's weird, the larger groups around Germany have different words for it, the countries on the eastern border call it something close to Niemcy (appearantly from originally meaning people that don't speak like us), in France, Spain and Portugal it's close to Allemagne (from Allemanni tribe that they interacted most with), English, Italian and the countries in Balkan appearantly all use a form of Germany (from the Roman name for it), Finland and Estonia name it after the Saxons, and the other nordic countries and the dutch language all use a form of Deutschland (Tyskland, Duitsland)... I think it was General Knowledge or someone similar who had a video about the different names for Germany some years ago
In Greece France is actually called Gallia...which probably comes from the Roman province of gaul...the land of the Gauls
Hey Chris , glad to hear you come to my beautiful country of Austria😊
38:04 I think he was afraid of getting cancelled
Love your content chris🎉🎉🎉❤❤❤❤
18:50 for many germans it even sound similar, at least when it's written an German speaking person could understand most of it. Germans mostly describe it as "drunk German" because it's sound pretty much like this for us. I am also really interested in how you will see the German dialects like Bavarian, Austrian or maybe swabian when you make you Germany trip. I have heard from many especially English speaking people that many of the dialects sound like different languages, especially those pretty heavy ones like Swiss German, Saxon or Bavarian.
If you speak even one of the languages you can understand both (for the most part)
- A Belgian
Another prominent theory is that Suomi comes from the Finnish word for swamp. Finland is pretty much all forest, and about half of it is swampy forest. Having a snowy season when nothing evaporates but all that snow eventually melts into water results in quite a bit of wetland. That, and a fairly flat land making that water stay put rather than flow away.
Hey, unrelated question, Ive really wanted to look more into Harry S. Truman as Ive loved reading Ron Chernow's Grant and I figured Truman would be my second choice of president to look into. Any books or movies or anything that you find do a good job of representing his story?
Hey as an Indiana resident there's a ton of cool stuff in the state when it comes to historical sights. Old Pendleton is one, at The Falls Park there is some civil war stuff. Vincennes is the first fort west of the Appalachians I believe, and the last one would be Connor prairie
Very interesting! Thank you.
My dad was in the military in the 80s and got several things during his time in west Germany. It's pretty cool to have items like that to pass on to my kids that are the products of so much history.
For English linguistic switches can actually “see” one of the major transitions in early US colonial records. Original New England colonies were establishing at the same time a major linguistic shift was happening/coming to its conclusion in England. It’s, unimaginatively, known as “the great vowel shift” in linguistics. Where I’ve seen it shows up in doing genealogy are in early New England birth/baptism/death records. Things like the spelling showing the name “Marcy.” Which, pre-shift is the phonetic pronunciation of the word/name “Mercy.” Later transcriptions of those early records often fail to recognize the linguistic shifts that were happening so either assume a “misspelling due to non-standardized language” or poor handwriting and recorded as “Mary.” There are a few UA-cam videos out there about the “great vowel shift.”
Thanks for the nice words about my country, The Netherlands! As for myself, I really like the USA. The nature and all the space there. I've been there twice now and I really want to go back, met nice people there. I also am very interested in the history, love to listen podcasts about it. (Sorry for my English, not my first language)
Your English is really good, no need to apologise for it.
21:55 recently, I found out that one distant relative is listed as being born in Austria in 1830. That is a very broad area (the Austrian Empire was quite large even in 1830).
it's pretty common for places to be named things like Port port, (or mountain mountain, lake lake, kebab kebab etc.) especially when to languages meet and the "new language keeps using the old word for a place but then add the a descriptor in front (or behind) it. but if the older word was allready a description... you can se how coincidences like these easily pop up.
Hey Chris.
Wondering what your thoughts are on the current xQc controversy, specifically in regards to his "reaction" to Lemmino's JFK video. You did a reaction series to that one, so I was wondering what your thoughts are both on that specifically and on reaction streamers in general.
If you're going to Switzerland, try one of those last steam powered side-wheel ships.
22:00 exactly to be confused with the Helvetica font. It was created there and named after it
I just recently went across Germany and visited Salzburg with my school at the start of this summer. Just letting you know that you are not ready for the beauty of Salzburg. Hope you enjoy your trip!
As a Hungarian speaker, I predicted the pronunciation of Magyarország was going to be incorrect. It wasn’t the only one mispronounced in the native language. Such incredible research and a cool video - but I wonder why a Google pronunciation search wasn’t part of the production.
What about a VTH Holy Land trip??? Double whammy as a Minister and historian!
Love the idea!
@@VloggingThroughHistoryretake Jerusalem in the name of Historical Fuckery
Hey Chris, I don't know if you are interested in weird UFO history but if you ever want to visit the crash site from one of the only government recognized and acknowledged "UFO incidents", I happen to live in Franklin Kentucky. If you are familiar with the Mantell case, then you already know the significance of this. I live only 5 mins from where Thomas Mantell crashed his P-51 Mustang after chasing after a "UFO". In a town as little as Franklin, any chance to share some cool local history is always a major win. We also have an interesting Civil War history. We have one of the oldest still standing Ocatgon style houses in the US that was used as a field hospital to treat both Union and Confederate soldiers. We also have preserved the Inn that was the site of a famous duel between Sam Houston (important player in the Texas Revolution) and General William White. And just one county over, Andrew Jackson had his famous duel with Charles Dickinson. Kentucky, especially on border towns like mine, was the go-to spot for Tennesseans to settles matters with duels since it was illegal in Tennessee.
When I was a teenager in the 1960's I used to listen to "Radio Nederland in Hilversum, Holland." This was the way they announced who the were. So to anyone listening to their short wave radio, Netherlands and Holland were the same thing because they used those names the way we would say Voice of "America" and "United States".
You're right about Caesar being pronounced "Kaisar". It's also where the German word Kaiser and the Dutch word Keizer come from as Caesar was arguably the first "emperor" of Rome
About Francia - at least on the course I took at the university we were taught that if the letters "i" or "e" come after "c" then it's a soft sound. If it's any other letter then we pronounce it with a hard sound.
I liked the aside comment about Flemish and Dutch sounding different and Southern US English and English spoken in Scotland sounding different. I lived in northern England for a year and was travelling in the Scottish Highlands. As I was standing in line to check in at a hostel, the person in front of me was speaking to the clerk at the desk. The person in front of me was from New York City while the person at the desk had a Highland Brogue. They could not understand each other but both could understand me. So I ended up translating from English to English for them.
38:00 I believe he had to shorten Montenegro's name to avoid being demonetized for the N-word
Switzerland is wonderful, I hope you enjoy any future visits. I spent two days in Lucerne, just beautiful, my fondest memory of Europe.
30:17 you MUST react to a video on the Indo European thing. It’s very fascinating.
Bahador Alast hosted a game where Lithuanian contestants would guess the meaning of Sanskrit phrases and vice versa. Very interesting.
Not watched it all yet, cant wait to see what he says about Great Britan.
Franc is still a word used today in french, used when wanting to be straightforward, as you could say "pour être totalement franc" translates to "to be totally honest/straightforward/direct"
It translates to "To be frank" ;P
@@rethla I forgot that it's also an english term, my apologies
I haven't seen my country yet but Ireland gets it's name from Eireann of the daughter of the Tuatha De Danann, yes Ireland is named after a female Eireann Land. The Tuatha de Danann were a magical people and Faerie folk also known as the Sidh or Si pronounced She. Where the name the Banshee comes from Bann Si basically translates as Faerie Woman.
Portugal ultimately meaning "port port" actually makes more sense than you'd think. In English there is a village called Torpenhow and next to is a hill that is supposedly named Torpenhow Hill. Even if the name of the hill is disputed, the name Torpenhow is a compound of Old English torr, Celtic *penn, and Old English hoh, all three of which mean the same: Hill. So the village is called hill-hill-hill and if the hill next to it is indeed called what it is, then it's called Hill-hill-hill Hill. Now this one is a bit under dispute but it's still an interesting example. But English does this all the time, so the island I live on is called Eysturoy but in English I'd not be surprised if it were referred to as Eysturoy island which is redundant as -oy already means island in Faroese. Speaking of the Faroes, the country is often referred to in English as Faroe Islands. Again, this is redundant as the -oe part already means island(s), hence why I always say Faroes or even just Faroe about the islands. Another example is Lake Chad. Well, Chad already means lake in a local language. I am of course aware that we don't know every language on Earth but as I said at the beginning of my TEDtalk, Portugal meaning "port port" is not that farfetched.
And why is the Belgian province next to Luxembourg also called Luxembourg? That's because in 1839 Luxembourg was partitioned and Belgium claimed all of that area.
He has a big boo with Slovenia, he got the flag right but the name he wrote was Slovakia.
Great Fun. As far as Montenegro the city of Kotar probably has the most majestic sea entrance in all of Europe a twisting 27 mile long mountainous fiord. Not well known since it cannot handle the behemoth cruse ships but silver sea and Viking cruise lines can be accomodated.
The Icelandic one is not entirely correct
Naddoddur did in fact name in Snæland, and Garðar named it Garðarshólmi, but it was Hrafna-Flóki, the first man who came here intentionally (barring Irish monks) who named it Ísland (Iceland)
16:30 the original root of the word is derived from the Celtic tribe Volcae living in today's central Germany. In Anglo-Saxon Britain it was later used to mean Celt or Brit, while in German there still is the term "welsch" which nowadays means any people of Romanic origin living nearby. For example in Southern Tyrol/Alto Adige some German speakers use "Walsche" as a derogatory term for Italian speakers.
Wallonia in Belgium and the second half of Cornwall also have the same roots.
As someone who really loves Iceland (but is not Icelandic, I just read up on its history a bit), the explanation in the video about how Iceland got its name is...somewhat lacking. According to Norse tradition, prior to Icelandic settlement (traditionally dated to 874 AD) there were four initial Scandinavian expeditions in the 860s-870s to land on Iceland, most of which gave Iceland different names.
Naddodd was the first one to find the island and he did indeed call it Snaeland, 'snow land'.
The second one (also the first to circumnavigate Iceland and the first to stay the winter there) was a man named Gardar Svavarsson who called it Gardarsholmur, 'Gardar's Island'.
The third one was a man named Floki Vilgerdarson (remembered as Hrafna-Floki, 'raven Floki', and the inspiration for the eponymous character in the Vikings TV show). He spent two winters there, but all his cattle died in the process and so he was forced to return to Norway. HE was the one who named it Island, 'ice land', after seeing drifting icebergs come down from the north, and well, the name stuck.
The fourth explorer was Ingolfur Arnarson, who would a few years later lead the first settlement of Iceland in 874.
All this is according to Norse tradition, so, grain of salt and all.
On the topic of English sounding like different languages if you compare different regions: I love the scene in Band of Brothers in which Hoobler speaks to the English lad in a German uniform. He can hardly understand a word, but I can't blame him, even though I speak to a lot of Brits on a regular basis.^^
Are we all just going to act like that amazing dad joke wasn't slipped in there near the end? 😅
As always, this was a great video, and I learned a lot of interesting facts. Thank you for letting us join in on your journey of knowledge and understanding of history!
Interestingly, Chris mentioned Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia being countries he remembered andcit was strange to see tall rhe new countries where they were, but they only existed for 75 years, being created November and December 1918, and breaking up in 1992/3. The present countries in their place mostly pre existed as either parts of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, or , for Montenegro and Serbia, independant countries
latin speaker here only because ive attended Latin Catholic Mass and took classes to study roman history further its a complicated language as one word can have many meanings and you are correct those Cs are pronounced with a Hard C but are pronounced with a soft C depends on the area and how long back that version of Latin was spoken, I'm half Polish Half Estonian fluent in both languages but I can understand some Finnish words most of it the words are familiar but can't make out what it means and yes please do a video reaction on how far back do we need to go to understand the English spoken but have always wanted to learn olde English yet there are a lot of versions of it
What's also interesting and not frequently thought of or discussed are the origins of the names of continents.
Asia bugged me for awhile, since most of what we now refer to as "Asian" is pertaining to east Asian countries and people, yet the name, as spelled, was Roman... but it was far, far older, used even in Hittite times. Although not entirely sure, Asia probably meant "east' or "land of the east/rising sun"
As you said that in your (and mine) countries disappeared and were created. It reminds me of a forgotten country. A neutral country that was invaded by the Germans during WW1 but never gets mentioned. I talk about "Neutral Moresnet". A country created with the Treaty after the Napoleonic within the Netherlands wars and dissolved in Belgium with the Treaty of Versailles. Its northern border (the tip of a triangle) was at the same place where the Netherlands, Belgian en German border came to single a point.
18:42 Yeah, they do. As a German, I always get a headache when listening to Dutch for too long because my brain tries to understand the words but can't quite manage.
When will be the next that Whiskey and Lemons civil war game episode Chris?
I went to Switzerland a few years ago. absolutely beautiful especially on the skylifts. I was on the Thun lake and went up the Neiderhorn. Everything there is breathtaking. Even the damn Burger King outside of Geneva looks like Van Gogh designed it
Regarding Belgium and the Netherlands, the info in this video is correct but missing something. In Latin the 'Low Countries' as its entirety was translated as 'Belgica' from the 16th century onwards. So New Netherlands (New York, NL americas) was described in Latin as 'Nova Belgica'. This has usually been forgotten and only the 'Belgae' explanation is used from the 19th century onwards to give the independance some substance (oldest trick in the book). Some cool maps can be found as 'Leo Belgicus'.
General.Knowledge channel creator is a my fellow countryman from Portugal. Aí está o meu compadre!
I speak fluent norwegian, I have family there, and I now live there (i'm English by birth) and have done so for 14 years... I didn't know they had two written languages. But apparently they do... Not what I expected to learn from this video.
A good example of an exonym currently in the news is India. India entered English via a Latin transliteration of a Greek word, who named the land after the river Sindhu (Indus). There's talk that India might change its official name to Bhārat, named after the Vedic tribe of Bharatas, referred to in the Vedic Sanskrit hymns (Rigveda) as one of the original kingdoms of Āryāvarta (a term referring to northern India).
I lived in eastern France/western (French-speaking) Switzerland for about a year and a half, which gives some bias, but I think it has one of the most interesting names, because it's 'official' name is the Latin Confoederatio Helvetica, and it's abbreviation is CH (for websites, for instance, the top-level domain .ch, and the ISO banking code for the Swiss Franc is CHF). However, when referring to it, the people will always use the local language equivalent for Switzerland (Schweizer, la Suisse, or svizzero). You might think it's similar to how Americans live in the United States of America but call it America, but it's on a much bigger scale than that--in the US, calling it the USA, the United States or even the U.S. wouldn't really raise any eyebrows, but in Switzerland the official name is ONLY used for 'official' written purposes, like coins, stamps, and legal documents.
On that note, Switzerland is definitely worth visiting! I loved my time there.
(Fun) fact, the Helvetica font was developed by a Swiss designer in 1957
21:00
One thing that is interesting about Germany and its names, that different languages used different Germanic tribes as origin.
Deutsch= Teutonen (apparently base of a name the Italians gave us in medieval times)
Allemagne = Allemannen
Iceland has had several names throughout its history, although its shortest usages were just before settlementation. It was first called Thule by the Greek explorer Pytheas. Then in the mid 9th century came Naddoddur. After him came the Swedish viking Garðar, who circumnavigated the island and called it Garðarshólmur(Garðar's islet), after himself. Finally came Hrafna-Flóki who saw drift ice in a fjord and called it Ísland(Iceland).
I love your videos! Could you please do more sam o'nella academy?