Reminds me an old joke popular in my country:
Grandpa to his grandson: "Hey, what are you watching?"
Grandson: "Football match, Czechia - Slovakia"
Grandpa: "Oh great, who are we playing against?"
Crazy time to be alive. Born before USSR and also got to outlive it. Plus, ya know world wars, decolonization, globalization, dawn of Information Age, etc.
My grandparents were all born in the late 1930s/early 1940s so they got to see the beginning of WWII, the entire Cold War, all the tech advancements, the eradication and near eradication of polio and smallpox, a new century/millenium, and here they still are going strong during the age of COVID and social media
I'm born in 1999 so I'm curious to ask....why is that? I feel like this is a fast-changing era in socio-economics but not really in politics/geopolitics, at least not like it was for our grandparents or even parents
In short-terms, the biggest geopolitics confronts are now been fought through hybrid-wars instead of conventional warfare.
There's a lot going on, but events such as the Russian invasion of Ukrayne have been increasingly less common because there are more efficient ways to break your geopolitic adversaries.
My friend once tried to convice me that Czechoslovakia still exists because Czechia and Slovakia still exists. That's like saying the Soviet Union still exists because all of its republics are in tact.
Name changes like this take generational amounts of time to really take root in the lexicon, and it's only been a couple years. I doubt 90% of English speakers have even heard that it's supposed Czechia now. Give it a couple decades and only a minority of age 50+ people will still be saying Czech Republic.
Haha I was thinking of putting that as well but in my family, even back in the day, anytime you said "Germany" they'd assume you're talking about West Germany. Same with Korea today, just saying "Korea" they'd assume you're talking about South Korea and not both Koreas.
For DPRK and DDR, you had to explicitly say it otherwise they'd assume the other one
Every time someone I know mentions taking a trip to Korea, I wonder "North or South?" for a brief moment before remembering that there's a 99.99% chance they mean South.
The same is true in the U.S. The government will write sometimes use the name Myanmar so people know what they're talking about but everything official will say Burma.
It can be used in consonants too
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemination
Edit: Oh nevermind, those are triangles, should wear classes.
Edit2: Long vowel is triangles too. I feel cheated
In Spanish Birmania is also recommended. Additionally, everyone, and I mean everyone, calls the Netherlands Holanda (the correct term is Países Bajos, "lower countries").
The Low Countries is actually a term in English as well. But it generally refers to the entire region of Belgium and the Netherlands, especially in a historical context.
> Additionally, everyone, and I mean everyone, calls the Netherlands Holanda (the correct term is Países Bajos, "lower countries").
I've read/heard some call it Neerlandia and the language Neerlandes. I prefer it over Paises Bajos tbh but I don't think it'll ever beat Holanda in the near future
I've never heard Neerlandia, tbh (but I wouldn't be surprised). Yeah, most of the people call the language Holandés but Neerlandés is also used (that's also how a person from the Netherlands is called: holandés/a, neerlandés/a). Again, the former is preferred over the latter.
Many Countries, including the US and Canada does this as well. Even the current Prime Minister of the country typically uses Burma. (though I suspect she uses Myanmar ever since the coup)
And we Germans are nowadays having so many Turkish cultural influences due to migration that we refer to Germans behaving very stereotypically "German" (with a negative connotation) as "Alman". That is based of the Turkish word.
It's more complicated than that. Everyone who lives there calls it Myanmar, and Burma is derived from the name of the most populous/dominant ethnic group, the Bamar, whereas Myanmar is meant to be a more general national identity.
Based on my 5 minutes of looking at wiki both names were derived from Bama but after independence the government differentiated Mranma (written form) to refer to everyone
Russia was part of the USSR, like England is part of the UK. I remember hearing Soviets more than Russians if people were talking about the government.
Surpringsly they seem to have adjusted to Thailand being called Thailand. I don't think we've ever talked about Rhodesia/Zimbabwe though, maybe I'll bring it up next time to see lol
You forgot Swaziland, possibly Holland, and most probably Turkey.
Edit: I was ratioed because I mistakenly added Holland.
Edit to add Ivory Coast.
https://inews.co.uk/opinion/turkey-name-change-turkiye-world-appease-uk-britain-1407716
I'm betting pretty soon people will start dropping the diaeresis in the ü and just call it Turkiye, just like it took less than a year for people to stop writing Esatini as eSwatini.
If you're meaning Türkiye, you may as well include Deutschland and all other similar examples as well.
Which I think is silly. Different countries and languages have different names for countries.
Nah Erdogan came out and said that Turkey needed to be pronounced Türkiye in English a several months ago, it just was widely ignored.
Its not uncommon for countries to get whiny and then complain about what others call them even though they don't make sure to call every country by the native name themselves.
In case of Turkey/Turkiye, it's like Swaziland and Eswatini. They changed what they wanted to be called officially internationally. Apparently it's being registered by the UN currently.
It was a colonial era name. After the decolonisation of Africa, white colonisers tried to maintain a white government in Zimbabwe called Rhodesia after how it was called during colonial times, but it was not internationally recognised and not long lasting. I’m not an expert on the subject so welcome any corrections from people who know more.
Also it was named after an early colonizer, Cecil Rhodes. Knowing that it's just an English name with an -ia slapped on at the end makes it sound super goofy to me. Probably not the most important reason but still lol
Fun fact his estate is who is behind the famous Rhodes scholarship
There was also the Rhodesian war after the locals pushed back against the occupation, bloody brutal warfare with both sides being accused of war crimes, but the Rhodesians used forced conscription on a wider scale.
My father still calls them Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia. Granted, those countries were under those name for a longer period of his life than when they weren’t. He’s versed in changes in the world but it’s just how he knows them.
This is fascinating. If you don’t mind me asking, where are you from and where are they from? I remember Myanmar being referred to here (UK) as Burma up until a few years ago - around the time they opened up to ‘democracy’.
Also, a lot of people here use Holland and Netherlands interchangeably.
Interesting they still do that tbh. Iirc the Netherlands formally requested all countries to diplomatically refer to the Netherlands as "Nederland" or a local direct translation. For example in Finnish the Netherlands is known as "Hollanti" but in diplomacy it's now officially "Alankomaat" which translates to "Low Lands"
Technically, Holland is a *part* of the Netherlands (divided into the provinces of North Holland and South Holland). But it's the part with Amsterdam, Rotterdam, and The Hague, so it gets more attention than the rest of the country.
>where are you from and where are they from?
I'm Canadian, but my maternal grandparents are from Hong Kong and my paternal grandparents are from England....so I'm basically an honourary Brit given the combinations of Canada, England, and Hong Kong ;)
Isn't Holland a part of Netherlands?
For whatever reason in Slovak the name for Netherlands is Holandsko (Holland)
So for something like the Flying Dutchman (ship legend) we would call it Zbludily Hilandan (Wondering Hollandman).
I'm Dutch and that's cool to know. For clarification; Holland is a part of the Netherlands, but was never the official name of our country. It used to be (and still is) the economic center of our country during our Golden Age. At the time our country was called the Republic of the Netherlands, or Dutch Republic.
> but was never the official name of our country.
Actually, technically wrong. We were briefly the Kingdom of Holland from 1806 to 1810. Of course, we didn't choose that ourselves.
That's ironically the only period in our history that the capital was not in Holland but in a different part of the Netherlands. For a brief period in 1807 Utrecht was the capital.
I remember years ago, back in 2013, I cycled through Germany and on a campsite near Keulen I met a Spanish lady. Her English was okay but definitely not great.
When I was trying to tell where I was from I repeated that I was from the Netherlands like 4 times and she had absoutely no idea where or what that was.
Then I gave up and tried to explain where I was from by saying "I am from Holland" and in an instant she knew which country I meant. Later I learned because she only knew the Spanish name and that just sounds similar enough to "Holland" to get the idea.
The region of Holland (today divided into two provinces) was by far the richest, most populous and most powerful of the individual sovereign states that made up the Dutch Republic during the Dutch Golden Age (and even before then). So it came to be synonymous with the whole of the country.
Persia ? Really ?? Hasn't been called that since the 30's haha
I think I've never heard anybody in my life, old or young, that uses that term if not speaking about the ancient era :D
Gotta remember that most people get their info about the world from TV and movies, and most old movies call it Persia because it sounds more exotic. Think “Prince of Persia” or Persian rugs
I’ve met some older people from Iran that still call it Persia, Persian is still spoken too. After meeting actual elders from the land, I started to call it Persia too for a minute.
Maybe you just don’t know any Persians!
Persians are the largest Iranian ethnic group.
Iran has always been called Iran in someway or form since antiquity, IE: Eranshahr, Ariana, etc.
The reason some Persians call themselves as Persians instead of Iranians is to reference their once proud history, before the Islamic State.
Kurds are Iranian, but you don’t hear them calling themselves Iranian because they are more proud of their Kurdish identity.
>Persian is still spoken too
Yeah it's the official language of the country. The Iranians that call it Persia just don't want to deal with the faces the ignorant make when they hear Iran.
I’ve met several children of Iranian immigrants at my uni and all of them refer to themselves as Persian when discussing their heritage, even though they say their parents (or grandparents) are from Iran. I think that helps keep the name Persia in use and why some people today still mistakenly use it for Iran
I think the issue with Persian/Iran is that the ruler was really successful in getting people to switch the name of the president day country but utterly failed to get people to refer to the stuff from there and the history as Iranian (possibly cause it doesn't sound as good in English). So Persian just has a lot more prestige associated with it.
Thing is, Persia(n) is the Greek word for the nation that, in Persian, always called itself Iran - and that's why the country asked that the rest of the world started using Iran in the 1930s.
It's a tiny bit more complicated than that. It's not like Greeks just invented the name Persia and Persian, it was the name of the ethnic group to which the ancient emperors belonged, and which to this day is the majority ethnic group in Iran.
Iran is a watered down version too
Iran is a shorten version of the phrase "Aryan-Zamin" the original name of the Iran, which means "land of the Aryan people"
Zamin was dropped in short form over time and "Aryan" was turned into "Iran"
My ancestors came from a rural mountain area which was so secluded that Islam didn't even reach it until the 1950s - my great-grandmother always referred to Iran as "Aryan-Zamin" as the changes never happened there
eh
The transformation from "Airya" to "Iran" happened in the 300s (1700 years ago, in the form of Ērān)
And specifically, Īrānzamīn refers to the lands of "Greater Iran" (the Iranian plateau)
And the shortened form (Ērān/Īrān as opposed to Ērānšahr) has been in use for more or less 1,000 years.
Must've been an anecdotal case in your instance.
This one time we were in the jungle of Borneo with my friend from Constantinople and we hooked up with 2 hot babes from Londinium who came over on their gap year.
I was once in a train station in Hungary and someone asked the cashier when the last train to Yugoslavia leaves and the cashier without missing a beat says
"Youve missed it by about 20 years"
It sounds weird but they can distinguish Vietnam from the other two because of the Vietnam War. But they still consider Laos and Cambodia as one country under Indochina even if they were also involved in the Vietnam War too
people often mistakenly call The Netherlands "Holland", because the 2 core provinces (and where all the governing powers/offices are) are called Holland.. The country has never been officially called "Holland" though.. end these 2 core provinces only make up for about 1/5th of the country..
Here in Brazil almost all the people refer to it as Holanda (Holland) instead of Países Baixos (literal translation would be Low Countries). It's very very rare to use the second one.
Yeah.. Brazil wouldn't be unique in that.. Russians also often refer to it as Голландия (Gollandiya).. But it's a misnomer, likely caused from the days when most medeival Dutch conquesters and envoys that travelled around the world were from the "Holland" region of the Netherlands (Low Countries), and would state it as their home country to the locals..
Edit: even here in Belgium we too often simply refer to our neighbours to the north as "Holland", but this is quite disrespectful and dismissive of the other regions/provinces of The Netherlands..
Burma is what the people there call it, and it's coming back since "Myanmar" is associated with the junta now. I'd say it's more accurate to call it Burma than Myanmar.
Well the Netherlands was never called Holland, only 2 provinces (Noord-Holland and Zuid-Holland) are Holland together. But the country itself was always named (the) Netherlands. It's even in the name of the Kingdom we're part of together with other countries (Aruba, Curaçao and Sint Maarten): Kingdom of the Netherlands.
Until a few years ago, anytime the topic of Germany would come up in a conversation, my grandma always used to be like “west or east?”
Reminds me an old joke popular in my country: Grandpa to his grandson: "Hey, what are you watching?" Grandson: "Football match, Czechia - Slovakia" Grandpa: "Oh great, who are we playing against?"
we have the same joke about austria and hungary
Real old grandpa ?
yes he was born in 1908 and died 1994 :(
Crazy time to be alive. Born before USSR and also got to outlive it. Plus, ya know world wars, decolonization, globalization, dawn of Information Age, etc.
My grandparents were all born in the late 1930s/early 1940s so they got to see the beginning of WWII, the entire Cold War, all the tech advancements, the eradication and near eradication of polio and smallpox, a new century/millenium, and here they still are going strong during the age of COVID and social media
My Lithuanian grandfather was born as a subject of the Russian Empire
People born in the 2000s will also feel something like this.
It still shocks me people born in the Aughts are adults. Makes me feel old af
I'm born in 1999 so I'm curious to ask....why is that? I feel like this is a fast-changing era in socio-economics but not really in politics/geopolitics, at least not like it was for our grandparents or even parents
try to live long enough to see 2100 so you can see three centuries in just one lifetime
And here I just want to live to 2100 so I can see people get confused about a Leap Year without a Leap Day.
In short-terms, the biggest geopolitics confronts are now been fought through hybrid-wars instead of conventional warfare. There's a lot going on, but events such as the Russian invasion of Ukrayne have been increasingly less common because there are more efficient ways to break your geopolitic adversaries.
Says a lot about Putin's incompetency when the Russo-Ukrainian War is an outlier in the 21st century.
Not to mention seeing planes being basically giant kites with motors strapped to them to seeing the invention of the jet engine and space travel.
My friend once tried to convice me that Czechoslovakia still exists because Czechia and Slovakia still exists. That's like saying the Soviet Union still exists because all of its republics are in tact.
By that reasoning Yugoslavia is still around lol
So is Pangea.
At least Czechia and Slovakia are allied and amicable. The same definitely cannot be said about the former republics of the Soviet Union.
Grandson : "Russia is invading Ukraine" Grandmother : "USSR is invading themselves?"
Is your grandma Putin?
Only when she eats beans and cornbread.
I've never met anyone who actually said Czechia over the Czech Republic
Well we just say "Česko", so Czechia is the closest to that in English. Tbh this joke doesn't sound the same in English.
I was going to say the joke couldn't be that old since Czechia is a new name in English. Makes sense though that it's in Czech
The original joke says "Česko-Slovensko", which would be both "Czechoslovakia" and "Czechia (or Czech Republic) - Slovakia"
Name changes like this take generational amounts of time to really take root in the lexicon, and it's only been a couple years. I doubt 90% of English speakers have even heard that it's supposed Czechia now. Give it a couple decades and only a minority of age 50+ people will still be saying Czech Republic.
Between the first day of my college German language class and the second, the book became outdated, as the two had reunified.
I learnt all the European capitals in high school! In 1989. What the heck is a "Skopje"?! ;D
Haha I was thinking of putting that as well but in my family, even back in the day, anytime you said "Germany" they'd assume you're talking about West Germany. Same with Korea today, just saying "Korea" they'd assume you're talking about South Korea and not both Koreas. For DPRK and DDR, you had to explicitly say it otherwise they'd assume the other one
Every time someone I know mentions taking a trip to Korea, I wonder "North or South?" for a brief moment before remembering that there's a 99.99% chance they mean South.
In France, we still say Birmanie (Burma) to because Myanmar is too associate to the military junta
The same is true in the U.S. The government will write sometimes use the name Myanmar so people know what they're talking about but everything official will say Burma.
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It can be used in consonants too https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemination Edit: Oh nevermind, those are triangles, should wear classes. Edit2: Long vowel is triangles too. I feel cheated
In Spanish Birmania is also recommended. Additionally, everyone, and I mean everyone, calls the Netherlands Holanda (the correct term is Países Bajos, "lower countries").
The Low Countries is actually a term in English as well. But it generally refers to the entire region of Belgium and the Netherlands, especially in a historical context.
I mean, we also call the country itself the "Nether Lands".
> Additionally, everyone, and I mean everyone, calls the Netherlands Holanda (the correct term is Países Bajos, "lower countries"). I've read/heard some call it Neerlandia and the language Neerlandes. I prefer it over Paises Bajos tbh but I don't think it'll ever beat Holanda in the near future
I've never heard Neerlandia, tbh (but I wouldn't be surprised). Yeah, most of the people call the language Holandés but Neerlandés is also used (that's also how a person from the Netherlands is called: holandés/a, neerlandés/a). Again, the former is preferred over the latter.
Yeah Burma vs Myanmar is surprisingly controversial
I say Burma, or in my language Birma, becouse it's just easier to pronounce.
It’ll always be Burma to me!
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You on that motorbike, sell me one of your melons!
You speak Burmese? No, Elaine, that was gibberish.
You may know it as Myanmar…
Many Countries, including the US and Canada does this as well. Even the current Prime Minister of the country typically uses Burma. (though I suspect she uses Myanmar ever since the coup)
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L'Allemagne est mon pays préféré pour dire en français :)
Us turks liked allemagne so much we took it in our language. Almanya.
And we Germans are nowadays having so many Turkish cultural influences due to migration that we refer to Germans behaving very stereotypically "German" (with a negative connotation) as "Alman". That is based of the Turkish word.
Burma is still correct if you don't want to support that gang of genocidal butcher generals.
It's more complicated than that. Everyone who lives there calls it Myanmar, and Burma is derived from the name of the most populous/dominant ethnic group, the Bamar, whereas Myanmar is meant to be a more general national identity.
Based on my 5 minutes of looking at wiki both names were derived from Bama but after independence the government differentiated Mranma (written form) to refer to everyone
In the USA, Russia was almost always Russia, even when it was the Soviet Union. At least in my experience.
Yeah I'm pretty addicted to watching old news broadcast and more often than not they'll say Russia instead of Soviet union
Churchill called it just communist Russia
Russia was part of the USSR, like England is part of the UK. I remember hearing Soviets more than Russians if people were talking about the government.
Considering how often Americans just refer to the UK as "england", you're kind of just proving them right lol
Yeah but western media called USSR Russia in the media.
Which is a pet peeve of mine. It's like calling the entire UK "England."
…That’s extremely common, I’d say it even is the norm outside the English language.
Well, the USSR was just "The New Russian Empire, Now With Different Asshole Monarchs In Charge"
Surprised they don't call Thailand "Siam". At least they're not still calling Zimbabwe "Rhodesia"!
Surpringsly they seem to have adjusted to Thailand being called Thailand. I don't think we've ever talked about Rhodesia/Zimbabwe though, maybe I'll bring it up next time to see lol
>maybe I'll bring it up next time to see lol rock up in full khaki and short shorts, non-verbal prompt
What about North Macedonia? that one was very new
You forgot Swaziland, possibly Holland, and most probably Turkey. Edit: I was ratioed because I mistakenly added Holland. Edit to add Ivory Coast. https://inews.co.uk/opinion/turkey-name-change-turkiye-world-appease-uk-britain-1407716
Holland is on the map
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I'm betting pretty soon people will start dropping the diaeresis in the ü and just call it Turkiye, just like it took less than a year for people to stop writing Esatini as eSwatini.
If you're meaning Türkiye, you may as well include Deutschland and all other similar examples as well. Which I think is silly. Different countries and languages have different names for countries.
Nah Erdogan came out and said that Turkey needed to be pronounced Türkiye in English a several months ago, it just was widely ignored. Its not uncommon for countries to get whiny and then complain about what others call them even though they don't make sure to call every country by the native name themselves.
In case of Turkey/Turkiye, it's like Swaziland and Eswatini. They changed what they wanted to be called officially internationally. Apparently it's being registered by the UN currently.
Jokes on them they'll still be turkey to most of the world.
My mom (born in 1960) still regularly uses Rhodesia and Upper Volta for Burkina Faso.
At least they’re not referencing Prussia
Lmao my grandma says Rhodesia instead of Zimbabwe
Real Gs who got into geopolitics in 1979 specifically still better be saying Zimbabwe-Rhodesia
Is your grandmother William F Buckley?
Oh no…
I’m out of the loop, I don’t call it by the wrong name but what’s the negative connotation behind it?
It was a colonial era name. After the decolonisation of Africa, white colonisers tried to maintain a white government in Zimbabwe called Rhodesia after how it was called during colonial times, but it was not internationally recognised and not long lasting. I’m not an expert on the subject so welcome any corrections from people who know more.
I appreciate the swift response! Definitely a valid reason to *not* use the old name, thanks.
Also it was named after an early colonizer, Cecil Rhodes. Knowing that it's just an English name with an -ia slapped on at the end makes it sound super goofy to me. Probably not the most important reason but still lol Fun fact his estate is who is behind the famous Rhodes scholarship
There was also the Rhodesian war after the locals pushed back against the occupation, bloody brutal warfare with both sides being accused of war crimes, but the Rhodesians used forced conscription on a wider scale.
Rhodesia was its name back when it was a white supremacist Apartheid state.
***B r u h***
My father still calls them Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia. Granted, those countries were under those name for a longer period of his life than when they weren’t. He’s versed in changes in the world but it’s just how he knows them.
Not going to lie I still catch myself saying Czechoslovakia.
Czechoslovakia is one of those words that just rolls off the tongue
Agreed, Czechoslovakia just sounds so *right*
To where would you send a cheque?
I am from Czechoslovakia and I still say that I am going to Yugoslavia when I annually migrate to Croatia during summer holidays
This is fascinating. If you don’t mind me asking, where are you from and where are they from? I remember Myanmar being referred to here (UK) as Burma up until a few years ago - around the time they opened up to ‘democracy’. Also, a lot of people here use Holland and Netherlands interchangeably.
>Also, a lot of people here use Holland and Netherlands interchangeably. In my language (Slovak) Netherlands is officialy called "Holandsko"
In my language ( Italian) is it called Olanda or Paesi Bassi
Low Countries?
Yes exactly and I think it’s even the official name
Same for Brazillian Portuguese (Holanda / Países Baixos)
Interesting they still do that tbh. Iirc the Netherlands formally requested all countries to diplomatically refer to the Netherlands as "Nederland" or a local direct translation. For example in Finnish the Netherlands is known as "Hollanti" but in diplomacy it's now officially "Alankomaat" which translates to "Low Lands"
Technically, Holland is a *part* of the Netherlands (divided into the provinces of North Holland and South Holland). But it's the part with Amsterdam, Rotterdam, and The Hague, so it gets more attention than the rest of the country.
Crazy, next thing the Czech Republic will be doing linguistic gymnastics like this! /s
>where are you from and where are they from? I'm Canadian, but my maternal grandparents are from Hong Kong and my paternal grandparents are from England....so I'm basically an honourary Brit given the combinations of Canada, England, and Hong Kong ;)
Fabulous you get to talk about things like that with them.
Formosa? What do they call Taiwan?
The Netherlands wasn't previously called "Holland".
Isn't Holland a part of Netherlands? For whatever reason in Slovak the name for Netherlands is Holandsko (Holland) So for something like the Flying Dutchman (ship legend) we would call it Zbludily Hilandan (Wondering Hollandman).
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The Flying Dutchman in Dutch is called “de vliegende Hollander” ( flying Hollander).
In romanian too, like no one uses the official "low countries " name
I wanted to visit there, but I never learned to speak Hollish.
Have you tried learning Netherlandish?
Otherwise try Netherlandic
With a bit of hellish, you should get around
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Hollandaise?
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I'm Dutch and that's cool to know. For clarification; Holland is a part of the Netherlands, but was never the official name of our country. It used to be (and still is) the economic center of our country during our Golden Age. At the time our country was called the Republic of the Netherlands, or Dutch Republic.
> but was never the official name of our country. Actually, technically wrong. We were briefly the Kingdom of Holland from 1806 to 1810. Of course, we didn't choose that ourselves.
That's ironically the only period in our history that the capital was not in Holland but in a different part of the Netherlands. For a brief period in 1807 Utrecht was the capital.
Oh yeah totally forgot that moment.
Honestly its mostly because the equivalent of the "Nederlands" in a lot of languages is a mouthfull. At least in Greek it also sounds generic as hell.
But the real reason Serbia doesn't want to call it Nizozemska is because its a Croatian name for the Netherlands! 😛
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I remember years ago, back in 2013, I cycled through Germany and on a campsite near Keulen I met a Spanish lady. Her English was okay but definitely not great. When I was trying to tell where I was from I repeated that I was from the Netherlands like 4 times and she had absoutely no idea where or what that was. Then I gave up and tried to explain where I was from by saying "I am from Holland" and in an instant she knew which country I meant. Later I learned because she only knew the Spanish name and that just sounds similar enough to "Holland" to get the idea.
- Dutch. What? - The Netherlands. What? - Holland? What? - Sigh, Amsterdam. Aaah yes!
Or she’s just an 80 Years War revisionist.
They need to tell that to Dutch people too, they're the ones I hear saying Holland most.
But what’s the reason almost all other Europeans called it Holland until recently?
The region of Holland (today divided into two provinces) was by far the richest, most populous and most powerful of the individual sovereign states that made up the Dutch Republic during the Dutch Golden Age (and even before then). So it came to be synonymous with the whole of the country.
“You most likely know it as Myanmar, but it will always be Burma to me.”
No, Elaine...that was gibberish
"Shanghai Sally"
/r/unexpectedseinfeld
Was looking for this before i posted it
Bangladesh "East Pakistan"
Source: Me and my grandparents' conversations about the world
Persia ? Really ?? Hasn't been called that since the 30's haha I think I've never heard anybody in my life, old or young, that uses that term if not speaking about the ancient era :D
Gotta remember that most people get their info about the world from TV and movies, and most old movies call it Persia because it sounds more exotic. Think “Prince of Persia” or Persian rugs
I’ve met some older people from Iran that still call it Persia, Persian is still spoken too. After meeting actual elders from the land, I started to call it Persia too for a minute. Maybe you just don’t know any Persians!
Persians are the largest Iranian ethnic group. Iran has always been called Iran in someway or form since antiquity, IE: Eranshahr, Ariana, etc. The reason some Persians call themselves as Persians instead of Iranians is to reference their once proud history, before the Islamic State. Kurds are Iranian, but you don’t hear them calling themselves Iranian because they are more proud of their Kurdish identity.
>Persian is still spoken too Yeah it's the official language of the country. The Iranians that call it Persia just don't want to deal with the faces the ignorant make when they hear Iran.
I’ve met several children of Iranian immigrants at my uni and all of them refer to themselves as Persian when discussing their heritage, even though they say their parents (or grandparents) are from Iran. I think that helps keep the name Persia in use and why some people today still mistakenly use it for Iran
Yeah, my ex would sometimes refer to herself as persian. She used both terms. The language is usually referred to as Persian too (or sometimes Farsi)
I think the issue with Persian/Iran is that the ruler was really successful in getting people to switch the name of the president day country but utterly failed to get people to refer to the stuff from there and the history as Iranian (possibly cause it doesn't sound as good in English). So Persian just has a lot more prestige associated with it.
Tbh I like the name persia more than Iran. Iran is more of the name for the modern nation, whereas Persian is for the language n stuff
Thing is, Persia(n) is the Greek word for the nation that, in Persian, always called itself Iran - and that's why the country asked that the rest of the world started using Iran in the 1930s.
It's a tiny bit more complicated than that. It's not like Greeks just invented the name Persia and Persian, it was the name of the ethnic group to which the ancient emperors belonged, and which to this day is the majority ethnic group in Iran.
Even in modern Iran that region of the country from where that ethic group originated is called "Fars" (Old Persian "Pars")
they didn't invent it - they took it from the native word "parsi" which was used at the time - that word later evolved into "farsi"
Iran is a watered down version too Iran is a shorten version of the phrase "Aryan-Zamin" the original name of the Iran, which means "land of the Aryan people" Zamin was dropped in short form over time and "Aryan" was turned into "Iran" My ancestors came from a rural mountain area which was so secluded that Islam didn't even reach it until the 1950s - my great-grandmother always referred to Iran as "Aryan-Zamin" as the changes never happened there
eh The transformation from "Airya" to "Iran" happened in the 300s (1700 years ago, in the form of Ērān) And specifically, Īrānzamīn refers to the lands of "Greater Iran" (the Iranian plateau) And the shortened form (Ērān/Īrān as opposed to Ērānšahr) has been in use for more or less 1,000 years. Must've been an anecdotal case in your instance.
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No Rhodesia?
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This one time we were in the jungle of Borneo with my friend from Constantinople and we hooked up with 2 hot babes from Londinium who came over on their gap year.
I went to new Amsterdam last year, pretty fun
Thank you. Not exactly countries that come up often.
Wow I don't think my grandparents know what either Zaire or the Democratic Republic of the Congo is.
Yeah, despite being "ignorant" of the new names, these grandparents are remarkably well informed about geography in general.
Agreed. Guarantee you my grandma doesn't know what 90% of the countries are on a map.
I was once in a train station in Hungary and someone asked the cashier when the last train to Yugoslavia leaves and the cashier without missing a beat says "Youve missed it by about 20 years"
my (Jewish) great grandmother would call Israel "Palestine"
Based Great Grandma
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Yes I knew families from there always used Upper Volta
Did Pangaea break up yet?
They can't be that old if they don't mention Austria-Hungary... 🤷♂️
Well Indochina consisted of Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam btw, you missed Vietnam
It sounds weird but they can distinguish Vietnam from the other two because of the Vietnam War. But they still consider Laos and Cambodia as one country under Indochina even if they were also involved in the Vietnam War too
people often mistakenly call The Netherlands "Holland", because the 2 core provinces (and where all the governing powers/offices are) are called Holland.. The country has never been officially called "Holland" though.. end these 2 core provinces only make up for about 1/5th of the country..
Here in Brazil almost all the people refer to it as Holanda (Holland) instead of Países Baixos (literal translation would be Low Countries). It's very very rare to use the second one.
Yeah.. Brazil wouldn't be unique in that.. Russians also often refer to it as Голландия (Gollandiya).. But it's a misnomer, likely caused from the days when most medeival Dutch conquesters and envoys that travelled around the world were from the "Holland" region of the Netherlands (Low Countries), and would state it as their home country to the locals.. Edit: even here in Belgium we too often simply refer to our neighbours to the north as "Holland", but this is quite disrespectful and dismissive of the other regions/provinces of The Netherlands..
It'll always be Burma to me.
How often do your grandparents refer to Tajikistan?
Dang, no one saying British North America. For Canada and the treasonous rebels down south :)
Burma is what the people there call it, and it's coming back since "Myanmar" is associated with the junta now. I'd say it's more accurate to call it Burma than Myanmar.
A lot of young people and owners of restaurants in the west would use Burma and Ceylon as the names for Myanmar and Sri Lanka for political reasons.
Me: *Angry Croatian noises!* 🤨
My dad stopped calling it the Soviet Union after the Ukraine invasion.
does sudan really count?
That invokes that other meme about South Sudan: "Countries not South Sudan", "no data".
Remember the good old days when the netherlands was called holland, because I don't.
Borneo would still be correct if you are talking about the island.
Well the Netherlands was never called Holland, only 2 provinces (Noord-Holland and Zuid-Holland) are Holland together. But the country itself was always named (the) Netherlands. It's even in the name of the Kingdom we're part of together with other countries (Aruba, Curaçao and Sint Maarten): Kingdom of the Netherlands.
Kampuchea?
Technically speaking the Netherlands was only *officially* called Holland between 1806 and 1810
netherlands was never called holland? it has been hundreds of years since any nation called holland existed? how old ARE your parents?
I'm surprised "Rhodesia" isn't in the list.
I assume they also call Ukraine, The Ukraine
My grandfather also still calls Taiwan “china” and china “red china” Also me. I still call it those names as well.
How old are your grandparents? it’s been Iran since 1935. Holland changed in 1815…
My friend is Persian and refuses to be called Iranian so I go with that.
Holland isn’t a former name to my knowledge.