It is rather well known that America does not bear the name of the alleged discoverer
of the New World, Christopher Columbus, but of another Italian explorer, Amerigo
Vespucci. However, only relatively few people appear to know the origin and
meaning of the name of their own country. The Germans, for example, call their
fatherland Deutschland, but very few of them know what deutsch means. Somewhat
more understandably, they also have no clue why the British and Americans call their
country “Germany”, or why the French call it l’Allemagne. Speaking of France, how
many Parisians would be able to tell us why, about 1,500 years ago, their country
exchanged its fine original name, Gaul, for the admittedly equally concise and
elegant “France”? And how many proud Spaniards are aware that the name of their
country means ‘land of rabbits’, and that this name was concocted almost 3,000 years
ago by the Phoenicians, a people from the opposite end of the Mediterranean, an area
now known as the Middle East? Probably only a handful. Finally, what percentage
of Greeks would be able to tell us why we call them “Greeks” while they refer to
themselves as “Hellenes”?
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