Interesting Stories Behind the Names of These 9 Countries

Names of the countries – History is always interesting and people, who are sucker for it, will never find their wanderlust satiated.

If you are one of them and travelling to different places in the quest for knowledge, we will give you names of the countries that really have interesting stories behind the naming of them.

Like India derived its name from the assortment of river Indus and the Old Persian word Hindu hence called ‘The people of the Indus’ then India, the below mentioned countries too have pretty intriguing history behind their names:

Names of the countries –

1 – America:

America derived its name from Amerigo Vespucci who happens to be an Italian explorer who challenged the concept that Columbus invented America. He rather said that where Columbus sailed in 1942 was a different part of the continent.

2 – Kenya:

Kenya derived its name from Mount Kenya which was given by Dr. Johann Ludwig Krapf. He was a German missionary to see Mount Kenya for the first time in the year 1849, a year after the discovery of Kilimanjaro.

3 – Argentina:

The name is derived from a Spanish adjective meaning ‘Silvery’ which is traditionally called Argentine in English, in Latin American Spanish, it is called Argentum, the feminine meaning of ‘Silver’ which has as Greek-Hellenic meaning.

4 – Australia:

The Dutch navigators pointed out Northern, Western and Southern coasts of the place during 17^th century and named the continent ‘New Holland’, thereafter an English explorer Matthew Flinders gave it the name Australia.

5 – Turkey:

The name Turkey derived from the medieval Latin Turchia . The Ottaman Empire that ruled in Turkey was generally referred to as Turkish empire and the name perhaps stemmed from that.

6 – Singapore:

Singapore gets its name from Singa Pora which means the lion city in Sanskrit. It was previously called Temasek where a Sumatran Prince called Sang Nila descended and saw a lion called ‘Singa’ so he named the island ‘Singapura’.

7 – Pakistan:

Pakistan was previously named as Pakstan by Choudhry Rahmat Ali who was a movement activist therein. In the aftermath, it was named Pakistan because it is the land of Paks, a homeland of Punjab, Afghania, Iran, Sindh, Tukharistan, Afghanistan, and Balochistan.

8 – Bangladesh:

Bangladesh was called East Pakistan before its independence from Pakistan. After Indian independence in the year 1947, it was separated with Pakistan by the Radcliffe line and in the year 1971, Bengali speaking people in East Pakistan revolted against Urdu being the national language and fought for a different country altogether which is now called Bangladesh and Bengali is the national language there.

9 – Germany:

Germany is still called Deutschland in the otherwise, which means ‘of the people’. It formed a central part of the holy Roman Empire in the beginning of the 10^th century which later called Germany having derived its name from Latin Germania.

These are the stories behind the Names of the countries – Hope it fed fat your GK a little.