Monarch names - do other countries do this?

[Anodyne]

Originally posted by Gangerolf
I would guess "Tanska" was a "finlandization" of scandinavian "Dansk"(=danish)?

Yes, of course!, so that's 4 countires, then...

And names such as Itävalta (Austria) and Alankomaat (Hollanti) are direct translations...
Itä = Öster
Valta = Reich
Valkoinen = White = Bel (slavic) -> Belarussia etc...

And Turku meant a "Marketplace" in (very) old Finnish. There's some logic in everything...

And about George -> Yrjö -translation; I'm not quite sure, but one theory is that the English George is the equivalent of Jorge in Portuguese, and Jürgen in German, and the pronouncing of Jürgen is not too far from the Finnish Yrjö...

[Ecthy]

and we say "Ostgebiete" instead of "Poland", "Lithuania", "Czech Republic" or "weird Russian bit of land up there".

[Heresson]

Double mail, sorry.

[Heresson]

Thanks, Ecth
In one western book I heard a proverb "a Pole is almost a Frenchman". It is wrong. A Pole is much more than a Frenchman. Oh, or at least me.
turku... In Poland there are cities named by nation of uhm
compulsory colons that were their first inhabitants.
F.e. Niemcza (in fact a city which heroically defended against Germans during one war) - of Germans. Turek - probably of Turkish.
I would give You here some nice city names, but Apolyton
doesn't recognize Polish-unique fonts.
One of most popular tonque-twisters is "W Szczebrzeszynie
chrz?szcz brzmi w trzcinie"
Szczebrzeszyn is a city... Never come to Poland! You'll get lost and won't be able to spell your way out of it!

[Richard I]

Older names like Charles = Karl, Henry = Henrik etc. is quite common for earlier monarchs. contemporary names are not translated. This is the norwegian practice.

[Heresson]

Ah, one thing. I remember when I saw it, I almost fell
out of my chair...
In czech language, Holland is "Niskoziemsko"

[Heresson]

Oh, and do You notice that Russian thing? We never say "John" but Iwan....

[Rehsab]

Turku and some country names

Originally posted by Ade
And Turku meant a "Marketplace" in (very) old Finnish. There's some logic in everything...

Yes, Turku comes from the same word stem as Swedish torg (marketplace). If I don't remember wrong, the word originated in old Slavic word turg. Kaupang is an ancient Scandinavian name for a place of trade. It gave Finnish the word kaupunki (town) and can also be seen in Sweden in the form of numerous towns ending with "köping".

Saksa (Germany) comes from Sachsen (Saxony), a region in N Germany.

Ruotsi (Sweden) comes from the Rus, the Swedish Vikings who made long trading voyages through Russia to the Black Sea and also founded Russia. The international and native name Rossija shows this connection.

Venäjä (Russia) probably is derived from vene (boat) and -jä makes it a place name. Estonian for Russia is Venemaa (boat land), so it may be connected with the Vikings' Eastern trade, but the name can also have been in use earlier than that. This is my own explanation.

Oh yes, I love etymology.

PS. Sorry, this partly overlapped your previous post so some of these were kind of clear already.

[Rehsab]

Originally posted by ranskaldan
Chinese does it with every single foreign city, country, or human name that is not in Chinese.

Yeah, that's understandable. Isn't Helsinki "Hel-xin-zhi" in Chinese?

But Stockholm is "Stokkuhoroma" in Japanese!

[Rehsab]

Originally posted by Kassiopeia
But Finnish has gotten much more influence from Indo-European languages then other Ugric languages, methinks.

Yep, though I guess we still can't compete with the Estonians, who haven't invented as many new original words as we have...

Several IE words in Finnish can be tracked down to almost 4000 BC. But we don't know for sure even if the current language groups already existed at that time.

[Heresson]

In fact, in Polish "marketplace" is targ.

[Adalbertus]

Several IE words in Finnish can be tracked down to almost 4000 BC

I'd be seriously interested in the dating methods.

[Rehsab]

Dating languages

Originally posted by Adalbertus
I'd be seriously interested in the dating methods.

I'm not a pro, but I guess they must be very speculative. The estimates can be rather rough since no literature has existed back then.

The dating method has something to do with the estimated average of changes occurring during a certain period of time between languages related to each other. Loanwords are also a great source of knowledge since they can also tell how cultures have interacted, mixed and developed.

[Transcend]

John = Johan = Johannes = Jean = Juan = Giovanni = Ivan