countries named after people

[curwin]

I found the following on this site:

http://www.kheta.ge/georgia/georgia.html

We should like to say a few words should be said about the name the Georgians identify themselves with. The Georgians call themselves “Kartveli”. This name goes back to the designation of the central part of East Georgia, Kartli; hence, the common term all Georgians identify themselves with: Kartveli, i.e. an inhabitant of Kartli. Later on, this common designation served as the basis for the name of the whole country: “Sakartvelo” i.e. “the land in which the Kartvelians (Georgians) live”. Hence, “Kartuli ena”, i.e. the Georgian or the Kartvelian language; accordingly, the study of Georgia and everything connected with it is called “Kartvelology”. As to the other peoples, they had their own terms for the country and its inhabitants. The Old Persians called East Georgia “vrkana”, and its population “vrk”(the etymology is vague). The Armenian term for the Georgians “vrats” is of the same origin. In the pre Persian the country is called “gurgjan”, and its inhabitants are known as “gurg”. In the Arabic-Syriac the form “djurdj”, “djurzan” is used, the Turks use “gurdji”(a Georgian) and “Gurdjistan”(Georgia). This form was the basis for the Russian terms of “Gruzia” and “gruzin”. The forms “Georgia”(Lat.), “Georgie” (Fr.), “Georgia”(Eng.) and “Georgien” (Ger.) wide- spread in European languages since the also 13th century, derive from the Turkish 'gurdji" (13th century).

[Johanna]

*All right, this is wandering into deeply obscure reaches of ancient philology, but here goes…

How do we get from Old Persian vrk to Middle Persian gurg? Actually, the Old Persian form could also be spelled “wrk”, pronounced something like “work.” There was a shift from Old Persian initial w- followed by r to gwr- to gur-. The final -k softened to -g.

The shift of initial w- to gu- is also seen in Frankish words in French: compare “ward” and “guard”, “warranty” and “guarantee”, “war” and “guerre”. Old Persian wered or wred ‘rose’ became New Persian gul. It also was loaned into Arabic as ward, into Hebrew as vered, into Homeric Greek as brodos, and into Attic Greek as rhodos, which eventually became our “rose.”

Arabic doesn’t have a /g/ sound, so it substituted j (which was historically a Semitic g anyway). This turned gurg into jurj, which explains how we got “Georgia.”

What did the old name vrk come from? Perhaps some ancient tribal name in that area of eastern Georgia. Perhaps from the Proto-Indo-European root *wlkwo- ‘wolf’ which became v.rka in Sanskrit, varka in Old Persian, and gurg in New Persian. Also became Greek lykos, Latin lupus, and English wolf. A tribal totem?