So he’s called different things in different languages. Cristoforo Colombo in Italian, Cristobal Colón in Spanish, Christopher Columbus in English. I can handle that.
But I don’t get this part: they speak Spanish in Colombia. Why didn’t use the Spanish version of his name as the base when they named the country?
The same reason North Carolina isn’t North Charlesland. Latin was in back in the day, especially on maps.
If you expected “Colonia” instead of Colombia I´ll inform you that in Spanish that would be syntactically incorrect since a “n” can´t be followed by a “b”.
:smack:
I mean “Colo**n[/]bia”
Oh dear…
TitusBenedictus correctus est.
Ale, have you had one too many of your namesakes?
So why is Bolivia not Bolivaria?
“Colonia,” capitalized, is the name in Spanish for Cologne, Germany. Uncapitalized, it means “colony.” So using this form, rather than the latinized one, could cause confusion.
The comedy troupe The Firesign Theater sang the song “God bless Vespucci Land” as the continent is named for the explorer Americus Vespucci.
What if I told you that I don´t drink alcohol at all, never ever?Honestly, I don´t know if that would work as a vindication or not, though. 
By the way, Ale is short for Alejandro, my name.
But wasn’t Columbus the Latinized version of his name? So maybe the question should be, why isn’t it Columbia, just like our District?
I thought it was Amerigo Vespucci…
Amerigo Vespucci in Italian, Americus Vespucius in Latin.
Looks like Colombia is a hybrid based on the Latinate Columbia, but borrowing the stressed vowel from the Spanish form Colón.
How (and why) does one translate proper names into Latin?
"It’s a joke name sir, like Biggus Dickus…"
Not sure what you mean, but a country or land ending in a masculine is rather odd in latin. Usually (if not all of time) lands are feminine even if named after a male person e.g. roma, patria, america (named after one Amerigo or Americus), hispanola. The i before the a seems to be very popular with place names if it flowed well with the word. Same thing for other word named after males to describe feminine things like carolinian, shavian (Shaw), julian, georgia ect.
actually i don’t think there was anyone named hispanolus. I forgot to delete it when i changed the sentence around.
Simplest case: The name is already a name used by the ancient Romans, or a variation thereof. For instance, Claudia = Claudia, or Mark = Marcus.
Next-simplest case: Find someone famous with your name, and do it the same way they did. Example, Charles = Carolus. Saint names can be a good source, here, since they all have a standard Latin form.
And if that doesn’t work: Make it up yourself, making sure that it ends in -us for a male name or -a for a female, and follows a few other miscellaneous patterns for Latin words.
As for why, it looks cool, and important, and official, and all those things.
oh i get it. Sorry ignore everything I have said. I thought you meant why wasn’t it called columbus.