Supposedly, when Christopher Columbus first found the South American mainland, the rivers he sailed into reminded him of the canals of Venice… which inspired him to called the land he found “Venezuela.”
Not quite what I’m asking for, but interesting nonetheless. Had Columbus spoken to a Venezuelan and asked the name of the country and the native gestured toward the river and said “Venzwayla” and Columbus took it to mean the entirety of the country.
Would you mind sharing both stories? They sound interesting.
The story with Nome, Alaska is that some explorer spotted this little cape and drew it on the map he was making. He didn’t have a name for it, so he just wrote in “? Name”. Later on, others misread this as “C. Nome” and thought the place was called Cape Nome.
The story with kangaroos is that European explorers asked the Aboriginees what that strange animal was, and received the reply, “kang-a-roo.” What they didn’t realize that this means “I don’t know.”
The English word “Japan” (as distinct from “Nihon” or “Nippon”, as the Japanese say it) supposedly comes from Europeans asking in China what that country over there was called, and then typically badly transliterating it. According to Wikipedia, what the Chinese said was their pronunciation of the same two characters that produce “Nippon” in Japanese (these two characters might be loosely translated as “where the sun comes from”, i.e. the easternmost country.
Is there a more accurate transliteration of those two characters in what was probably Cantonese?
Roddy
Nippon is Japanese. In Mandarin it’s pronounced “Zr Ben” (pin yin Ri Ben). In Cantonese, it’s Yat Boon. Japan seems to fit within tolerance of all of those.
edit: and the a tighter translation would be “sun origin” with the Nip, Ri, Yat, and Jap part being “sun”, and the pon, ben, boon, pan part being “origin”
When the British showed up at the current location of the capital of West Bengal, an officer waved his arm across the freshly mown fields and asked in English “What is the name if this place?”
A scrawny farmer replied in Bengali “kal kata” – “it was cut yesterday”
There are various stories about what “Panama” means. Some say it means “an abundance of fish,” others that it means “abundance of butterflies.” It’s also the name of a common tree. So odds are that the word originally just meant “a lot of.”
In the English county of Kent, there is a small village called Thong. Long ago I read of a legend that it got its name from an incident involving one of the early leaders of the Germanic (Angles, Saxons, Jutes) invasion of Britain, Hengist. After doing some favor for the British king, Vortigern, Hengist requested a reward of some land, but after argument he agreed to accept only as much land as he could encompass with an ox hide. The Briton thought this would mean only a few useless square feet, but Hengist cut the hide into small thongs, tied them together, and with them was able to encircle a small hill, large enough to build a fort. This foothold helped to enable the success of the eventual Germanic invasion.
There are versions of the story online here and here. Although they both differ slightly from each other and from the version I remember. The first places the events as most probably in Lincolnshire (although this is odd as Hengist and Vortigern are more usually associated with Kent) or, if Kent, with the village of Tonge (a different Kentish village). The second does not mention the village at all, and has Hengist being upfront about his intention to make the hide into a long thong from the get go. I like my version better.
Winnebago for “water.” James Duane Doty gave the name to the locality. It is claimed that the name originated in the answer which an old Native American once gave to Governor Doty, when the latter pointing to the Fox River asked “What is that,” – meaning to ask the name of the river. The Native American, supposing that he wished to know what water was called in the Winnebago language, answered “neenah” which means water or running water.
Okay, here you go. “I have no idea what you’re saying” (in response to Columbus or a contemporary explorer asking “What, native people, is the name of this land?”) is just one of four theories, each of them about as likely and plausible as the others. The link provides the four phrases in Maya. The other three possibilities are almost as goofy. None of them refer to the region, nor really to any place on it. (It’s unlikely there WAS a native name for the whole peninsula – the closest thing these days is “Mayab”.)
