Australopithecus means “southern ape”
Australia probably has the word “south” tucked in there as well
Austria seems to also, but the Austrians call their own country “Oesterreich”. Ill be damned if that doesnt look like “eastern empire”.
Whats the deal here?
last one- eastern empire.
jb
But does the English word “Austria” mean “south”? Its this contradiction Im asking about.
The English word “Austria” means the country that its natives call “Österreich.” There’s no contradiction here.
nope. ‘Austria’ is the english phonetic version of the german ‘Osterreich’. i forget the term for bastardizing a word like so. it’s not a cognate… shit, anyway, they said “Osterreich”, we heard “Austria”, and there you go. of course, i’m sure it’s more complicated than that, but hey- what can you do?
‘australis’ is latin for ‘south’. notice that the ‘-a-’ immediately follows the ‘-tr-’. with etymology, little things like that are a huge deal. austria doesn’t have that ‘-tra-’.
jb
Just to add some trivia:
North in latin was Septentrionis, referring to the 7 stars of Ursa Minor, the Little Dipper. In Chinese it is Bei (as in Beijing)
South in Latin was Australis. In Chinese it is Nan, as in Nanjing.
East in Latin was Orientalis from the word “rise”. In Chinese it is Dong, as in Dongjing.
west in latin was Occidens, from the word meaning “fall, die, set”. In Chinese it is Xi, as in Xi’an.
Maybe someone can give the origins of the English and French words.
Little History: You may thing its is odd, since Ausatria is South of Germany. But the area first got that name by being the Ost-Mark, settled by soldiers of Karl der Grosse (the bastardizing Frenchmen call him Charlemagne)
A. Österreich in literal translation means the Eastern Realm. The date when this name came into common usage is highly disputed. The first mention of the name is in a document from 996 AD where the Holy Roman Emperor Otto III refers to “regione vulgari vocabulo Ostarrichi” (regions called the Eastern Realm in common speach). What he means exactly by that is uncertain. Clearly these regions at the time encompass number of different units variously in conflict with each other, why it is improbable that this should infer some sense of communality, but most probably refers to a geographic directional description.
A region, roughly equal to Austria becomes an independent political unit of any sort for the first time in 1156 when Emperor Frederick Barbarossa creates the Duchy of Austria as independent from Bavaria. When the Habsburgs take power over the Empire in 1278 it is still doubtful that the name is in common usage, although it is certain that it is in academic usage. In the later Habsburg history the name slowly takes on an official and common meaning as a compound part of the name Austria-Hungary.
Nationalistic segregation within Austria-Hungary only takes strong root in the latter half of the 19th century after the loss of the Sven Weeks War in 1867 which initiates the crumbling of the Empire in an obvious way. It is only at this time that any popular sentiment equal to ‘we the Austrians’ arises. As a matter of fact, despite the creation of the Dual Monarchy in 1867 (which separates Austria and Hungary yet keeps them under one rule) the people in modern Austria are pretty late in that development, and it is in the provinces like Serbia and Bosnia that it starts. Austria as we know it is created only in 1919 after the defeat of the Central Powers in 1918.
Today the nationalistic myth dates Austria as one millennium old due to Emperor Otto’s document. This is highly controversial considering that the Habsburgs and their people didn’t clearly see modern Austria as an independent unit, nor was the geographic region it encompasses always the heartland of the Habsburg Empire, which shifted as various Emperors changed their mind as re the seat of government - mostly between Prague, Innsbruck and Vienna. Therefore the name should be seen for what it is, a practical way to describe a variety of fiefs within a discrete geographical region that played a significant part as a trading chip in the geo-political games of Imperial Europe.
B. Austria in English is just a phonetic version of the German name Österreich as already noted.
Realm and Reich may be related words also.
Perhaps “realm” is related to “rex” as well, as in kingdom. Then it would basically mean “empire” which translates as “Reich” in German.
If “realm” is related to “rex” as in king, then it basically means “kingdom,” not “empire.”
“Rex” is from the Latin word for “king.”
“Emperor” is from the Latin “imperator,” a title that was created specifically to indicate that the holder was not a king.
Kind of, sort of and mostly yes… but no.
‘Realm’ means kingdom, domain or sphere and comes from the Latin ‘regimen’ which means ‘rule’.
‘Reich’ means more or less the same thing and has the same origin. The confusion arises because ‘Reich’ also means ‘empire’ in German.
(rex and regimen are obviously related as well, but since it’s rex’s cousins in political geography we’re dealing with… let’s leave the king aside for the moment)
The fact that the name Österreich predates Austrian-Hungarian imperial times by several hundred years is what indicates that it does in fact have the lesser meaning only denoting a cross regional domain. Remember from my earlier post that the first political unit with the name was a duchy. A little weird with a duchy called an empire as would be the case with the Duchy of the Eastern Empire… The Duchy of The Eastern Domain makes more sense, don’t you say?
Sparc
I’m a little slow… but eventually the coin drops. So there I am having my dinner when somewhere between the filet and the cheese my claret suddenly starts tasting watery as all my senses get hijacked by afterthought and sudden realization (the deep reds don’t take lightly to pondering no matter what the intellectual Left tells you). “Austria…” thinks I “…but isn’t that the name in Latin as well?” Oddly perturbed I wobble over to my blue Moroccan bound copy of “Atlas of Columbus and the Great Discoverers” (you have to love the editors for not including C among the great discoverers) and much to my dismay every map of Europe that I peruse doesn’t have any Austria on it… well maybe this isn’t so astonishing given that Austria is a somewhat landlocked region and that I am browsing 15th and 16th century maps made by seafarers… how bothersome.
One to not be so easily swayed from a task once undertaken, I looked her up in my old faithful Latin books and made a quick Internet double check to confirm that indeed it is as I had suddenly remembered. Austria as a name comes about very early and is the Latinized version of Ostarricchi through the original Germanic root word for east austar which has been deformed a little and given the proper suffix for land, regions and realms -ia which gives us Austria or once again in English; Eastern Realm. Incidentally first uses of Austria dates to shortly after Ostarricchi.
Once the old knob has started wandering in these paths it just can’t stop. So what about this austar business. East and Easter sound frightfully close, don’t you say? Another quick perusal of some literature and a fast search of the American Heritage Dictionary gave me the following: East just like austar comes from the Indo-European root aus- meaning to shine which has also given us aurora and yes the direction in which the sun rises, which would be the east. What about Easter then? Well it is celebrated around the vernal equinox, which used to be the celebration of the dawn goddess Aurora or Ostara in the Germanic tribes. That gave Eostre in old English, which eventually became Easter.
But the OP wanted to know about south and Austria…
I was feeling a bit rummy after having dismissed the whole affair so casually earlier and while revisiting it all, I felt that I should try find that out as well. Unfortunately that one stumped me, as it seems to have stumped the etymologists of the world thus far as well. Auster is the simplest known form for south in Latin and is believed to be named after the south wind, which relates back to the aus- root as well, but by the devils beard that’s as far as we get.
No one seems to know for sure why those pesky Romans used the same Indo-European root word for south that the Germanic language makers used for east when there is a perfectly sensible one that we others used namely sâwel- which means sun. I saw two vague attempts at explanation fly by in somewhat less than reliable sources. One said it was due to the same fact as sun became south in Germanic, since that is where it travels in the sky, hence the south shines, hence aus- or shine, that’s a maybe… The other source proposed that the speakers of the noble Latin tongue had simply botched the idea of the Italian peninsula’s direction on the globe and figured that down was east… now don’t think about that too long, because it hurts after a while.
So in the end the OP is vindicated since aus- gave both east and south and hence the Southern ape does have something vaguely to do with Otto’s eastern provinces.
Sparc
PS. North is from the Indo-European ner- for under or left, which only makes sence when you consider that left is north on an eastward oriented map as they traditionally were. West is from wes-, which means evening and is quite symmetrical with aus- out of the perspective of where the sun goes to bed. DS
I like to pronounce Oesterreich as “Easter egg”.
<vigorous applause> Sparc, that was a wonderfully well-writtten, erudite and entertaining post.
Good one, Sparc; let me top it off by noting that Reich, rich, right, rex, reign, and Hindi raj ‘realm’ and raja ‘king’ all come from the same Indo-European root, *reg-. So you could just as well translate Austria as ‘Eastern Raj’.
But in Turkish it’s called Nemse. 
Could it not have something to do with the German word “Aus” as in “Auslander”(foreigner)? While I like the idea that Austria is just an English pronunciation of Osterreich it’s possible we just borrowed another German group’s name for it. Much like Eskimo is an Iroqouis name for the Inuit (which in itself is merely the name one group gives itself amongst the various northern native populations)
So, based on what Sparc is telling us, we’re really saying “Eastria” without knowing it?
Well yes… it was our first quick and dirty conclusion that Austria was just an Anglicized version of Österreich. However, a bit further down in the thread than CarnalK stayed with us I conclude (under the beneficial effects so elegantly encapsulated by the saying ‘in vino veritas’) that Austria was in fact borrowed to the English from medieval Latin, in which it is identical.
While as Ausländer might at first glance have something to do with all thi; it does in fact not at all. Aus means out and länder is the plural form of land (guess what that means) all together it gives someone from out of the lands, or as we say in the vernacular; ‘a forinr’. Incidentally the word is sometimes used in English where it is auslander. Anyhow out and aus both stem from the Old High German uz which in turn comes from the Proto Indo-European root ud- which means up or out.
Maybe its worthwhile to note at this point that English is more related to German, Dutch and Scandinavian languages than any other language. All of them belong to the West Germanic branch of the Indo European languages, it might seem astonishing when you ponder German words like kreisverwaltungsreferat, but I promise you, it’s a fact. It’s all got to do with Saxons, Anglians, Danes, Normans, a lot of boats, some frivolous sex and a few swordfights.
Indeed we are. The -ia suffix forms nouns in Latin as in Academia, Suburbia, Arabia, Germania, Italia, Umbria, or* Austria* and is the standard way to form regional place names. As for the whole east business and the etymology of Austria it is all available for verification at The American Heritage[sup]®[/sup] Reference Collection, in Julius Pokorny’s *Indogermanisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch * [Indo-European Etymological Dictionary] (Bern, 1959), and various other sources about cartography and Austrian history that I am too lazy to list.
If you prefer a more crackpot explanation to it all you can always side with the Slavic linguist Otto Kronsteiner who like a Don Quixote of the place name sciences battles for the acceptance of the Slavic Ostrik meaning jagged mountains as the origin of Österreich. There sure as Austria is a republic are a hell of a lot of jagged mountains in the country, but he’s nevertheless pretty alone on that position and so far hasn’t convinced anyone except himself and a few others with somewhat dubious scientific credibility due to pretty outspoken political motives.
Personally I’ll just be a boring old Sancho Panza and stick with the simple and logical solutions.
Sparc
Well Sparc your well researched answer definatly trumps my hunch(I was actually reading your post as I was submitting, the server was running so slow I thought I’d stopped it in time. curses). 
We can thank you for some definate ignorance snuffing.
No probs CarnalK, I didn’t mean to come across as if I thought you were being silly. In fact your insert provided an interesting opportunity to make a foray into the shared etymology of aus and out, so I’m glad you didn’t manage to stop it in time.
Thanks for all the kind words all of you, but the pleasure was truly mine. I just love this stuff since it is incredibly indicative of how closely related our human cultures are in the end. When one is forced to deal with a good majority of the languages in the Germanic branch and some Latin branch languages on a daily basis you start seeing patterns of communality that are truly remarkable – even typical Indo-European family traits that run across the branches.
Sparc