Which Nations are Named for Specific People?

So far I’ve come up with:

United States of America: Named for Amerigo Vespucci

Israel: Named for Jacob/Israel, a character in the Bible

Columbia: Named for Christopher Columbus

Bolivia: Named for Simon Bolivar

Greece (Hellenic Republic)): I assume this is related to Helen of Troy. But this is just an assumption and I freely admit that I could be quite wrong on this point.

What others am I missing?

And by the way, I’m looking for nations named for specific people, so nations named for tribes or ethnic groups (Scotland, Afghanistan, for example) don’t really count, unless the name in question can be traced, either via legend or via fact, to a specific person bearing the name (Israel, for example).

Perhaps Georgia – not the one named after King George, but the one named after Saint George.

[

](Rhodesia - Wikipedia)

CMC fnord!

Venezuela is also named after him. Full name: Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela . Here is a list of some others.

Zimbabwe used to be called Rhodesia:

‘The colony was named after Cecil Rhodes’

And Tasmania (formerly Van Diemen’s Land) counts twice:

‘Van Diemen’s Land was the original name used by Europeans for the island of Tasmania, now part of Australia. The Dutch explorer Abel Tasman was the first European to explore Tasmania. He named the island Anthoonij van Diemenslandt in honor of Anthony van Diemen, Governor-General of the Dutch East Indies who had sent Tasman on his voyage of discovery in 1642’

However, Tasmania is not a country, and never has been: the closest it has been to being a country was during 1856-1900, when it was a self-governing British colony.

A number of British territories and former colonies have such names, based either on explorers or named after notable people:

Bermuda (Juan de Bermudez)
The Falklands (one of the Viscounts of Falkland)
Pitcairn (after the sailor who spotted the island)
South Georgia & South Sandwich Islands (George III & 4th Earl of Sandwich)
Kiribati (local pronunciation of ‘Gilberts’, Gilbert Islands, named after a British sailor)

(Oh, and plenty named after saints and whatnot: St Helena, the Solomon Islands, St Kitts & Nevis, St Lucia, etc.)

Cleaner link List of places named after people.

[nitpick]Does the USoA really belong on the list?
Is the USoA named for Amerigo Vespucci, or is the USoA named for the continent of N. America, which is named for Amerigo Vespucci?[/nitpick]

CMC fnord!

China is believed to be derived from the name of the Qin Dynasty, founded by Qin Shi Huang.

The Phillipines, named for King Philip II of Spain.

Dominican Republic, named after St. Dominic. (**Dominica’s ** name, however, is derived from Sunday).

Belize, believed to be derived from a corruption of the name of the pirate Peter Wallace

Saudi Arabia, Muhammad bin Saud

El Salavador, named after “The Savior,” Jesus Christ.

Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Christopher

Saint Lucia, Saint Lucy

Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Saint Vincent Pallotti.

San Marino, Saint Marinus

**São Tomé and Príncipe **,Saint Thomas

**Mauritius **, Maurice of Nassau

Solomon Islands, King Solomon

Marshall Islands, British captain John Marshall

**Seychelles **, Jean Moreau de Sechelles

No, not Helen of Troy (Ἑλένη), but there is no firmly accepted etymology for the word “Hellas” (Ελλάδα). There have been people who referred to themselves by that name for millenia, but we don’t really know where the word originated from.

El Salvador – Jesus, of course

Uzbekistan – One of the few cases where a nation was named after its founder, Oz Beg (the variant in the name is a trick of Altaic-language vowel-change rules), who united a group of Turkestani peoples under his rule.

Greece was not named after Helen of Troy but after the eponymous Hellen, male, almost certainly fictitious and a relative (in the myths) of the two brothers and their two nephews who gave rise to the four main Greek clans: Achaians, Dorians, Ionians).

Georgia is a Western coinage for the country called in its own tongue Sakartvelo or in Russian Gruziya.

Assyria, the long-lived north Iraqi empire of pre-Classical times, was supposedly named after Asshur (mythical hero, identified as a Cushite in the Bible). However, it appears to have been named after the city Asshur, its first capital, and the folk hero a case of toponymic myth).

Lorraine, an autonomous duchy for an extended period in early medieval times, was named after one of Charlemagne’s sons in a rather strained sequence: He was Lothair, and was Emperor in succession to Charlemagne, but with his two brothers having the heartlands of France and Germany and his personal domain a strip running from the Netherlands through Lorraine to northern Italy. This area was named Lothairingia, and after the separation of Italy under his son, the northern portion was divided into Upper and Lower Lotharingia. The lower region segmented off under the Counts of Holland, Louvain, etc., and the upper region eventually became the area now termed Lorraine, the name losing consonants with aplomb.

San Marino was named after its founder, St. Marinus.

Half the West Indies are autonomous, “free association,” or independent nations named aftr someone, usually the saint on whose name day that particular island was discovered.

Regarding Greece, there was an eponymous Hellen after whom some claimecd Hellas was named (Nothing to do with Helen of Troy – no one claims the name came from her). A lot of people are suspicious of this – it seems more likely that “Hellen” was created to be the eopnymous ancestor of a nation named Hellas.
There are a lot of ancient countries said to be named after a person, most or all of which are suspect today:

Rome – after Romulus

Persia – according to Herodotus, named after Perseus (the guy who killed the Gorgon). According others, after someonme names Perses. I don’t think the Persians themselves bought any of this.

I believe a lot of the tribes in the Old Testament were said to be named after a founder (and by extension, the countries were named after the founder, too) – the Moabites and Amalekites and so forth.
Rghodesia was the first that came to my mind, but it’s been done already.
If you go by states, we have quite a few:

Virginia – named after Elizabeth I, the “Virgin Queen”

Delaware – named after Lord De La Warr, and after the Lenape Indians that the British renamed “Delawares”

Maryland – after Queen Mary

Georgia – after King George (And Russian Georgia, also named after a George)

Pennsylvania – after William Penn

Louisiana – After King Louis

Washington, after George

We almost had the state of Franklin, name after Ben.

If we accept this, then Romania, once a Roman colony, qualifies as well.

Not an independent nation, but the Virgin Islands are named after 11,001 people: St. Ursula and the 11,000 virgins.

The former British colony of Vancouver Island was named for Captain George Vancouver.

While I could be mistaken in the etymology I believe that the Ottoman Empire, named after Uthman I, would fall under this category.

Almost certainly, though which Ozbeg is slightly equivocal. The common hypothesis is that it was named after Ozbeg ( r.1314-1341 ), the most important khan of the Golden Horde after the founder Batu, who definitively converted the GH to Islam. This also lines up with when the name starts appearing, from the mid-14th century. But the actual origin is completely obscure.

Close, but a little off. Charlemagne’s grandson Lothair, eldest son of the emperor Louis I the Pious ( Charlemagne’s only son to survive his father ), eventually became emperor and king of “Middle Francia”. Meanwhile his younger brothers Louis the German and Charles the Bald became kings of “East Francia” ( roughly Germany ) and “West Francia” ( roughly France ) respectively. When emperor Lothair I died, he partitioned his realm into thirds - his eldest son Louis became king of Italy and emperor as Louis II, his second son Lothair became king of Lotharingia, his third, Charles, king of Provence.

It was this second Lothair, a great grandson of Charlemagne, after whom Lotharingia was named. After his childless death it was largely partitioned between Louis the German and Charles the Bald. Louis the German’s son, Louis the Younger, substantially reunited Lotharingia as a territorial unit before his death in 882. After various vissitudes it was definitively annexed to Germany as a duchy by the new Liudolfing king Henry the Fowler in 925. It wasn’t partitioned into Upper and Lower Lorraine until 959, after the death of Henry’s son Bruno, duke and Archbishop of Cologne.

  • Tamerlane

Except that China never called itself China. Depending on how you Romanize the pronunciation, it’s something like Chung-kuo, meaning “Middle Kingdom” as most of us learned in history classes.

Father Christmas has two islands named after him.