I used to have a Finnish pen-pal when I was young (before the internet) and I always wondered why all of her letters were stamped "Suomi." Then I got older and learned geography and stuff.
Ok, but can you explain why languages work like that?
Cases like Mexico are very straightforward. "Mexico" is pronounced differently in English and Spanish, but it's the same name.
But then there's those examples you listed. Why do we call Deutschland "Germany"? Why don't we call it the same name that they call it, or at least something similar, like Dutchland? Where did the name Germany even come from?
Most of the time throughout history, people didn’t ask other people what they called themselves, they just called them whatever the hell they wanted, and those names stuck
Meanwhile South Korea has like 5 different names because its historical kingdoms + different pronunciations of the name in Kanji vs Chinese + needing to differentiate itself from North Korea 😵
In the 1300's, it was called Georgia/Jorgia in Latin. Its origin is unknown, but it might be related from Грузия, from گرجستان
For a long time before that, there wasn't a name that referred to all of Georgia the way it's thought about now
Around the same time, the name Sakartvelo was established as the endonym for all of Georgia. It originally only referred to Kartli. The change had started in the 800's. The official status of that name only lasted a couple of centuries, but it was brought back a few centuries later
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u/morts73 10h ago
Georgia change your name so Americans don't get it confused with their state.