Theiling Online    Sitemap    Conlang Mailing List HQ   

Re: CHAT National toponyms

From:J. 'Mach' Wust <j_mach_wust@...>
Date:Friday, September 17, 2004, 19:57
On Fri, 17 Sep 2004 19:17:27 +0100, Ray Brown <ray.brown@...> wrote:

>I am quite sure there are many more such examples. If Mach was indeed >meaning that England got its name from the Angles who were just one of the >several Germanic peoples that settled in England (and lowland Scotland & >parts of Ireland) after the collapse the Roman province, then fair enough. > But I just wondered if............
I didn't. It's just that in several languages I know (actually, all languages I know but English (?): German, French, Spanish), the most usual way to refer to the UK is by saying _England_ (in the respective languages). Actually, _Great Britain_ is just another such toponym, since originally, British only referred to the Celtic people (whereas _Welsh_ could have referred to both the Celtic and the Romance people on the island if there were any Romance at all). It's very common that a country is named after a part of it, but a name that goes the other way round, that a country is named after a region of which it forms a part, seems to be the exception. kry@s: j. 'mach' wust