Re: Country names
| From: | Herman Miller <hmiller@...> |
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| Date: | Thursday, May 8, 2003, 2:25 |
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On Wed, 7 May 2003 08:20:07 -0400, Jeffrey Henning <Jeffrey@...>
wrote:
>As a result, I decided for country names it would be fun to name each
>country after an animal commonly associated with it. In other words,
>rather than borrow "Mexico" as 'Mesicon' it might takes its name from
>the chihuahua.
I did something similar with one of my langs. There might be something
about it in the Conlang archives. The USA was "eagle" (from the bald eagle,
naturally), the Democratic Republic of Congo was either "bonobo" or "okapi"
(I don't remember which), and so on.
Tirelat sometimes derived country names from the names of languages -- so
for instance "Sweden" was "svenskavor", but not regularly -- "kitaivor" was
"China", from the Russian word for "China", instead of something derived
from "hanyu" or "zhongwen". But I've always liked the idea of naming
geographical regions after animals, and Lindiga doesn't yet have any
country names. It might be interesting to try this method for Lindiga
names.
>Here's what I've come up with so far:
>
>Andes Mountain countries = Andean condor
>Belgian Congo = gorilla
Borneo: orangutan.
>Brasil = parrot
Parrot is pretty generically "tropical". Hard to associate parrots with any
one country, although specific kinds of parrots might be better.
Hummingbirds are also widespread in South American countries. The coati, a
relative of the raccoon, might be a good representative for Brazil (but
they're also found in other South American countries....)
>Canada = beaver
>Caribbean islands = parrot
>China (mainland) = panda
>Commonwealth of Australia = kangaroo, koala
>Cuba = pig (because of Bay of Pigs)
>Dominica = frog
>England = lion
>Finland = reindeer
>France = maybe auroch, given the Lascaux cave
>Germany = white stork
>Guatemala = quetzal
>India = peacock, tiger
Indonesia: komodo dragon
>Jamaica = crab (okay, I probably shouldn't let _The Little Mermaid_
>inspire these choices)
Kenya: impala
>Lesotho = crocodile
>Malagasy Republic = lemur
>Mauritius = dodo
>Mexico = chihuahua, monarch butterfly, scorpion
Mongolia: gerbil (while gerbils are widespread, the ones familiar from pet
stores are generally Mongolian gerbils).
>New Zealand = kiwi
>Nippon = crane
>Norway = moose
Sweden should be moose, or you'll confuse the Monty Python fans. For some
reason I associate lemmings with Norway.
--
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