BellaOnline Forums Travel and Culture Chinese Culture Countries names?

I read your article about country names. Do all the countries have "guo" in the names? What about:
Poland
Hungary
France

do they have also interesting names? Do any countries have... negative sounding names?

Jaga,

Thanks for reading the article. Glad you liked it. Not all countries have guo in their name. There are "negative" names for certain countries but they are more like derrogatory nicknames than anything else. Most are play on words and sounds.

France is "Fa Guo" -- lawful country

The other two countries don't have guo in them as they are fairly "newer" to the Chinese world. So as time went on, the Chinese picked names that sounded like the country name and kept the references to nice things as we do with most conversion of Anglicized names to Chinese ones. So...

Poland is "Bo Lan" -- wave orchid
Hungary is "Xiong Ya Li" -- chest tooth benefit

So not really as many meanings behind the country name as it just sounds like how it would in English.

Too bad... Poland and China never shared the common boarder... in Ural mountains for instance... some of the Polish joked would suggest it...

yes, I understan Poles and Chinese are too far and they do not share that much comon history. Besides Poland is much smaller country, at least compared to China.

I like Polish name - but it sound like "Poland" so it seems that the name was matched to the sound - not the opposite. As for Hungary - what is "chest tooth benefit"?

Haven't a clue. Like I said, it was more so it sounded nice. I wish there was a way I could record the sounds for you. I think both country names are very "lyrical" when said in Chinese. In English, you emphasis the constanants. So it's a strong "P" at the start. In Chinese, the vowels tend to be focused on more. So it ends up having an almost singing quality to saying it.