NationStates

IC: Yitanka is named after the first encountered indigenous people on the peninsula; the Itelmens. The endonym for the Itelmens is "Итәнмән" (Itanman), which would be rendered in kanji/hanshi as 伊丹門 (Itanmon/Yitanmon). The "mon" 門 was dropped, assuming it was a suffix identifying the people as a clan. Though the new final character "ka" 霞 is of indeterminate origin, it most likely either refers to the persistent nightly shore fog or smoke from one of the nation's many active volcanoes.

OOC: I reversed the logic with which the Kamchatkan Peninsula was named (which was after the "Kamchadals") and applied it to the first peoples the fleeing Wokou and Ikkō-ikki would have encountered, with first contact now happening in the south rather than the north. I picked some kanji that would have been used to create the phonetic "Itanman", dropped the "mon" 門 after seeing it could mean "clan", "family", or "kin", and forced an extra syllable in there to make the name sound better to me. The opening "Y" is from my own homebrewed linguistic drift from the original Japanese that most of the settlers would have spoken mixed with strains of Middle Chinese/Korean/Mongolia (from the ethnically diverse/ambiguous Wokou pirates) and local Kamchatkan languages. And of course, having been annexed by Russia for so long I've changed the primary writing system to Cyrillic.

(Of course, I'm doing all of this not actually knowing any of these languages. I really only have a pretty good idea of how to do linguistic research, so a lot of my choices/reasonings could end up being way off. But hey, c'est la vie.)

It means New Navarre, and derives from the Kingdom of Navarre and the Chartered Community of Navarre.

East Plate (Spanish: Plata Oriental) comes from its geographical position, at the Eastern bank of the River Plate. The name is the result of the British wanting to keep the naming convention that was used for the territories of the colony before it was annexed by the British Empire (Banda Oriental, or "Oriental Stip" under the Viceroyalty of the Rio de la Plata, Oriental Province, under the administration of the United Provinces of the Rio de la Plata, Oriental Republic during the brief independence of the territories under British protection, and East Plate, as a colony of the British Empire).

"Kuoyama" is translates from "our people's land"

Our nation's name, Ceryana, is an Anglicised/Francisised contraction of the classical Suryanese Malay name for the Kingdom of Surya, Suryanagara, which was one of the main kingdoms on the Suryanese lands when European contact was established.

Breaking down each word, surya (or suria in contemporary Suryanese Malay) means the sun, while nagara (or negara in contemporary Suryanese Malay) means kingdom. Suryanagara hence translates to the Sun Kingdom. Suria is now used to refer to the sun exclusively in scientific terms, while the meaning of negara has now been generalised to mean nation or country.

Both surya (सूर्य sū́rya; sun) and nagara (नगर nagara; city) are derived from Sanskrit, an important literary language in the old Buddhist kingdoms that were located throughout the land of today's Ceryana, including the Kingdom of Surya.

(OOC: My old nation name was Cirona, but I didn't like the "Ci" combination at the beginning so I created a new nation with an approximate name. So yes, I gave up on my nation created in 2009 for aesthetic reasons.)

Vrigny is just a shortening and corruption of how the early Vrignyans referred to the Zarnarchy-dominated lands (Basically owned by vampires).
The way they used to refer to Vrigny was: "Vag raks ig nyn" which just means "Long teeth in (this) land". With time, the sentence was shortened to a single word for convenience, and Vrigny was born.

The name of the Dyrrhonian Isles is derived from the Diarcesian Latin diminutive dyrrhum, literally meaning "somewhat bad." Despite the harsh winter climate in the location, the islands have several excellent natural harbors: it is named as such by the discoverers to prevent too many people from immigrating to the land.

Deleted

Two words, Chicken and Tenders.

The name Axorea enters English via Latin, from Armenian Աքսորք (Akʿsorkʿ), literally meaning "exile; land of banishment." It was chosen by the Armenians who dwelled in Constantinople in exile; with the Conquest of Contantinople in 1347, the Armenian conquerors decided to keep the old name for their nascent kingdom, at least until they retake the Armenian homeland. However, upon the Reunification of Greater Armenia in the 18th century, the name Akʿsorkʿ was already absorbed in the tongues and hearts of the Armenians and so it was officially decided to keep the name, stripping the word աքսոր (akʿsor) of its negative connotations permanently.

Axorea is ultimately derived from Ancient Greek εξ ὅρων (ex órōn), "beyond the frontier." This is reflected in the Greek name of Axorea, Εξορία (Exoría), which also means "exile" in Modern Greek.

Frostland was named by Occidental settlers in the 9th century to connote the continental region with a cold climate. It has been the universal name for the nation ever since, although the indigenous call it "Nutarishen".

Diaperland takes its name from the theme park and resorts that were built on the former Iwana Islands. The name is exactly what you'd assume it might be, meaning "the land of diapers". It was dreamed up by the former CEO who built the theme park, who said he wanted to attract people with the most wholesome thing he could think of. The name not only stuck, but it became a major theme across the islands, and today diapers are also the name of the small country's currency, their most popular symbol, and its most treasured item of clothing.

A latinized toponym for "land of the Piscataway people," The Piscataway being a tribe from the Potomac river region.

Mann wrote:

The name of the Thedish nation is Mann. This is from the Old English (Thedish: Ealdenglisch) word meaning ‘man, human being, person’, from Proto-Germanic (Thedish: Urgermanisch) *-mann, from either Proto-Indo-European (Thedish: Urindeeuropische) *mon- or *men-, the latter meaning ‘to think; mind’.

The ethnonym for the people of Mann is Thedish, singular noun Theder and plural noun Theden (Thedish: Theodisch, Theodar, Theoden). This comes from Old English þēodisċ, meaning ‘national; native, of one's native tribe/nation’, from þēod, meaning ‘nation, tribe, people’. This ethnonym refers exclusively to native, ethnic Theden - outsiders are called Eltheodisch/Eltheodar/Eltheoden in Thedish, which uses the prefix el-, meaning ‘foreign, strange; different, other’, ultimately from Proto-Germanic *aljaz, meaning ‘other, another, else’.

So a exonym for your nation could be Thedia or Thederland?

We are The Final State. No further explanation is required.

Shalotte is the Hebrédan name for both the archipelago, and the nation - the latter's full, formal name being naeHiorag Domrigád Shalotte in Hebrédan, and the Royal Isles of Shalotte in English.

The word 'Shalotte' has been in use as the name of the archipelago, and then much later as the name of the united country, since pre-history. It has no clear etymological roots in Hebrédan - it predates all written records (it appears as the name of the archipelago, almost unchanged, in the earliest written records), and is dissimilar to other words in the modern language.

It is thought by some historians that 'Shalotte' was once the name of an ancient deity in the pantheon of the original settlers of the isles, almost 3,000 years ago. Those ancient gods (now known collectively as 'Saerchan', their names forgotten and regarded more as superstitions akin to fairies) may have also provided their names to the Shalotte calendar's five days of the week. If this hypothesis is accurate, then given its prominence, 'Shalotte' may have been the name of the chief deity of this ancient precursor to Shalotte polytheism's pantheon.

In Old Aldish, the suffix na means "place" or "location"; Aldina more-or-less translates to "place where the island of Alde is" (Alde being the largest, most populous, and historically most influential island in the Aldish archipelago). The name of Alde itself is ancient; its original etymology is unknown, but it may have simply meant "rocky island", in which case "Aldina" might be more descriptively translated as "place of rocky islands".

The name of this homeland is "Jardim-Primavera", which in English is translated as "Spring Garden". This name is due to the fact that in the beginning our country was very beautiful and flowery. Unfortunately, as a result of the actions of the Ministry of Urban Development, all the natural beauty is gone and today this homeland is nothing but a dry and almost lifeless desert, with no plants or flowers left.

The name, "Fidimouni", originates in two separate French terms combined. The term Fidi comes from fidèle, meaning "Faithful", and the term Mouni comes from mounir, meaning "Light". When translated, the original name of Fidimouni means "Faithful Light". This name comes from the arrival of French settlers to the then colony, predominantly of Catholic descent.

Prior to settlement and colonization by the French powers, the term Fidimouni was never used by any regional entity, and as a result, it is growingly contested among indigenous activist. Alternative names for the nation have been proposed, notably the name of the former Kingdom of Yatif.

Svetaketu (pronounced Svet-a-kay-too) is a charecter in the Upanishads, a series of ancient Indian philosophical discourses and is a name derived from my interest in East Asian religion and thought.

Arbaro is the Esperanto word for forest. Esperanto is one of the nation's three official languages, along with English and Spanish.

Hyidai is a misspelling of a contraction of the words high and day. This comes from the term: "It's a high day for ____" which in Hyidai means that today's likely to bring ____. This was famously said several times over the Second War for Independence. For an example, when William Sirel, the future Head of State, stepped out from a 7 hour round of negotiations, he said "It's a high day for peace."

Watsonian: Mobius is the anglicized form of Möbius which derived from the name Bartholomäus which is the German form of Bartholomew which is the English form of Βαρθολομαίος (Bartholomaios) which is the Greek form of an Aramaic name meaning "son of Talmai" with Talmai either deriving from tellum "furrow" or the Hebrew name for "Ptolemy" which means that the Aramaic name either means "son of furrows" (rich in soil) or "son of Ptolemy". Although the correct French translation of Möbius is Mœbius, which was the basis of the exonym Moebius, the French translation in Mobius wound up becoming Möbius due to the Mobian dialect of French being in close proximity to Germanic-speaking peoples on the archipelago.

Doylist: Because Sonic the Hedgehog.

Terrapacis comes from the Latin terra pacis, meaning 'land of peace'. The country's name originated from the writings of colonist William Edwards, who described the landscape of the larger of the two primary islands of Terrapacis as being 'awe inspiring and serene, like we have ventured into a land of peace' in 1627.

The name Terrapacis was formally adopted as the name of the territory in 1692. From 1626 until 1692, the territory was known as Davids' Land, named after Sir Matthew Davids who helped found the first permanent English settlement on the islands in 1623. The name Davids' Land survives in the name of the modern day Terrapacisian province of Davidsland.

The Dominion of Omarhe is a Deep Space Nine reference. The Founders of the Dominion had their homeworld in the Omarhe Nebula.