Over the course of my channel, I made a video or two... or ten, about how different places got their names.
What I did not mention in any of these videos, however, is that most of these are what's called an exonym:
meaning "outside name", or names, that originated outside of the place, that they describe.
And in recent years, there's been a trend of changing names from the common exonym back to an older endonym -
- an "inside name", or a name, that actually comes from within the country, that it describes.
So what I wanted to do, was to try to figure out what some of the endonym could be, for the places that I've already covered.
And see, if they make a good replacement for the exonym we know them by.
I guess it doesn't matter where I start, so let's start with America.
Like I said, "America" is in all likelihood an exonym, being named after the Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci.
But in mu opinion, this land is too big and diverse for any single name
to encompass it, so let's start with just South America.
Easily, the largest and most influential civilization to inhabit this continent were the Inca.
So, I think it's appropriate to rename South America with them in mind.
In their native language, they called the world that they inhabited Tawantinsuyu.
Which, well... it's not catchy, but it does make a pretty good description of the continent.
Tawantinsuyu translates into "land of the four quarters", referring to the four different regions,
or quarters, which fell under the Inca empire.
Chinchaysuyu, the northernmost quarter, reached all the way into Columbia,
and consists of mostly forested foothills and some mountains.
Cuntisuyu fell mostly within the Atacama desert and surrounding arid regions.
Antisuyu was a very thin strip of land, bordering on the Amazon rainforest,
and got its name from the Anti people who inhabited the region.
It's from these Anti people, that the Andes mountains got their name.
Lastly to the south, was Collasuyu, reaching down into Chile and even Argentina,
and contained the continent's tallest mountain at its southern reaches.
Together, these 4 quarters cover essentially every distinct climate zone found in the continent,
and uniting them under one name makes for a pretty inclusive title, so - Tawantisuyu it is.
Next, we're moving it to North America, and I actually want to break up this into two smaller lands,
Central America - going as far as the US-Mexico border,
and... well, the rest of North America, the United States and Canada.
Central America was home to two other, very recognizable civilizations: the Aztec and the Maya.
But the Maya weren't really a unified civilization, and rather a collection of city-states, similar to the Greeks.
So they didn't have any one name for themselves - instead, going by whatever town or city they lived in.
And the Aztecs actually originated, as a people group, outside of this region, somewhere above the Gulf of California.
And because we're trying to make endonyms, they are disqualified.
But when the Aztecs migrated south to central Mexico, they found the ruins of a once great civilization, and claimed that they had descended from it.
It was this far more ancient civilization, that built some of the most impressive pre-Colombian structures in America, including many pyramids and cities.
These people were the Teotihuacanos, and their territory was centered around the city of Teotihuacan.
The ruins of which can be found 40 miles north of Mexico City today.
This was the largest city the Americas had seen before the arrival of Columbus,
and influence from this civilization had spread to all other civilizations in the area.
Because the influence that these people and this city had, was so important to the region,
I think the name Teotihuacan serves as a good name for Central America as a whole, and so that's what I'm going with.
Finally, moving to the rest of North America, I'm going to choose the Powhatan people to decide a name.
I'm choosing them, because they belong to the greater Algonquian language group,
which spread across a large portion of the continent, and was the biggest group to be found here.
I'm specifically choosing the Powhatan, however, because they were the first people
that the English settlers to North America came across, when they founded the city of Jamestown.
And if it hadn't already been given a European name, the settlers likely would have asked the Powhatan,
what they called the land, and used some form of that name.
If they had done this, they most likely would have gotten the answer Tsenacommacah,
which translates into "densely inhabited land", as it was home to over 30 unified tribes under the Powhatan confederacy.
And this description hold true to this day, as Virginia is part of the Eastern Seaboard,
the largest population center on the continent, containing over 115 million people.
Although, a very few of those can actually trace their heritage back to the original Powhatan, or even Algonquin people.
Okay, so far we have 3 endonyms to replace one exonym. And now, it's time to get out of the Americas.
I might as well say it now: I think I'm going to keep Antarctica.
Because well, there aren't really any endonyms for it, because no one's from Antarctica.
Well, maybe then, we should let Emilio Marcos Palma name it,
considering he was the first recorded person to ever be born on the continent, in 1978.
So I guess he could be considered the oldest native to the land.
But yeah, other than that - Antarctica remains Antarctica.
So next, let's look at Africa.
Now, if you've watched my video on how Africa got its name,
you'd know, the origin of the name "Africa" is still a bit of a mystery.
And may either be Phoenician, or Berber, or Greek, or Latin.
And considering the Berbers were native to the continent, there's a 25% chance, Africa could actually be an endonym.
But for all purposes, let's just try to find another one.
So, the agreed upon, oldest civilization in Africa were the Egyptians, around the Nile river.
It was here, that the first African written language, and only the second written language in the world, was developed.
So I believe it's here, that we'll find the oldest endonym for Africa.
The Egyptians had two names for the world they knew of:
Kemet was used to describe where they lived, along the banks of the Nile,
and then, Deshret was meant to describe the desert beyond the river.
Which if you ask me, is suspiciously close to the word "desert".
But basically, Kemet was used to describe Egypt, while Deshret was for the rest of the known world, and what woul've been the rest of Africa.
Because of this, I'm tempted to say Deshret is a better name for the land as a whole,
but looking at the translations, well, let's just say I started to question this.
Deshret translates into "red land", meant to describe the colour of the desert's sands beyond the Nile.
While Kemet translates into "black land", originally meant to descibe the fertile black soil,
deposited on the river banks of the Nile during the floods each year.
And when considering a name, that can encompass the scope of the African continent, I think Kemet is a much better fit.
And the same way it originally described the dark soils, which allowed the Egyptian civilization to prosper,
it could come to mean the people of Africa, who allowed the current troubled continent as a whole to prosper in the future.
If you don't like that, though, the South African Zulu word for Earth - or just land in general - is Umhlaba.
And the Swahili word is Dunia. So, maybe we could break Africa into three, just like we did with the Americas.
Okay, onto Europe. Now, the most popular theory, is that Europe comes from the Greek "eurys" and "ops",
meaning "wide face", to describe the scope of the land here.
And since Greece - well, at least most of Greece anyway - is on mainland Europe, this is already an endonym.
However, there are some theories, that the name had an Akkadian or Phoenician origin;
and if true, would mean that the name from the modern-day Middle East, and would qualify as an exonym.
So for fun, and so that Europe doesn't feel left out, let's just assume one of these theories is true, and "Europe" is in fact an exonym.
To find a definitive endonym then, we need to ignore the Romans and the Greeks, as they both used some form of "Europe".
And instead, we're going to need to look elsewhere, with different people groups.
An often forgotten people group, that had a huge impact on the continent, were the Celts,
who got their start as a distinct people group in this general area;
from eastern France, through southern Germany and Switzerland, and into Austria, all the way to Hungary.
From this original Celtic homeland, they expanded throughout Europe, until they inhabited nearly all of western Europe.
Because of their huge area of influence, many names throughout the continent are actually already Celtic in origin, so I think they're a good choice to focus in on.
But, since the Celts were more of a collection of people with a similar language, rather than a unified civilization,
much like the Mayans, there wasn't a single name they had for themselves or their land.
But the Celts definitely did have patterns, in what they liked to name things after.
And, collecting some of the most common words or sounds given to places,
we have a list of words to choose from, and build our own name with.
The stars next to each word means, that they have been reconstructed using similar, modern words,
in languages like Welsh or Irish, that are still living languages; to figure out, what their root Celtic word must have been.
Looking at these, and thinking about what best fits too, stand out to me.
The first one is magos, which became maes in Welsh to mean field, and magh in Irish to mean plane.
Both of which describe a lot of Europe pretty well, which mostly consists of large, open green fields.
The second root word, that sticks out to me is windo, which in those same languages
became wen or gwen, to mean white or blessed in Welsh, and fionn in Irish, to mean fair.
Putting these two roots together, we can reconstruct a name like Windmagos, or Winmago.
I'll be honest: I'm not really an expert at language reconstruction, so if there's a better way to put these two together, let me know in the comments.
Exxentially, however, this name means a fair, blessed, or... yeah, white, field or plain.
And I mean, these are all accurate, and for calling Africa black land, we might as well call Europe white field.
No one's gonna get offended by either of these, right?
But if we want, we can change this from the old, reconstructed Celtic language, into one that's still around today.
Translating this into Welsh, we get something like Wenmaes, or possibly Gwenmaes,
which... I don't know, looks pretty cool to me.
Or we could switch it into Irish, as Fionnmagh, which I don't know,
but it might sound cool to someone watching. I'll let you decide on that one.
Next one is Arabia, which actually, is also already an endonym,
coming from the ancient Semitic languages which originated here.
Meaning the name "Arabia", traces back to... Arabia. Which means we can skip it.
Nah, just kidding. While Arabia might be an endonym, the Arabian Peninsula belongs to the larger place,
which (maybe one day I'll make a video about this), I think should be considered its own continent,
and that is the Middle East. Whether or not you agree with me on that, though, we can both agree, that the term "Middle East"
definitely originated outside of this place, and could use its own endonym.
For this, I'm going back to the Semitic language group, which originated in this region, for an endonym.
Luckily, unlike the Celts, the people here decided to give their land a name - actually, two names.
In Arabic, the term "Maghreb" refers to the western portion of the Arab world,
literally translating into the West, "where the sun sets".
Then, for the eastern side of the Arab world, the name "Mashriq" is given, which can be used to describe roughly this area.
Now, this doesn't perfectly align with what we're going for, spilling over a bit into Africa, through Egypt and Sudan.
But it does include a big portion of the Middle East as well.
And sometimes, things can't always be perfect. So, Mashriq it is.
India however, is another story.
Now technically, the name "India" does come from the Sanskrit word "Sindhu", which did originate here.
But, the natives used the word Sindhu to describe the Indus river, and not the land here.
And it was foreigners, who confused the name of the river for that of the land.
Instead, the locals actually gave a different name to describe the Indian subcontinent:
Bharata Khanda, and the people of India still call their country Bharat.
The name Bharata Khanda, however, no surprise, comes in two parts.
Khanda can sometimes be replaced with Ksetra, which can either mean a temple, or a residence, usually a divine one.
Bharata then, refers to the legendary emperor of India, also named Bharata
(who is important, but I don't have time to explain why), but Bharata can further be translated into cherished.
So then, Bharata Khanda becomes the Cherished Residence, which I think is another good way
to refer to the land, that you live in. So, that's what we're going with.
And then, this can also be expanded to the Indian Ocean, so that it becomes the Bharata Ocean, or the Cherished Ocean.
Okay, so now we can move onto the continent of Asia as a whole.
Which, while first used by the Greeks, is thought to have come from either the Hittites, or the Akkadians.
And therefore, could also qualify as an endonym. But, I'll be honest: Asia is ginormous.
And since we typically only associate China, and the rest of what is East Asia, with the term,
instead of the Middle East, where this name comes from, it still feels like an exonym.
Being such a big place with so many people, I think East Asia deserves a term of its own.
To find this, we'll need to go back to the oldest civilization in the region: ancient China.
Which was the seed culture for the rest of the countries here, just like what the Teotihuacans were for the Aztecs and Maya.
Here, the people had the idea of a place called Tianxia, which was meant to describe the entire world:
Everything, that was known to them, or even everything that existed.
Literally, Tianxia translates into "Under Heaven", very similar to the phrase "everything under the Sun" in English.
And considering, the only areas the ancient Chinese really knew about at the time, was greater East Asia, I think it fits.
Okay, so that leaves us with Australia, or what people have started to refer to as Oceania,
which includes all of the far-off Pacific islands as well.
Either way though, Australia and Oceania both have European origins, so neither can be considered an endonym.
Now, before Europeans came to this region, it was inhabited largely by Polynesians, Micronesians and Melanesians.
All of which, similar to the Celtics and the Mayans, never really unified into a single nation.
This, again, makes it hard to come up with just one name, when there's so many different people groups to choose from.
And this time, I'm going to go with the most populous group still around today, who are the Māori people:
Polynesian descendants, who lived on a north island of New Zealand.
In native Māori, the term Whenua translated into land, ground, territory, or even country.
So it's fitting to call the continent here, whether it be Australia or Oceania, Whenua.
But I'm not done yet. The people who lived here, were extremely talented seafarers and navigators;
capable of sailing for thousands of miles, in some of the cooles canoes you'll ever see.
And so, one could argue, that they lived in the water just as much as they did on land, so I'm going to make this a double-name maker.
Since the Pacific Ocean is also an exonym, as "Pacific" comes from Latin,
I think it's more appropriate to use another Māori word. This time Tahuaroa, which means ocean.
Then you can call all of this just Tahuaroa, or you can say it's the Tahuaroa Ocean.
Which yes, does translate into "Ocean Ocean", but I don't know. It just sounds better to put "ocean" behind it.
And that's it, all the places that I've covered so far. At the end, we get a map that looks like this.
Oh yeah, I should also say, I don't think I'm going to change the Atlantic either,
because I don't think you could say it had inhabitants, the same way the Pacific did.
And the people who spent the most time here, were definitely the Europeans, so I think it works to leave it.
I hope you enjoyed this, and honestly, I'm curious if anyone would actually consider using any of these terms.
Some sound and look better than others, so maybe you could suggest other names in the comments.
I definitely missed a lot of different people groups and cultures, so I'd like to hear more.
Of course, changing the name of a country, let alone a whole continent,
would require a tremendous amount of work and collaboration between different groups.
If you'd like to know why a country would go through this process - well, you're in luck, as I teamed up with WonderWhy on this,
and he has a whole other video talking about just that, over on his channel.
He was actually one of the first youtubers I ever watched,
so it was incredibly exciting to get to work with him on this.
So yeah, definitely check out his video next.
Of course, thanks to my Patrons over on Patreon for helping make this video, and this whole channel possible.
I'll be back next week with another one. Thanks.