I like to be in America - countries named after people
My wife has been in Bolivia for the last 5 weeks, a country named after Simon Bolivar, El Liberator. I was trying to think of other members of this set. Chris Correa pointed out that the United States of America qualifies. Zimbabwe used to be an example, when it was called Rhodesia. Anything else?
Update—there are quite a few, and even a quiz about them here.
Other examples
Solomon Islands (although I don’t know why, exactly)
Saudi Arabia
Phillipines
Israel
El Salvador
Colombia
Bermuda
Others?
May 16th, 2005 at 12:08 pm
I spent some (well, too much) time thinking about this after our conversation this morning. I thought of a few included in your list but also some others: Kenya, Armenia and a bunch of island nations (such as Marshall Islands, Saint Lucia, Sao Tome, etc).
I also thought of a few questionable inclusions… For example, one explanation for the name ‘China’ is that outsiders referred to people as ‘Qin’(dynasty)-ese. So the origins of that name could be traced to qin shi huang.
And what about Chad? I think it was named after the lake, so is the lake named after someone?
May 16th, 2005 at 12:16 pm
This page says I’m wrong about Kenya but points to a few other possibilities, including Seychelles, Mauritius, and Angola.
May 16th, 2005 at 12:34 pm
China is also interesting because the indigenous name for the country clearly is not name based.
I like “Chad”