Exonyms and Endonyms: Why Countries Have Different Names
Countries have different names in different languages because each language named a country after the people, tribe or written form it met first; that outside name, the exonym, often settled long before the country’s own name, the endonym, was known abroad.
Endonym and exonym
An endonym is the name a place carries in a language spoken there: Deutschland, Suomi, Magyarország. An exonym is the name used for it elsewhere: Germany, Finland, Hungary. The United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names defines the endonym as the name of a feature in an official or well-established language of the area where the feature lies.1 Most country names in most languages are exonyms, and many are old enough to have outlived the empires and tribes that gave rise to them.
Exonyms are not mistakes. A language needs a word it can pronounce, decline and fit into its own spelling, and it takes the name it first heard. That first contact was often with a neighbouring tribe, a trading port or a written form passed on by another language, so the same country can end up with names that share no sound at all.
Germany in 21 languages, sorted by root
Each row names the language, its ISO 639 code and the root the name goes back to.2 More than a hundred further names stand on the Germany page.
| Language · code · root | Name of Germany | Romanisation |
|---|---|---|
| German · deu · diutisc | Deutschland | |
| Dutch · nld · diutisc | Duitsland | |
| Danish · dan · diutisc | Tyskland | |
| Icelandic · isl · diutisc | Þýskaland | |
| Yiddish · yid · diutisc | דײַטשלאַנד | Daytšland |
| English · eng · Germania | Germany | |
| Italian · ita · Germania | Germania | |
| Greek · ell · Germania | Γερμανία | Germanía |
| Japanese · jpn · diutisc | ドイツ | Doitsu |
| French · fra · Alamanni | Allemagne | |
| Spanish · spa · Alamanni | Alemania | |
| Turkish · tur · Alamanni | Almanya | |
| Persian · fas · Alamanni | آلمان | Ālmān |
| Finnish · fin · Saxons | Saksa | |
| Estonian · est · Saxons | Saksamaa | |
| Polish · pol · *němьcь | Niemcy | |
| Czech · ces · *němьcь | Německo | |
| Ukrainian · ukr · *němьcь | Німеччина | Nimeččyna |
| Hungarian · hun · *němьcь | Németország | |
| Latvian · lav · unclear | Vācija | |
| Lithuanian · lit · unclear | Vokietija |
Why Germany has so many names
Germany is the extreme case in Europe, because the peoples around it met different German-speaking groups.2 Old High German diutisc, of the people, gave Deutschland and its relatives in Dutch, Danish and Icelandic. The Latin Germania, a Roman word for the land beyond the frontier, lives on in English and Italian. The French met the Alamanni, a tribal confederation of the upper Rhine, and Allemagne passed on to Spanish, Turkish and Persian. The Finns and Estonians met the Saxons, hence Saksa and Saksamaa.
The Slavic name is the most striking. Polish Niemcy, Czech Německo and Ukrainian Німеччина go back to Proto-Slavic *němьcь, which probably meant mute or speechless, a people whose language could not be understood; Hungarian borrowed it as Németország.2 Latvian Vācija and Lithuanian Vokietija form a group of their own whose origin is still unclear.
Hellas, Yunan and Nippon
Greece shows the same mechanism from three directions. Greeks call their country Ελλάδα (Elláda) or Hellas. The Romans called the Greeks Graeci, and from Latin came Greece, Grèce and Griechenland. The Persians met the Ionians on the coast of Asia Minor and called them Yauna, a name that travelled east and south as Arabic al-Yūnān, Turkish Yunanistan and Hebrew Yavan.3 Georgian has a fourth name again, საბერძნეთი (Saberdzneti).3
Japan is a case of a written name read in different ways. The two characters 日本, the origin of the sun, are read Nippon or Nihon in Japanese and Rìběn in Chinese, and Korean writes 일본 (Ilbon). Europe took its name by way of Malay traders and Portuguese sailors; Malay still says Jepun and Indonesian Jepang, and the details stand on the Japan page.
When countries ask for their own name
Some states have asked the rest of the world to drop an exonym. Myanmar asked for its English name in 1989.1 Swaziland became Eswatini in 2018, Czechia was adopted as the short English name of the Czech Republic in May 2016, and a Turkish presidential circular of December 2021 made Türkiye the official form.1 Each of these changes reached the ISO 3166 country list, and the pages on Eswatini, Czechia and Türkiye give the dates.
Everyday language follows more slowly. French lists both Myanmar and Birmanie, and the Myanmar page shows the older name Burma alive in many languages beside the new one. An exonym that has been in use for centuries belongs to the language that uses it, and no request from abroad removes it overnight.
Questions about exonyms and endonyms
What is the difference between an exonym and an endonym?
An endonym is the local name of a place, such as Deutschland or Suomi; an exonym is the name another language uses for it, such as Germany or Finland.1
Why is Germany called Allemagne in French?
French named the country after the Alamanni, a Germanic confederation on the upper Rhine, the group the French met first. Spanish Alemania and Turkish Almanya come from the same root.2
Why do Turkish and Arabic call Greece Yunan?
Persian named the Greeks after the Ionians, Yauna, and the name passed into Arabic al-Yūnān and Turkish Yunanistan.3
- 1Wikipedia, “Exonym and endonym”, with the definition of the United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names (UNGEGN), the 1989 request for the English name Myanmar and the December 2021 circular on Türkiye; checked 28 October 2026. ↑
- 2Wikipedia, “Names of Germany”; checked 28 October 2026. ↑
- 3Wikipedia, “Names of the Greeks”; checked 28 October 2026. ↑