Argentina in 102 languages: Buenos Aires, ISO codes and 23 provinces

The land of silver

Argentina comes from Latin argentum, silver. Explorers of the Río de la Plata basin in the early sixteenth century heard of silver in the interior, and the word Argentina appears on a Venetian map as early as 1536. Spanish itself would say plata, as in the river's name; the Latin-derived form was probably brought by Venetian and Genoese navigators.

The first written use in Spanish is the title of La Argentina, a poem of 1602 by Martín del Barco Centenera. The state was the Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata under Spain and the United Provinces of the Río de la Plata after independence. The constitution of 1826 was the first to use Argentine Republic, the constitution of 1853 formalised Argentine Confederation, and a decree of 1860 settled on Argentine Republic, declaring every name used since 1810 valid.

English long called the country the Argentine, from the adjective. In the table, most European languages keep the -ina ending and only adapt the spelling to their alphabet: Arġentina in Maltese, Argjentinë in Albanian, Arxentina in Galician. Slavic and East Asian forms follow how the g sounds: Russian Аргентина keeps a hard g, Ukrainian and Belarusian read it as h, Bulgarian Аржентина and Persian آرژانتین (Āržāntīn) have zh, and Korean 아르헨티나 (Areuhentina) has an h.

How the provinces came about

Jujuy split from Salta in 1834, and the thirteen provinces of the time became fourteen. Buenos Aires Province stayed outside the 1853 constitution for a decade and accepted it in 1861, and its capital city became a federal territory in 1880. That is why the province of Buenos Aires governs from La Plata while the city of Buenos Aires is a unit of its own.

The city is listed by ISO as Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires and carries the code AR-C; Congress designates it as the federal capital. With it the first level counts 24 units.

Eleven capitals share the name of their province, among them Córdoba, Mendoza, Salta and Santa Fe. Others differ: Santa Cruz is governed from Río Gallegos, Tierra del Fuego from Ushuaia, Misiones from Posadas and Chubut from Rawson. The full official name of the southernmost province is Tierra del Fuego, Antártida e Islas del Atlántico Sur; ISO lists the short form.

Flag of Argentina and the Sun of May

The flag is a horizontal triband of light blue, white and light blue in the proportion 5:8, with the Sun of May at the centre of the white band. Manuel Belgrano created it, and it was first raised at Rosario on 27 February 1812 during the war of independence. The present version dates from 1861, and its design was standardised in November 2010. The sun has a face and 32 rays, straight and wavy in turn.