Country name and flag confusion

[Ecuadorian]

Since this is such an international forum, I wanted to start a thread about country names and the confusion they can cause.

For example, the current name of the country where I live is Ecuador. These lands were part of a Spanish Royal administrative division called "Real Audiencia de Quito" until 1822. After breaking ties with Spain, these lands, together with other southamerican regions in the north, formed a country called "Colombia". In 1830, these lands decided to split from Colombia and adopted the name of Ecuador, taking it from the imaginary line that crosses the north of the country and divides the Earth in two (the Equator), thus causing confusion to this day, as this line also crosses other countries and in Spanish the name of the line is spelled in exactly the same way as the country name. To this day, "Quito" is the name of the capital city.

In the north, other lands also split from Colombia and formed the country today known as Venezuela. Since both Ecuador and Venezuela were once part of Colombia, they retained the same flag (yellow-blue-red), but each added something extra to the design. When two of these three countries have a soccer match, one of them has to wear a different set of colors so as to avoid confusion.

Do you have any other interesting stories of confusion with country names and such?

[Pg09]

This is really interesting but i can't add any stories

I was always wondering what's the "difference" between the people in different countries like Ecuador or Peru.
It's the same mix of europeans/africans/indigenous indians, no?
Do you guys think about forming a union like the USA or EU?
It looks like only news from Venezuela and Bolivia make it the to the world press.
Does this means that Ecuador is more peaceful and quiet country with better economy and less crazy leaders?

[Fletch]

I would be completely unqualified, after only reading one book on the history of Croatia, to attempt to summarize it... but I can say that it's history is equally as convoluted.

The most difficult thing for my wife being when she meets people living in the States who tell her they are from "Yugoslavia" when Yugoslavia ceased to be since 1991. The flags too, are a similar story as near as I can tell... new country symbols added to similar colored flags... the stripes are different between Croatian, Slovenian, Serbian, but are all 3 horizontal stripes and the same 3 colors... red white and blue. Slovenians and Croatians have a symbol on theirs.

The important thing is, though, that the people of the country are getting to direct their own affairs.

Where freedom of speech and democracy exist, countries are stronger when they focus on the similarities of their peoples instead of trying to exacerbate their differences. Could be mistaken, but many many people here have told me what a great place Bosnia-Herzegovina was before the war because Catholics, Muslims, and Orthodox shared same cities and neighborhoods with no issues. Since then the powers of various countries all over the world have worked very hard to convince them all to hate each other... it is sad.

Here's wishing for more Unity, Peace, and Joy on this earth... the only one we share.

[Ecuadorian]

Pg09, Ecuador and Peru have very similar culture, geography and ethnicity. The dialect spoken in Lima, Peru, is almost identical to the one spoken in my own city. In fact, there are more differences within each country than between countries. This might be in part due to the fact that the lands today known as Ecuador and Peru were part of the Inca Empire.

There are no plans to form a South American union like the U.S. or the E.U., but if you were born here you can freely travel through most of South America without requiring a visa or even a passport.

Fletch, perhaps you could tell us a little bit more about why the U.S. is colloquially called America and what confusion this causes.

[Gaieus]

To add to some of the confusion, here is the coat of arms of Hungary before WWI.

Fletch, can you recognise some of the symbols?



There is Dalmatia, Slavonia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Transylvania (now in Romania) and Fiume/Rijeka in it with Hungary in the middle but the Slovakians use part of that middle as well:



and as a comparison:



Well, such is History...

[Ecuadorian]

Perhaps that's because European Royal families seem to be all related and maybe those were actually Royal family symbols, Csaba?

More confusion:

Germany is called Alemania in Spanish, and Deutschland in its native language. The Spanish name Alemania comes from the ancient people that inhabited the land, the Alamanni.

In the U.S., the city of Washington is in the East coast, while the state of Washington is in the West coast. The city of Washington is not part of any of the 50 states; instead, it is contained in a special administrative region of exactly the same size and shape called the District of Columbia, thus "Washington, D.C."

In Chile, the 14th region is located between the 9th and the 10th.

85px-ChileRegions.png (26.45 KiB) Viewed 14542 times

In Argentina, the capital city is usually callled "Capital Federal" instead of Buenos Aires, to avoid confusion with the Province of the same name. People from the province of Buenos Aires are called Bonaerenses, while people from the capital city, also called Buenos Aires, are called Porteños. Despite being inside the province of the same name, the capital city is not part of the province.

[Fletch]

of exactly the same size and shape

exactly same size and shape of what?

yes, Gaieus, the country of Croatia used to be part of the Austral/Hungarian (spelling?!) empire... so the flag/symbols are familiar indeed... and at that time in Croatia the languages of Hungarian and German were adopted by the aristocracy. Most people I meet here that can't speak English are also fluent in German... and many speak Czech. ...I've only met one or two Hungarian speakers... sorry to report... know quite a few that speak Ukrainian... and Polish...

Istria, the penninsula upon which I reside, used to belong to Italy as well at one point, adding to the confusion... and the dialect spoken here is wild... if you speak Italian, anyone can speak with you as almost all here are fluent in Italian... but you will not understand if they speak with one-another if you are from another part of Croatia, or from Italy, because for a second you will be pretty sure you heard Italian... then Croatian... no, wait... that was Italian... no, Croatian... wait a second - what the heck was THAT word?! ... Italian... no, Croatian again... ugh. (Similar to how the dialect around Strasbourg, France (Alsace) which sounds like someone took German and French through a blender and set it to Italian music.)

And of course it depends from Village to Village for some words as well. (just like in Belgium with Flemish dialects)

but I met some Austrians this summer that said in Austria from town to town each have their completely own dialect and anyone even from another town in Austria will have no idea what the other is talking about in their own dialect. I used to want to learn "all the languages I can"... now I'm pretty content with the couple I know.

Miguel, don't forget to mention that most cities in the U.S. are named for someplace else on earth... so as you drive through Wisconsin you will see Lisbon, Belgium, London, New Berlin... and in Texas of course you can see Paris.

[Gaieus]

There is a joke about Roosevelt receiving the declaration of war from Hungary during WWII (yes,WE declared war on the puny Americans).

He asked his advisers:
- What country is this?
- It'S A BALKANIAN KINGDOM:
- So it on the Balkans?
- No.
- And wo is its king?
- No king, a governor - an admiral - is leading the country.
- So they have access to the sea, too?
- No, there is no sea connection to Hungary...


(And so on - I cannot remember all the details of it but well, all is like that).

BTW Fletch, such as "Ausrian-Hungarian Empire", only existed from 1867. We had a so called "personal union" (the same king) with Croatia and Slavonia from the 11th century (in fact, the diocese in Zagreb was founded by one of our kings in 1091). But in rality it was rather something like between England and Scotland - one always felt it is subducted - but only since Romanticism and the rise of national sentiments mainly. This is too mixed here.

[Ecuadorian]

Fletch, I mean that the District of Columbia has the same shape and size as the city of Washington. In other words, both cover the same area.

[flipya]

Well, to boost some life into an old thread...

I live in The Netherlands most of the time, was born and raised here. Funny thing about it is that internationally our country is known as either '(the) Netherlands' or 'Holland'. The confusion comes in when you realise that our country's inhabitants are called 'the Dutch', as well as our language being Dutch. I will spare you the details about the history and linguistics behind it.
Trust me when I say that when your hometown is Amsterdam, capital of a country called the Netherlands (or Holland if you will), a discussion like this is quite amusing:

*location is a bar in Vienna, Austria. 'She' is a UCLA somethingsomething major on a EU-trip*
She: Where are you from?
Me: From Amsterdam.
She: Isn't that Connecticut? You don't sound like you're from Connecticut!
Me: No, actually I'm Dutch
She: Oh my god, you're from Germany? No way! How's Berlin, I hear it's amazing, my friend went there blablabla.....
Me: Berlin's great, but I'm not German. I'm from Holland.
She: Haha you're joking right? You just told me you're from Amsterdam!
Me: Yeah I did, Amsterdam is inside of Holland.
She: How drunk do you think I am? One country can't be inside of another country!
Me: Well it can, look at Lesotho (I know I know, shouldn't have mentioned that but couldn't resist)
She: What?
Me: Nevermind
She: But how can you be from Holland and be Dutch at the same time? Do you have, like, two passports or something?
Me: No I don't. I live in Amsterdam, which is located in the Netherlands! Therefore I am Dutch and Holland is my country!
She: Ok you're not making sense anymore *staggers over to her friend to tell her how I'm not making sense*
Me: Wanna come home for some steamy love?
She: Sure!

Ok I admit those last two lines didn't happen, but they should have! Just to compensate for the difficulties of being Dutch. I treasure the time I spend in Africa, at least there I'm simply a whiteman, no questions asked