this post was submitted on 07 Jan 2026
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Showerthoughts
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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The most popular seem to be lighthearted clever little truths, hidden in daily life.
Here are some examples to inspire your own showerthoughts:
- Both “200” and “160” are 2 minutes in microwave math
- When you’re a kid, you don’t realize you’re also watching your mom and dad grow up.
- More dreams have been destroyed by alarm clocks than anything else
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Wait till you find out that Germans have different words for all the other things we have words for, too!
Seriously though, the names of countries are just words. There's no reason to expect them to be the same in different languages.
I think it's so funny that almost all languages have some variation of the name "Hungary", except in Hungarian, where it's called "Magyarország".
I believe the languages of some neighbouring countries such as Turkey resemble Magyarország more closely :)
Actually I'd argue country names are one of the examples where it would make more sense to have the same name everywhere. Why not use the countries actual name (maybe with slight adaption to the language)?
The United States of America is just a series of English words. It really wouldn't make sense in some other languages.
In Spanish it's Estados Unidos which seems like a translation of the words.
USA is EU???? 🤯
Because of an old rule (plurals get double letter), I believe the recommended way by the Academy is «E.E. U.U.». Not sure if they've said otherwise recently.
It's also not uncommon to see «E.U.A.», «E.U.» or those same but without the dots.
No confusion with the European Union, though, because that's «Unión Europa»: «U.E.».
Finally we can get into Eurovision!
Do country names, or names in general, need to make "sense"?
As for the USA, without any evidence or desire to look it up, I think most languages translate it pretty much literally.
Why not use the German name for "chair"? Words are arbitrary. Why would you use the local inhabitants' name for it?
What about when a country has more than one ethnic group with more than one language, which have different names for the country? This is the case in many places. You could pick one, of course, but that's just another arbitrary choice.
The historical reason is that names for countries (which often develop from names for peoples) don't always come from the a common source.
The word for chair is arbitrary. The chair has no feeling towards one word or another. Most countries' people do have feelings towards their country and it's name.
Picking one of the people's names for the country would still be better than using your arbitrary name for the country.
OK, but most native speakers of a language have feelings towards their own language, and want to continue to speak it as they learnt it. Why should the speakers of a one language have any say over how the speakers of another language speak? What if I feel that Germans should stop using the word "Stuhl" and start using the word "chair" instead? My feelings are irrelevant because it's not my language and have no rights or interests in the matter.
What happens in multilingual countries? Should the English-speaking majority of Wales be able to dictate to the Welsh-speaking minority that the country is called Wales rather than Cymru ? Should the English-speaking majority of England be able to dictate to Welsh-speaking Welsh residents of England that they should stop using the name Lloegr? Or vice-versa? Shall we call Switzerland Die Schweiz or La Suisse or Svizzera or Svizra? Do you think the German people - or perhaps the German government - should go and tell speakers of Sorbian that they have to stop calling Germany Nimska and must instead use a different word? Do you like where this is going? I mean there were never any problems in Germany before that smell similar to this.
No, this is all rubbish and nonsense. Let people speak their languages. Literally nothing bad happens if you do, and if you go the other way it opens a massive can of ethnically-oppressive worms where one ethnic group gets to tell others what to do.
So does every person get called a different name in every country they visit? What about your pet?
It is normal - in most European languages at least - for proper nouns to be treated differently. And usually the names we use for places ARE the same across languages or at least extremely similar. I think it makes sense for someone to be surprised and curious in cases where that isn't true.
And I find the reasons in this and a bunch of similar cases to be really interesting, often weird, and sometimes pretty stupid to still be in use. Including the name China (and variations of it).
If you would be a people of the nation of chair, then yes. But turns out you're not, because chair isn't a country and you're just making a useless comparison.
The only one who's talking about forcing this on anyone, is you. So instead of getting all agitated over it you could just stop?
Anyway in your opinion Turkey has no right or reason to ask others to use it's original Türkiye instead?
I'll answer your question if you answer the questions I already asked about Wales, England, Germany and Switzerland. Though my position should be obvious.
Türkiye cannot in any reasonable sense be called "original" either - it's the word naming the country in Turkish but like all words except those coined recently it has undergone etymological changes to become what it is today. Calling it "original" makes it sound like the Turks came up with a name they still use and the English got it wrong. That's not what happened.
I've always wanted to make a map that used the native names for countries instead of their English/American names.
https://endonymmap.com/ ? :)
Looks like they specifically chose the official English names for countries even when the indigenous name is also official.
They explain the methodology - where there is more than one official name, the name in the language with the most speakers in that country is used.
That's certainly a decision.
How would you pick along multiple official names in different languages?
I mean it's mostly a criticism of whoever suggested this map as a way to see country names in the language of the country, rather than just English.
But it's also kind of a pointless map as it's not useful to an English speaker but it doesn't commit to teaching you indigenous place names either.
I don't really understand. I asked how you would pick better names but you're not saying how.
Maybe I would understand if you gave an example. I look at a country you might be thinking of, Nigeria, say, the official language of Nigeria is English, so this surely should not be an example because English is the language of the country. (Both by official status and by number of speakers).
English of course is not an indigenous native language of Nigeria - a description you seem to use interchangeably with "language of the country" - but there are over 500 of those, so if you don't think the map is suitable due to featuring non-indigenous names, which of them should it pick?
Trying to answer the question I asked on your behalf (always prone to error) maybe you would prefer a map which names countries according to the most widely spoken indigenous language in each country? It would be interesting to have a map which labelled the USA Wááshindoon bikéyah ałhidadiidzooígíí, and Britain as Prydain, but I suspect the original reply would have expected those countries to be labelled in English, not in indigenous minority languages.
Mate. This is the post you responded to:
And you then suggested a map that chose "Ireland" over Éire
It's ok if you don't want to discuss it but it would be nice if you just said that rather than ignoring whatever I say. Bye.
Most of them are fairly expected. That Finland tho...
Etkos puhu suomeä? :)
valitettavasti en :(
I do watch a lot of Hydraulic Press Channel though so i at least have an ear for Finglish :)
No... I have a name. Someone talking to me in a different language doesn't make my name different. It's intuitive to think country names are the same.
Other languages use different characters or might not even be able to pronounce the name as they don't have the sounds. It might be simple to think that, doesn't make it correct.
You'd still expect to call them something similar to what they call themselves as best as another language can, but nope!
But they specifically said "There's no reason to expect them to be the same in different languages." Which there absolutely IS a reason to expect that.
Expectations end where knowledge begins, I guess.
Never said it was correct to not translate country names. Only that there is a reason to think they wouldn't be.
Countries aren't people though. And depending on language and context, this does happen, and used to happen even more. Finns might refer to a David as Taavi in Finnish. John Cabot's name in Italian was Giovanni.
Never said we shouldn't be translating the names of countries, only that there is a reason to think we shouldn't. Because the comment I was replying to said "There's no reason to expect them to be the same in different languages."
My name is said differently in different languages, I'd expect nothing different
Your name is your name. Things like Jack versus Jacques or Matthew versus Mateo exist, but those aren't your name.
It gets interesting when you hear how the Chinese call countries.
Oh, it's all interesting IMO!