Countries in their Native Language

What a great idea for a quiz! Pretty tough!

Great quiz, but not that difficult. Got 22/24.

I love languages so great quiz! I got 24 :)

Got all 24 with 1 minute left. Very hard quiz!!!

Hmm, added this ones myself Aug. 6, slightly different, but yet very much the same. http://www.jetpunk.com/user-quizzes/15906/simple-country-names

D: You have stolen my quiz idea!
http://www.jetpunk.com/user-quizzes/25526/countries-by-official-name-1
http://www.jetpunk.com/user-quizzes/25526/countries-by-official-name-2
http://www.jetpunk.com/user-quizzes/25526/countries-by-official-name-3

Seriously, I thought I checked if there wasn't some similar quiz around, and I couldn't find anything when typing 'countries' in the search box. When you type 'official' in the search box though... Anyway, great minds think alike (and fools never differ)

How did we English speakers get Finland from Suomi, or Egypt from Misr?

We probably named the areas long before we actually spoke to the natives. I'm guessing the name Finland was made up to describe a part of Russia (like Siberia) but then it became its own country and we kept calling it that cos it's easier for us.

The origins of the name Egypt are older than the name Misr. Misr is the Arabic name for Egypt. When Arabs conquered and colonized Egypt, all but obliterating the native culture, Arabic became the official language, and Misr the official name. The English name Egypt comes from the old French name Egypte. William the Conquerer brought the French language to England. France in turn was conquered and became part of the Roman Empire, and got their name for Egypt from the Latin Aegyptus. Of course the Romans borrowed the word like so many other things from the Greeks, whose name for Egypt was Aigyptos. One theory is that the Greek name came from the Egyptian name for Memphis "Hikuptah" which in turn was a corruption from early Egyptian "Hwt ka Ptah" or "home of the soul." Another theory is that Aigyptos was a compound of Aigaiou Huptios (below the Aegean). The Arabic word comes from the Hebrew name for Egypt Mitzrayim, meaning "two straits," referring to upper and lower Egypt.

Kalbahamut, that's one of the best comments I've read in a while.

The name Egypt is derived from "Aigyptos", the Ancient Greek name for the region. This was borrowed from Egyptian "Hikuptah", an ancient name for the city of Memphis. The name Finland has its roots in the 13th century and is likely a Swedish name for its neighbour. Swedish and Finnish are fairly dissimilar languages (Swedish being Germanic and Finnish being Finno-Urgic) so this is probably why the names are so different.

can netherlands be netherland???? is it possible?

Not really as it's a collection of the Netherlands. You don't call USA the United State of America do you?

Can't believe I didn't get Iceland. That should have been a no-brainer. :)

You should also add Georgia - Sakartvelo, Armenia - Hayastan and Lithuania - Lietuva

Few interesting suggestions: Crna Gora - Montenegro, Zhōngguó - China, Bharat - India, Myanmar - Burma and so on :-)