Statistics for Country names by etymology (meaning) of native name

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General Stats
Answer Stats
Score Distribution
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General Stats

This quiz has been taken 228 times
(198 since last reset)
The average score is 76 of 152

Answer Stats

Hint	Answer	% Correct
From Norse for either "northern way" or "narrow way"	Norway (Norge)	97%
The Rus' people (who were actually Norsemen, not Slavs)	Russia	96%
Land of ice	Iceland (Island)	92%
The Franks (a Germanic tribe)	France	91%
The Bulgar people (who were actually Turkic, not Slavic)	Bulgaria	90%
Low land	Netherlands (Nederland)	87%
The Belgae tribe of Gaul	Belgium	86%
Ultimately from "Slavic people"	Slovakia + Slovenia	86%
White Rus' people	Belarus	83%
Black mountain	Montenegro (Crna Gora)	82%
Romans	Romania	80%
Spanish for "rich coast"	Costa Rica	79%
Spanish for "the savior"	El Salvador	79%
British sea captain John Marshall	Marshall Islands (not native name)	79%
Named after the Dutch province Zeeland	New Zealand	79%
Spanish for "equator"	Ecuador	78%
The Lao people	Laos	78%
Venezuelan military and political leader Simón Bolívar	Bolivia	77%
Saint Dominic (medieval Spanish priest, founded an order of monks)	Dominican Republic	77%
Named after the Paraguay River (itself of uncertain etymology)	Paraguay	77%
Christopher Columbus	Colombia	76%
An Amerindian tribe called Surinen	Suriname	76%
Named after the Uruguay River (itself of uncertain etymology)	Uruguay	76%
The Spanish city Granada	Grenada	75%
Saint Marinus	San Marino	75%
Spanish for "Trinity" and "tobacco"	Trinidad and Tobago	75%
Italian for "made of silver"	Argentina	74%
Land of the Magyar tribe	Hungary (Magyarorszag)	74%
Named after the Jordan River (its own etymology is debated)	Jordan	74%
King Philip II of Spain	Philippines	74%
The martyr Saint Lucy of Syracuse	Saint Lucia	74%
Combination of Tanganyika (sail in the wilderness) + Zanzibar (black shore)	Tanzania	74%
The Biblical King Solomon	Solomon Islands	73%
Realm of the Svea tribe	Sweden (Sverige)	73%
Land of Bengal	Bangladesh	72%
Portuguese for "green cape"	Cape Verde	72%
Spanish for "Little Venice"	Venezuela	72%
The origin of the sun	Japan (Nippon or Nihon)	71%
Jean Moreau de Séchelles, the French minister of finance from 1754-56	Seychelles	71%
Named after the Zambezi River	Zambia	70%
Land of the people who speak Sotho	Lesotho	68%
Land of almost Turks, alternatively pure Turks	Turkmenistan	68%
"East" + Malay word for "East"	East Timor	67%
Latin for "southern"	Australia	66%
Spanish for the "bearded ones"	Barbados	66%
Bosna river + the German for "duke's land"	Bosnia and Herzegovina	66%
From the native St Lawrence Iroquoian word for "village"	Canada	66%
Greek for "Indian islands"	Indonesia	66%
Aryan (the ancient name of a people that means noble)	Iran	66%
From another name for the Aztecs	Mexico	66%
Portuguese for "Saint Thomas and the prince"	São Tomé and Príncipe	66%
Land of the Tswana ethnic group	Botswana	65%
Latin for the Berber people they called Mauri (from Greek for "black")	Mauritania	65%
Sanskrit honorific meaning "radiance" + "island"	Sri Lanka	65%
Land of the Kambojas (an Indo-Iranian people that lived in Kashmir)	Cambodia	64%
Spanish for "ancient" and "bearded"	Antigua and Barbuda	63%
Latin for "freedom"	Liberia	63%
King Mswati II (d. 1868)	Swaziland (eSwatini)	63%
Native pronunciation of "Gilbert" (after British sea captain Thomas Gilbert)	Kiribati	62%
Maurice of Nassau/Orange, Stadtholder of the Dutch Republic, 1585-1625	Mauritius	62%
From the title "ngola" used by rulers of Ndongo	Angola	61%
The Spanish deacon Saint Vincent of Saragossa + the city Granada	Saint Vincent and the Grenadines	61%
Spanish for "lioness mountains"	Sierra Leone	61%
Named after the Buganda kingdom	Uganda	61%
Woodland or borderland of the Dani tribe	Denmark (Danmark)	59%
Latin for "Sunday"	Dominica	59%
The native Taino name "land of high mountains" of Hispaniola	Haiti	59%
Sanskrit for "lion city"	Singapore	59%
Land of the + another word for Pashtuns	Afghanistan	57%
Greek for "small islands"	Micronesia	56%
Possibly "the end of Tibet"	Bhutan	54%
Tongan pronunciation of the island name "Viti (Levu)"	Fiji	54%
From Nahuatl (Aztec language) for "place of many trees"	Guatemala	52%
Portuguese for "like an ember" (named for a red tree)	Brazil	50%
Latin for "Port of Cale", a Celtic settlement	Portugal	50%
Eastern realm	Austria (Österreich)	49%
English shortening of San Cristobal + Spanish for "(our lady of the) snows"	Saint Kitts and Nevis	49%
Possibly from Sanskrit for "protected by the sage Nemi"	Nepal	48%
Named after the ancient and Biblical Philistines	Palestine (Filastin)	48%
The first local commoner or ruler the Spanish met named Birú	Peru	48%
From Chinese for "southern Yue people" (named after battle axes)	Vietnam	48%
From an ancient Berber tribe (the Greeks called the continent by the name)	Libya	47%
Bright stone (from the name of a castle)	Liechtenstein	47%
Possibly from the ancient city Uruk	Iraq	46%
Little castle	Luxembourg (Lëtzebuerg)	44%
Arab trader and ruler Mussa Bin Bique (alternatively Ben Mbiki), ca. 1500	Mozambique	44%
The native Taino name "land of wood and water"	Jamaica	41%
Possibly native for "I go to the beach"	Nauru	41%
Middle realm	China (Zhōngguó)	39%
The royal dynasty + the people (which means desert nomads)	Saudi Arabia	39%
Possibly from Greek for a certain tree or plant	Cyprus	38%
Land of people speaking diutisc ("popular" in contrast to Latin)	Germany (Deutschland)	38%
Many possible Nahuatl words, eg. "the Anahuac reached this far"	Nicaragua	38%
Probably from Tuareg "Egerew n-Igerewen" ("river of rivers")	Niger + Nigeria	38%
Possibly "the borderland"	Ukraine	38%
Originally from Mayan belix for "muddy-watered" for a river	Belize	37%
From Tamil for "islanders"	Maldives (Dhivehi)	37%
Either from Taino for "big upper middle land" or Spanish for "low tide"	The Bahamas	37%
Possibly native for "village"	Palau	35%
From Phoenician for "white" (as in snowy)	Lebanon	34%
Greek either for "highlanders" or "the tall ones"	North Macedonia	34%
Land of the pure (while also an acronym for five of the regions)	Pakistan	34%
Arabic for "black"	Sudan	34%
"Lake", named after its largest lake	Chad	33%
Struggle with God	Israel	33%
Native name of uncertain origin + named after the coast of West Africa	Papua New Guinea	33%
Portuguese for "shrimp"	Cameroon	32%
Land of the Kartvelians	Georgia (Sakartvelo)	32%
From the name "vast place" (named for a desert)	Namibia	32%
Corrupted form of "Ubinu", the capital of an empire in Nigeria	Benin	31%
The Bamar ethnic group (alternatively the literary name for this group)	Burma/Myanmar	31%
Greek for "single house"	Monaco	31%
Greek for "red", as in the Red Sea	Eritrea	30%
Greek for "burnt face"	Ethiopia	30%
South	Tonga	30%
Eight standing together (meaning eight inhabited islands)	Tuvalu	30%
Amerindian for "land of many waters"	Guyana	29%
Two words of different languages meaning "honest" + "fatherland"	Burkina Faso	28%
Semitic for "frontier" (while the Greek comes from the temple of Ptah)	Egypt (Masr)	28%
Land of the wanderers (meaning nomads)	Kazakhstan	28%
Land of the forty (for forty original tribes)	Kyrgyzstan	28%
Many possible native meanings, eg. "abundance of fish"	Panama	28%
Spanish for "depths"	Honduras	26%
The ancient Bharata tribe and the legendary emperor Bharata	India (Bharat)	26%
Arabic for "the West"	Morocco (al-Maghrib)	26%
Ultimately from the city Ashur (even though it's the wrong location)	Syria	26%
The Persian governor Athurpat (Atropates in Greek, ca. 320 BCE)	Azerbaijan	25%
Land of (legendary figure) Hayk the Great	Armenia (Hayastan)	23%
From the Arabic word "qamar" meaning "moon"	Comoros	23%
Name the Portuguese used for West Africa of older uncertain origin	Guinea	23%
Gets its name from medieval Europeans confusing it with Mogadishu	Madagascar	23%
Possibly from Greek rendering of Oscan word for "calf"	Italy	22%
Possibly from Greek for "honey"	Malta	22%
Possibly "south" or "blessed" for its fertile soil south of the desert	Yemen	22%
"God's resting place" named for a mountain	Kenya	21%
Possibly from the word "hippo" which became "place where the king lives"	Mali	21%
Great Han (which also means great, and unrelated to Han China)	South Korea (Daehan or Hanguk)	21%
"Large houses of stone" after a ruined city from the Middle Ages	Zimbabwe	21%
The two seas	Bahrain	19%
Wolof for "our boat", named for a river	Senegal	19%
Native word for "land" or "home" with "stand" (meaning independent)	Vanuatu	19%
"Warrior king", a title given to kings of the empire of the same name	Ghana	18%
From Kambra, the original Mandinka name for the major river	The Gambia	18%
Arabic for "the islands" (named for a city on the coast)	Algeria (al-Jazair)	16%
From the Portuguese for "cloak" for the shape of the estuary	Gabon	15%
Possibly from Tamil for "mountain land"	Malaysia	14%
Possibly related to the Norse word "to burn" via Old High German	Switzerland	14%
Land where lagoons lie	Togo	14%
Probably from Latin excipere for "understanding"	Albania (Shqipëria)	9%
Possibly from Sanskrit for "seafarers"	Brunei	9%
Possibly evolved from a word for "human being"	Thailand	9%
Morning brightness (also an ancient name for the country)	North Korea (Choson or Joseon)	8%