I mean:
English
Russian
French? (how did this happen? France --> French?!?)
Chinese
And someone from Afghanistan is an Afghan? How did the word get shorter not longer? 🤔
Also, why is a person from India called an Indian, but the language is called Hindi? This breaks my brain…
Philippines --> Filipino? They just saw the “Ph” and decided to use an “F”? 🤔
Okay idk how language even works anymore…
[This is an open discusssion thread on languages and their quirks…]
I mean… similarly: How did we get “China” from ZhongGuo? 🤔
We didn’t. 中國likely became the most common name with 中華民國（present day commonly known as Taiwan). What you now know as China is 中華人民共和國, so 中國 carries on. During dynasty periods that was not the common name.
China comes from sina/sino. I don’t remember where this comes from. Sanskrit?
Uh… 中国(Zhongguo) was first used in the Western Zhou period, over 3000 years ago. Other words like 诸夏(Zhuxia), 诸华 (Zhuhua), 天下 (Tianxia), 华夏 (Huaxia), 神州 (Shenzhou), 九州 (Jiuzhou), and assorted combinations or variations of these were used off and on over the time as well. (None of which sound like “China” naturally.) 大清国 (Daqing Guo) was used the Qing before they were overthrown and the Republic, and later the People’s Republic, took the country over again.
It wasn’t common though. Like everyone calls it 中國 now. Not so back then. China has fragmented and reunited many times
Odds are that both were independently borrowed from Sanskrit चीन / Cīna:
Note: dunno in English but at least in Latin “Sina” (often Sinae, the plural) refers specifically to southern China. The north is typically called Serica (roughly “of the silk”).
In Arabic it’s “Seen” (صين) with a Saad (ص) [sˤ]. It came from Persian “چین” (Cheen). Which came from Sanskrit.
My bad, and thanks for the info! I’ll correct my comment, I kind of rushed checking the etymologies.
Wikipedia says from Portuguese, through Persian, back to Sanskrit, being the grand daddy of English, calling it “cina”, and/or it has to do with Qin Dynasty that unified China.
Probably better than whatever bullshit they would have gotten from Zhongguo if “Peking” was as good as they could do with “Beijing”
Sanskrit is more like English’s uncle than granddaddy: English is from Proto-Germanic, and both Proto-Germanic and Sanskrit are from Proto-Indo-European.
Or that soy beans are actually named after the sauce, since English didn’t have a word for the bean yet.