Instead of just referring to somewhere by their proper name, does your country/language have another creative way to refer to foreign places?
In Ireland it’s quite common to refer to Britain (or England specifically) as “across the water” (i.e. the Irish Sea). You would often use it when making a comparison (e.g. “here” vs “across the water”), or describing someone who has moved there (“they’ve gone across the water”).
Like with a lot of places, we refer to mainland Europe as “the continent”. Some people might describe the US as “across the pond” but that tends to be more common in Britain than in Ireland. But like Britain we also usually talk about Australia and New Zealand as being “down under”.
22 comments
I’m not aware of anything like that used in our everyday language but we used to practice defending ourselves against the “yellow country” in the army. The idea was that it’s an imaginary neutral country but everyone knew we were practicing in case Russia attacked.
Edit: I Googled it. Apparently, since last year, they’ve openly started talking about Russia instead of the yellow country.
Mainland Europe (not including Denmark for some reason) is often referred to as “the Continent” in Sweden, Norway and Finland too.
It’s as we’re desolate northern islands, somehow disconnected from the rest of Europe.
^(Edit: Although Russia, and even more so the USSR back in the days, could just as well be seen as an uncrossable ocean. So sure, we *are* somewhat geographically disconnected from Europe.)
I rhink I’ve heard “across the pond” for the UK/US by the respective other, not sure about specifics though.
In Germany it can happen that people refer to the whole of the UK as just “England”. It’s usually just laziness and people do know better, but especially Wales often gets thrown in the pot with England. Scotland and Northern Ireland are more on people’s minds.
There are humorous names for other countries, but they aren’t really used in everyday speech. I know of the term Froschschenkelland (frog’s legs country, because that’s a stereotypical French food) for France, but I’ve never actually heard anyone refer to it like that.
Germany itself has the name “Das Land der Dichter und Denker” (country of poets and thinkers) which I think is known internationally. It doesn’t get thrown around all the time, more in a cultural or academic setting.
Edit: I’ve seen Dutch people jokingly referred to as “Swamp Germans”. Not sure if we also call them “Sumpf-Deutsche”, but it wouldn’t surprise me lol.
I’m sure I’m forgetting others and there probably were more nicknames for other countries in my parents’ and grandparent’s generation, but they might have been quite derogatory and aren’t known to my generation.
In Romania, sometimes Germany is jokingly referred as Nemția (edit: the ț letter is basically the ts or tz sound) , which is not correct grammatically in Romanian or has any historical legacy. In the early 2000, when facebook appeared, there some illiterate football fans started to call Germany as Nemția bc of of some game between our countries. Before them, Germany was never referred as Nemția. The reason why this confusion came into existence is because germans are more referred as “nemți” than germans in Romania. And those idiots probably thought that Nemtia is the official Romanian name for the country. Jokes on them, unlike other countries, there is none other than just Germania.
Edit, I remembered Europe being referred as Strainezia with a touch of cynicism and dark humor because of how big is the romanian diaspora. Strainezia derives from the word “strain” which means stranger, and “ezia” is inspired by the typical “ia” Latin terminology “the land of”.
Sweden is ”söta bror” (intentionally featuring a Swedish ”ö” rather than a Norwegian ”ø”), which translates to ”sweet brother”. Mainland Europe is, as in Ireland and Sweden, ”the Continent; but like in Sweden, Denmark isn’t really considered part of ”the Continent” since we’re Scandinavian siblings. No other examples that I can name off the top of my mind. In a sort of reversed example, where a situation is named for a place, we call something crazy ”heilt Texas” (”completely Texas”), conjuring up images of cowboys and Wild West-ery.
In the Netherlands, Belgium is called ‘zuiderburen’ so southern neighbors. Germany is called ‘oosterburen’, so eastern neighbors.
In Italian the term is “oltre” (beyond, across) so Switzerland, Austria and, above all, France are indicated by the term “oltr’Alpe” (across the Alps), the United Kingdom is “oltremanica” (“La Manica” is how the English Channel is called in Italian) America is “oltreoceano” and Vatican city is “oltretevere” (across the Tiber).
In the press or on TV (nb: in French-speaking Belgian media). France can be référence to as “outre-Quievrain”, ie “over Quievrain”, Quievrain being a tiny village on Belgian side of the border. And the Netherlands is “outre-Moerdijk”, which is actually not totally consistent as the Moerdijk is a village located clearly inside the Dutch territory and not at all on the border.
Me and people around me often refer to Sweden as “on the other side of the sea” but I don’t think it’s a Polish thing, I think we just developed that habit since flights to Sweden were always ridiculously cheap and back in the day it was the only foreign country we’ve been to and we were mentioning it a lot
I don’t think we have it for the countries, but we do have it for the people of the countries.
So people from England are sometimes called “bifes” literally “steaks”, french are sometimes called “francius” or “avecs”.
We have “camones” (I think it’s from “came on”) for tourists. Some people use it just for English speaking tourists, other people use it for all tourists.
Netherlands is sometimes jokingly referred as “Räme-Germaania” or “Räme-Saksa” Swamp-Germany.
Sweden is occasionally referred as Svea-Mamma.
Germany is sometimes called “der grosse Kanton” (“the great Canton”; Switzerland is subdivided into 26 Cantons). There is also a [movie](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2889820/) with the same name.
There are also older, derogatory terms for people in neighboring countries like “Gummihäus” (“rubber necks”; origin unknown) for Germans. Italians used to be called “tschingge” (from the word for “five”).
In press when Russia is portrayed negatively it often is called ‘the Eastern neighbour’ or ‘the big neighbour’ and it sounds very concerning if you are Latvian.
Territory that was annexed by Russia from Latvia in 1945 still is almost always referred by its pre-1945 name ‘Abrene’ even though it’s not official and has been actively discouraged.
Lithuania and Lithuanians are often called ‘braliukas’ which is Lithuanian diminutive word for brother (supposedly how they call us) or ‘leiši’ which is an archaic word for Lithuanians.
I’m not %100 sure but i’ve heard Turks say “komşu (neighbour)” exclusively to refer to Greece even though we border 7 more countries
Spain or the Spanish can be referred to as “nuestros hermanos”, which is Spanish for “our brothers”.
The UK is often paraphrased in light journalism as “em terras de Sua Majestade”, meaning “in His/Her Majesty’s lands”.
The USA is sometimes humorously “os States”, so “the States” but with the untranslated English word States pronounced with Portuguese pronunciation.
Im Irish too. Here in Mayo, we’d refer to Scotland as Alba, England is Sasana, The US is either Meiriceá or Yankeedoodledonkeyland 🤣
And Mainland Europe is either called The Mainland or The Continent or An Mór-Roinn in Irish
I think the funniest we have is for something within Denmark. Zealand has been nicknamed “the Devil’s Island” (Djævleøen) by people from Funen and Jutland
Other than that, it’s pretty generic stuff like “The North” (Norden), being the three Scandinavian countries plus Finland, Iceland, the Faroe Islands, and Greenland
This may just be in my circles, but if someone is saying that they are going to take a trip across “the border”, then it is shorthand for going to Germany 90% of the time. While more rare, you could also say that you would “cross the Sound” (krydse Sundet) or take a trip “across the bridge” (over broen) as a way of saying that you’d swing by Sweden. “The Sound” is referring to Øresund (the water between Zealand and Scania) and “the bridge” is referring to Øresundsbroen, the bridge connecting Copenhagen to Malmö
Because we are a lazy bunch, we also lump whole countries under the main region/entity, even if we do technically have names for the full country. So, for example, The Netherlands are Holland and the UK is not uncommonly simply called England (sometimes Great Britain, but there is no love for Northern Ireland, it seems).
In Polish we sometimes use Russian names for some nations when we want to sound informal and low-key dismissive. Russian people become “Ruskie” rather than “Rosjanie”, the Chinese become “Kitajcy” rather than “Chińczycy” etc.
Austria is called father-in-law (sógor) in Hungarian, and pretty much all neighbouring nations have their own unique hungarian name. Rácz for Serbians, oláh for Romanians, tót for Slovaks. People from the US are called Yankees but I think its an international expression.
Many Hungarians still call neighbouring countries in names which where used when those countries were part of the Hungarian Kingdom. For example Slovakia is often called Felvidék (Upper Lands/Upper Hungary). The majority of cities in this area has a unique Hungarian name, just a couple of examples: Bratislava -> Pozsony, Vienna -> Bécs, Cluj Napoca -> Kolozsvár, Novi Sad -> Ùjvidék, Belgrade -> Nàndorferhèrvár (tho not used officially anymore), Rijeka -> Fiume and so on
One that is quite common in the UK is to refer to Ireland as “The Republic”, which is a bit weird because there’s loads of other republics near by as well.
– France: l’Oltralpe = (the land) on the other side of the Alps
– UK: l’Oltremanica = (the land) on the other side of the Manica (“manica” could be literally translated as “sleeve”, here it indicates the English Channel)
– Japan: il Sol Levante = (the land) of the Rising Sun.
– Germans and Austrians: i Crucchi (nb it’s derogatory) = italianization of “kruh”, i.e. “bread” in Serbo-Croatian, because during WWI usually the first thing Austro-Hungarian prisoners asked for was something to eat.
From old folks I’ve heard also:
The French: i cugini tristi = “the sad cousins”
Italians calls France “oltralpe” “further the alps”