North African Place Names

>Mediaeval Ghana and Modern Ghana don't overlap at all
>Neither Sudan nor South Sudan are in the Sudan region

What's going on here? Are these terms unrelated and the similarity is coincidence? Is it caused by nomadic groups taking terms with them? Or is it some weird version of wewuzzing?

the word 'sudan' is literally just arabic for 'place of black people' or something like that IIRC
the modern state of sudan took it's name from the arabic word for western africa because black people i guess
in short, arabs aren't very creative with names

So kind of like "Niger" and "Nigeria" both meaning "black" (ultimately from the Niger River, aka river for black people)?

>mfw there are 2 Albania's

>mfw there are two Georgias
>mfw there are two Galicias
>mfw there are five Springfields in Wisconsin alone

>There's an Iberia in Iberia and an Iberia in the Caucasus.

>mfw there's a place called King of Prussia
>mfw there's not a king in Prussia

Sud is south, the French came up with it.

>mfw there were literally a dozen Alexandrias

Sorry, meant this one. I should rename the map, derp.

They were kings in Prussia before Freddy the great united the borders

>tfw spent a year in Alexandria, Afghanistan. The name of the city eventually mutated into Kandahar.

Suudaan literally means 'blacks' in Arabic. Sudan is short for 'bilaad as-suudaan' (Land of the Blacks).

>Alexandria
>Al-Ekandria
>Al-Ekander
>Al-Kandahar
>Kandahar

I can see it, but I also love historical linguistics.

the state borders are colonial and the names wer made up by the colonisers as well. cameroon literally means shrimps because one time when the portuguese were passing by they saw lots of shrimps in the water.

sudan is arabic and means black people ( is wrong). the region bilad as-sudan ("land of the blacks") went all the way from west to east and includes the later country of sudan (at least partially). the british simply called their part of sudan "sudan" and the term stuck, whereas in the french areas other terms were chosen as the name for the state instead.
ghana, like mali, was probably chosen to claim the legacy of an important native empire from that region for the country and to replace the clearly colonial name "gold coast", i.e. the place the europeans got their gold.

>ghana, like mali, was probably chosen to claim the legacy of an important native empire from that region for the country and to replace the clearly colonial name "gold coast", i.e. the place the europeans got their gold.

While that makes sense, Mediaeval Mali and Modern Mali overlap to a large degree.

afghanistan is not arabic speaking so the al- part wouldn't have been there. it's actually disputed whether or not kandahar comes from alexandria. it might rather have been derived from the hellenistic state of gandhara or gondophares, the name of a king in the area.

your etymology is correct for the egyptian alexandria though

alexander
al-iksandir (no e in arabic, al- reinterpreted as arabic determinate article)
al-iskandir (metathesis of s and k)
al-iskandiriya (modeled on greek alexandreia but identical in form to an arabic "nisba-adjective" that expresses origin, similar to Iraq -> Iraqi, feminine Iraqiya)
leading to today's pronunciation of al-iskandriya or dialectally something more like el-iskandreyya

>it might rather have been derived from the hellenistic state of gandhara or gondophares, the name of a king in the area.

Interesting, I didn't know that.

As for the Arabic -iya suffix, isn't it conveniently similar in meaning/usage to Greek -eia and Latin/Romance -ia?

>afghanistan is not arabic speaking so the al- part wouldn't have been there.
This is true. The Afghan version of the name "Alexander" is Sikandar. The other etymologies are much weaker, especially since we have ancient Hellenic site within the city itself.

It's the relative adjective (-iyy) (an-nisbah), but with the feminine marker (-ah). All cities in Arabic are grammatically feminine.

prussia is actually a good example of a place name migrating across the map. the prussians were originally a pagan baltic people whose territory was conquered by german crusaders. the name for the region stuck even as the crusader teutonic order ruled over the area while original prussians assimilated to german and polish culture. the grand master of the teutonic order who controlled the area eventually became protestant, so he decided to turn the order into a secular protestant duchy which he named duchy of prussia. later the dukes of prussia inherited the march of brandenburg through dynastic politics and moved their capital there, so that eventually brandenburg became synonymous with prussia and original prussia was renamed eastern prussia.

a similar thing happened to saxony. the actual saxons never lived in what is today saxony, but rather in what we now call lower saxony. dynastic entanglements led to the title being conferred on the ruler of meißen and eventually his territory became synonymous with the name saxony and people there today call themselves saxons even though their ancestor mostly weren't saxons at all.

Another good one is "Askenazi", the Jewish group. "Ashkenaz" used to basically mean "Gaul", but as those Jews moved east and Gaul was renamed to France, it lost that original connection. If "Ashkenaz" were to be resurrected as a place name, it'd have to either mean Poland or Israel.

>mfw Alexandria in the Caucasus, in Bactria

>It's the relative adjective (-iyy) (an-nisbah), but with the feminine marker (-ah). All cities in Arabic are grammatically feminine.

Thanks user.

>ywn never live a timeline where Central Asia was Hellenized/Westernized
>mfw

>a similar thing happened to saxony. the actual saxons never lived in what is today saxony, but rather in what we now call lower saxony. dynastic entanglements led to the title being conferred on the ruler of meißen and eventually his territory became synonymous with the name saxony and people there today call themselves saxons even though their ancestor mostly weren't saxons at all.
Ah, thank you, user, I was wondering on this particular case more than once.