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For example India is Indien, Serbia is Serbien, Saudi Arabia is Saudi Arabien. However, some other countries are written as is: Malaysia, Namibia.

My questions are:

  1. Why is Latin -ia written as -ien in German? I mean, why is India corrected to Indien in German given that it is a foreign (Latin) word?

  2. Why is it applicable to some country names, not all?

I noticed this in FIFA country code list.

MAKZ
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    Why not? Why do you think it should be different? How do you think it should be, and why? – Hubert Schölnast Jun 09 '18 at 05:55
  • https://german.stackexchange.com/questions/12112/unterschied-zwischen-istan-ei-und-ien-in-ländernamen Maybe this answer can help – some_user Jun 09 '18 at 09:00
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    It seems that the suffix -ien is no longer productive, so only countries which existed/were known in Germany a century ago could use it: Indien, Arabien, Transsylvanien... vs. Namibia, Malaysia, Somalia etc. (And why? Well, my assumption is that it's just be part of the general trend towards anglicism, whereby any German construction can face a slow takeover by the corresponding English one.) – Kilian Foth Jun 09 '18 at 10:00
  • @KilianFoth that was my initial thought to: -ien appears in older countries. Your comment is close to an answer, if you could provide some links to scholarly articles that talk about it – MAKZ Jun 09 '18 at 10:15
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    I thought the German name of Namibia was Namibien. Wiktionary has it, Duden does not. Also listed here: http://corpora.informatik.uni-leipzig.de/de/res?corpusId=deu_newscrawl_2011&word=Namibien. – Philipp Jun 09 '18 at 10:41
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    Same with Malaysia, I always call it Malaysien – Philipp Jun 09 '18 at 10:42
  • @Philipp It is called "Namibia" and "Malaysia" on my globe and in my atlas. Moreover, I have never heard "Namibien" or "Malaysien". – tavkomann Jun 09 '18 at 11:24
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    @tavkomann At least I already heard "Malaysien" as well. "Namibien" not really. – πάντα ῥεῖ Jun 09 '18 at 11:29
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    @tavkomann I don’t know if it’s “correct” or not, but the -ien endings do exist in German with those two countries: https://www.gpskoordinaten.de/karte/land/MY and https://www.falkmedien.de/Namibien-Suedwestafrika to quote just two examples that are actually related to geography. Maybe the terms are old-fashioned or have been replaced by their English counterparts, but they do exist. – Philipp Jun 09 '18 at 12:24
  • @Philipp I can perfectly imagine to read this in older books, but I do not have a quote. However, I do not think that this naming of those countries is usual today. – tavkomann Jun 09 '18 at 12:31
  • The suffix -ien is still productive: Moldawien, Transnistrien, Kirgisien, Mauretanien. – Janka Jun 09 '18 at 12:42
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    Quiz (in German): countries that end in -ien: https://www.jetpunk.com/user-quizzes/186553/lander-die-mit-ien-enden – Philipp Jun 09 '18 at 13:34
  • I would say KilianFoth is right. Have a look at this page of a book about name studies (second and third paragraph on the right). – tavkomann Jun 09 '18 at 14:40
  • Your assumption/claim that -ia is a Latin suffix throughout might be true for India and Arabia, but definitely not for Namibia, Kenia and Malaysia – tofro Jun 09 '18 at 14:55
  • @tofro I would like to disagree. -ia is a well known Latin suffix and widely used to form the names of countries. Every country from Australia to Alemania, all country names ending with -ia is Latin. – MAKZ Jun 09 '18 at 15:43
  • "Why" questions relating to human languages are meaningless. Better ask "how comes...". This then at least allows for a historical explanation. The answer to "why" is always: "Well, that's how it has developed." – Christian Geiselmann Jun 11 '18 at 13:46

2 Answers2

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The -ien suffix is used for countries where the German name is taken from Latin (or, in some examples, Spanish), the -ia suffix is then converted to -ien:

  • Indien
  • Spanien
  • Serbien
  • Arabien
  • Kolumbien
  • Germanien

For other countries that (more or less coincidently, but not based on Roman language) end in -ia or -ya, the suffix is kept as is or transposed to -ia

  • Kenia
  • Namibia
  • Tansania
  • Malaysia

Latin country names have also typically been part of the German language for much longer time than these farther-away countries. Thus, their names had more time to be adapted to German.

tofro
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    Namibia is Namib + -ia where suffix -ia is of Latin origin. Same goes for Malayasia (Malaya + -ia). -ia suffix is used to form the name of a nation and it's definitely Latin. Kenya is not Latin. – MAKZ Jun 09 '18 at 15:29
  • Here's the story behind the name - there's no hint to a Latin origin. https://www.namibian.com.na/index.php?id=127811&page=archive-read . The very same applies to Malaysia - I am pretty sure the Romans didn't even know where that was supposed to be. You seem to assume that any language would simply form country names like English does (by appending -ia) - Why should they? – tofro Jun 09 '18 at 15:36
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    tofro, you missed the point. The name Namibia was formed by combining the words Namib and -ia. Here Namib is not Latin, i agree with you. But my point is -ia is borrowed from Latin. Namibia means Land of Namib. I agree with you that Romans did not know Malays existed. But when the Malays named their country, they called it Land of Malaya, which is what Malayasia means. Not all countries use -ia to name their country, but when they do, it's always the Latin -ia. – MAKZ Jun 09 '18 at 15:52
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    @MAKZ Nah, I'm not missing the point. You are aware that the forming of country names using the ex-Latin -ia suffix is a habit specific to the English language? Other languages have other habits, like Swedish, Danish or German that tend to use -ien. You seem to be extrapolating from an English-centric view. – tofro Jun 09 '18 at 16:08
  • Saudi-Arabia calls itself as-saʿūdīya (Arab), Syria call themselves as-sūriyya (still no Latin, but Arabic), Serbia is Srbija (very probably not Latin as well), and Croatia Hrvatska (no Latin as well). Even the official name of the state of India resolves to something like Bharat Ganarajya. There is no rule like you stated. – tofro Jun 09 '18 at 16:23
  • @tofro. just for the record: Arabic Sūriya is an old loanword from Greek. – fdb Jun 09 '18 at 17:49
  • Malaysia, seltener Malaysien – Carsten S Jun 09 '18 at 20:37
  • @tofro Although Danish and Swedish do use -ien like German, they also use -iet; the ending -en/-et in those endings is identifiable with the definite article in the commune/neuter gender (despite countries always being neuter, never commune). As in German, Kenya, Namibia, Tanzania, Malaysia, Colombia, Nigeria and various other countries also end in -ia rather than -ien/t in both languages. The dichotomy you posit between names from Latin/Spanish vs others also doesn’t hold up – Serbien, Moldawien, Kirgisien and others did not enter German through Latin or Spanish. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Jul 20 '23 at 14:11
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Many old German names for countries are weak plurals of the name of the inhabitants. For example, Sachse > Sachsen, Bayer > Bayern, Schwabe > Schwaben, Preusse > Preussen. By analogy to these you then have foreign names like Italië > Italien.This does not happen with names borrowed in the recent past.

fdb
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