50 Fun Facts About Country Nicknames

Which country, whose own name means 'sun origin', is nicknamed the Land of the Rising Sun?

Japan calls itself Nihon or Nippon, and its flag, known at home as the Hinomaru or 'circle of the sun', carries the same idea as a single sun disc.

Which gemstone gives Ireland its best-known nickname, an image traced to a 1795 poem by William Drennan?

The Emerald Isle owes its name to lush vegetation, a product of Ireland's mild climate and frequent rainfall.

Which country is nicknamed lo Stivale, 'the Boot', because of the shape of the peninsula it occupies?

Italy's boot even has named parts: Calabria is the Toe, Salento is the Heel and Gargano is the Spur.

Which country is nicknamed Oz and, after the ironic title of a 1964 book by Donald Horne, the Lucky Country?

Australia took the title as a compliment, but Horne meant it as a rebuke: he argued the nation had prospered on luck rather than on the strength of its political or economic system.

Which country did Archbishop Desmond Tutu call the Rainbow Nation after its first democratic election in 1994?

South Africa's rainbow image grew out of Tutu's televised talk of the 'Rainbow People of God', his picture of a country united after apartheid.

Which country is informally called Holland, a name that strictly belongs to just two of its twelve provinces?

The Netherlands gets called Holland because North and South Holland, home to Amsterdam, Rotterdam and The Hague, long dominated the country's trade and politics.

Which country is nicknamed the Great White North, a name shared with Bob and Doug McKenzie's SCTV sketch?

Canada's nickname reached a wider audience when Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas, as the McKenzie brothers, turned their sketch into a bestselling 1981 comedy album.

New Zealand's Māori name, Aotearoa, is most often translated as 'the land of the long white' what?

Cloud is the usual reading: in one tradition the explorer Kupe's crew knew land was near when they saw a long cloud hanging over it.

Which country did the Greek historian Herodotus famously describe as the gift of the Nile?

Egypt earned the phrase because its ancient civilisation depended on the river's resources and shaped its whole culture around them.

Which country's name for itself, Zhongguo, is usually translated as the Middle Kingdom or Central State?

China's 'Middle Kingdom' label reached European languages through the Portuguese in the 16th century and became popular in the mid-19th.

Which personification of the United States is linked by legend to a meat packer from Troy, New York?

Uncle Sam only got a standard look during the First World War, from James Montgomery Flagg's recruiting poster, itself inspired by a British one of Lord Kitchener.

Mainland France is nicknamed after which shape, an image first seen in geography texts of the 1850s?

The Hexagon is so familiar that in 2023 French deputies voted to write l'Hexagone in place of 'métropole', a term judged colonial, in a defence bill.

Which northern European country is called the Land of a Thousand Lakes, though it has well over 150,000?

Finland is about a tenth water and roughly three-quarters forest, which makes it the most forested country in Europe.

Which Southeast Asian country, where people greet one another with the prayer-like wai, is nicknamed the Land of Smiles?

Thailand's wai does far more than say hello: the gesture also serves for farewells, thanks and apologies, and changes with the status of the person receiving it.

Argentina's name comes from the Latin word for which metal, sought by the region's early European explorers?

Silver is argentum in Latin, and the first European explorers of the region chased a widespread legend of fabulous silver deposits somewhere upriver.

Which country is called Das Land der Dichter und Denker, the land of poets and thinkers, by many who live there?

Germany's literary boast, backed by names such as Goethe and Schiller, is hardly known outside the German-speaking world.

Which country prints the Latin name Helvetia on its coins and stamps and uses the country code CH?

Switzerland falls back on Latin when using any or all of its four official languages would be awkward, and CH stands for Confoederatio Helvetica.

Which part of the United Kingdom is known as the Land of Song, famed for male voice choirs and harpists?

Wales owes its male voice choirs to 19th-century chapels, where they formed from the tenor and bass sections of the congregation's singers.

Which country, blessed with highly fertile chernozem soil, is often called the Breadbasket of Europe?

Ukraine's plentiful rye and wheat shape its cooking too, going into the many kinds of bread at the heart of the national cuisine.

Which Asian island nation has a name meaning 'Lion City' in Sanskrit, even though lions never lived there?

Singapore owes the name to legend: the Malay Annals tell of the prince Sang Nila Utama seeing a strange beast while hunting and being told it must be a lion.

Stilt houses on Lake Maracaibo are said to have reminded Amerigo Vespucci of which city, inspiring the name Venezuela?

Venice inspired Veneziola, 'Little Venice', which became Venezuela in Spanish, though a member of Vespucci's own crew told the story of the name differently.

Which South American country probably takes its name from a tree once prized in Europe for its red dye?

Brazil was officially the 'Land of the Holy Cross' in early Portuguese records, but sailors and merchants in the brazilwood trade called it the 'Land of Brazil' instead.

Which Asian land was dubbed the Land of the Morning Calm in the title of an 1880s book by Percival Lowell?

Korea's nickname is a fanciful reading of the characters for Joseon, the old name of the kingdom, which more plainly mean 'morning freshness'.

What does the name Costa Rica mean in Spanish, a label some accounts credit to Christopher Columbus in 1502?

Rich coast was the verdict after Columbus reached the eastern shore on his final voyage and reported vast quantities of gold jewellery worn by the people there.

Which country is called the Graveyard of Empires after British, Soviet and American failures there?

Afghanistan has worn the label only recently: applied to that country, the phrase seems to date from a 2001 Foreign Affairs article by Milton Bearden.

Which island nation is known as the Great Red Island because of its prominent rust-coloured laterite soils?

Madagascar, the world's fourth-largest island, shows its orange-red earth wherever erosion has stripped the grass from the Central Highlands.

Which country's name, coined in a 1933 pamphlet by Choudhry Rahmat Ali, is taken to mean 'Land of the Pure'?

Pakistan began as an acronym built from the names of its homelands, and it also works as a word: pak means 'pure' in Persian and Pashto and -stan means 'land'.

Which Caribbean island's name comes from Xaymaca, an Indigenous word said to mean 'Land of Wood and Water'?

Jamaica's Indigenous name, also translated as the 'Land of Springs', outlived Santiago, the name the island carried as a Spanish colony until England seized it in 1655.

Which Himalayan land calls itself Druk Yul, the Land of the Thunder Dragon, and shows the dragon on its flag?

Bhutan's flag dragon, the Druk, clutches a jewel in each of its claws, and the country's kings are styled Druk Gyalpo, the Dragon King.

Who popularised Uganda's nickname, the Pearl of Africa, in a book written after touring the country in 1907?

Winston Churchill made the visit more than thirty years before he became prime minister, and Uganda's tourism industry traces its roots to his praise.

Which declining power is Russia's Tsar Nicholas I said to have branded the 'sick man of Europe'?

The Ottoman Empire's weakness set off the 'Eastern Question', as other European states manoeuvred to take advantage by expanding into its territories.

Which landlocked Asian country is called the Land of the Eternal Blue Sky for its 250-plus sunny days a year?

Mongolia has plenty of that sky to itself: it is the most sparsely populated sovereign state in the world.

Which Asian archipelago has the historic sobriquet Pearl of the Orient Seas, a phrase echoed in its national anthem?

The Philippines uses the image in the official Filipino words of its anthem, although the Spanish original pictured the country as a child of the sun instead.

Montenegro's name, a nod to the dense evergreen forests that once covered Mount Lovćen, translates as what?

Black mountain is a literal translation of Crna Gora, the name still used for the country in Montenegrin, Serbian, Bosnian and Croatian.

Which East African country is known in French as the Pays des Mille Collines, the Land of a Thousand Hills?

Rwanda's high country includes Volcanoes National Park, and the country is one of only three in the world where mountain gorillas live in the wild.

Which Asian island was long known in the West as Formosa, from a Portuguese phrase meaning 'beautiful island'?

Taiwan kept the older name in the West until after the Second World War, and it survives in the names of species such as the Formosan sika deer.

Which Pacific nation became known as the Friendly Islands after the welcome it gave Captain James Cook in 1773?

Tonga stands out for another reason: though a British protected state from 1900 to 1970, it never gave up its sovereignty to a foreign power.

Which ancient name for Great Britain may come from a word for 'white', perhaps inspired by the cliffs of Dover?

Albion is first attested in Greek, and the cliffs fit the theory neatly because they are visible from mainland Europe at the narrowest crossing point.

Which Caribbean country is nicknamed the Island of Spice and shows a nutmeg on its national flag?

Grenada's signature crop arrived by chance in 1843, when a merchant ship sailing from the East Indies to England left a few nutmeg trees behind.

Which North African country's Arabic name, al-Maghrib, means 'the land of the sunset' or 'the west'?

Morocco took the name from the Arabs, who introduced the term Maghrib after their conquest of the region; the country's full official title means 'the western kingdom'.

Which country, called Nyasaland until 1964, is nicknamed the Warm Heart of Africa for its friendly people?

Malawi was the British Central Africa Protectorate until it became Nyasaland in 1907, and it took its present name at independence in 1964.

The term 'banana republic' was coined by O. Henry for a fictional land inspired by his time in which country?

Honduras was where O. Henry hid in a hotel for six months, wanted at home for embezzling from a bank, and it became 'Anchuria' in his 1904 book Cabbages and Kings.

Which Balkan country, whose flag bears a two-headed eagle, has a native name widely read as 'Land of the Eagles'?

Albania's own word for itself is Shqipëria, a name traced back to the 14th century, and its people are likewise known as the 'Children of the Eagles'.

Which former Soviet republic is nicknamed the Land of Fire, a name echoed by the Flame Towers in its capital?

Azerbaijan's nickname goes back to natural gas flares that burn straight out of the ground, flames that Zoroastrian worshippers treated as a symbol of the divine.

Which country, formerly Upper Volta, was renamed in 1984 with words meaning 'land of the honest men'?

Burkina Faso was President Thomas Sankara's choice, joining words from two of its languages: Burkina is Mooré for 'upright', a mark of the people's pride in their integrity.

Which Asian country grew out of Lan Xang, a kingdom founded by Fa Ngum whose name means 'a million elephants'?

Laos inherits the nickname Land of a Million Elephants from the kingdom, whose full name added 'and the White Parasol' when Fa Ngum was crowned in 1353.

Which modern country matches Arabia Felix, one of the three regions into which the Romans divided Arabia?

Yemen earned the Latin name, 'happy' or 'fertile' Arabia, as the best irrigated part of the peninsula, in contrast to Arabia Deserta and Arabia Petraea.

Which country, home to the Boiling Lake hot spring, is nicknamed the Nature Island of the Caribbean?

Dominica's Boiling Lake is the second-largest hot spring in the world, set on an island that is still largely covered by rainforest.

Which country, fought over by rival European powers for centuries, earned the moniker 'the Battlefield of Europe'?

Belgium's unwanted reputation was reinforced in the 20th century, when both world wars were fought across its territory.

Which African country's name comes from a Shona term, often read as 'houses of stones', for a ruined medieval city?

Zimbabwe is named for Great Zimbabwe, a city the Shona began building in the 11th century that grew into one of Africa's major trade centres by the 13th.