For example in Spain Germany is the Teutonic country, France is the gaul one, Mexico is the Aztec one or Japan the country of the rising sun or Nipón one (Instead of Japonés/Japanese).
They are used mainly in journalism to avoid repetetiveness and to be fancier
Edit: I get wrong Germany nick, is Teutonic
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Pretty sure that “Land of the rising sun” is just the literal translation of the Japanese name for Japan so that’s probably used in at least some cases in most countries, even if only for tourism purposes.
But no I can’t think of any country that routinely gets called by a different description. Apart from the US being sometimes referred to by the acronym (VS), sometimes by it spelled out (Verenigde Staten), and sometimes as just Amerika. Same for the UK: VK, Verenigd Koninkrijk or Groot-Brittannië. I don’t think I ever see GB in use here.
The closest we probably get is “zuiderburen” and “oosterburen”, southerly and easterly neighbours, referring to obviously Belgium and Germany respectively.
Finland – land of a thousand lakes.
Indonesia – The emerald belt
From the top of my head, we do have some, but they are not necessarely common. **Albion** for England for example. The French use that too to my knowledge. **Ferner Osten** (far east) is used twice. It’s either [this](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Far_East) or [that](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Far_Eastern_Federal_District).
Then there is the **Naher Osten** (near east) which is what the WASP’s usually know as the Middle East.
In Danish, the Netherlands is still called Holland.
Germany is not the Goth country, we were. We use their own name, the old way, “teutónico”, which is the same as they call themselves, “deutsch”, Italian “tedesco”.
A couple years ago we made the switch from *Vitryssland* (lit. White Russia) to *Belarus*, but I think most people still refer to the country by its old name. Other than that I can’t really think of any historic names that are still in use.
In Greek there’s a few different layers of such alternative names:
* The closest to what you are asking is names of mostly post-colonial countries that got changed but the old name remains in occasional use. Examples include Κεϋλάνη (Keiláni, *Ceylon*) for Σρι Λάνκα (Sri Lanka), Βιρμανία (Virmanía, *Burma*) for Μιανμάρ (Myanmar), or Ζαΐρ (Zaír, *Zaire*) for Λαϊκή Δημοκρατία του Κονγκό (*DR Kongo*). I think that those three are the ones that you can still encounter in material produced in the 21st century, with Κεϋλάνη being the most common, as far as I can tell.
* Then you have forms of the names that come from earlier stages or variants of the language (which mostly means from Puristic Greek, a register of the language that was used as the written norm in the 19th and 20th century and which tried to make modern Greek sound/look more antique for prestige reasons). There, you have forms like Δανιμαρκία (Dhanimarkía, *Denmark*) for Δανία (Dhanía) which is only surviving nowadays in the quote from Hamlet as it was translated way back when. It’s most a phonological difference. You also have forms like Κοσσυφοπέδιο (Kossifopédhio, Kosovo) which is a Puristic and literal translation of [Kosovo](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_blackbird) Field. Κοσσυφοπέδιο is definitely hanging on when you refer to the area as a district of Serbia (which is the official position of both countries with Greek as a state language), but the form Κόσοβο (Kósovo) seems to be replacing it as the common term whether you refer to the area as a region of Serbia or an independent republic. But I haven’t seen the inverse – if you are talking about the Republic of Kosovo, you wouldn’t use Κοσσυφοπέδιο.
* Finally, a bit of the reserve of what you are asking, new terms coming in that could potentially make the current standard terms “historic” in the future. The most popular one is Λάτβια (Látvia) which is a strictly oral but common alternative to Λετονία (Letonía). It’s considered wrong at the moment, but it’s getting more popular (the mechanic is a common one – not a lot of direct exposure to Latvia, so when Greek speakers find out something about the country, it’s by English-language sources). Similar fate perhaps awaits Ισημερινός (Isimerinós, *Ecuador*), which is displaced by the direct borrowing Εκουαδόρ (Ekuadhór).
I’m not including cases like Γαλλία (Gallía, *France*) because that’s the only name the country has in Greek. I’m also not including contemporary erroneous use of names like Τσεχοσλοβακία (Tsekhoslovakía) and Γιουγκοσλαβία (Yugoslavía), because they no longer correspond to a specific state (and the person using probably means “one of those countries around there, I’m not sure which”).
There are plenty of them, the French are sometimes called the *cugini d’oltralpe* (cousins beyond the Alps), for synecdoche, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands are sometimes called *Inghilterra* and *Olanda*. A poetic and historical name for Great Britain is *Albione*. The Germans are sometimes called, with an obsolete term, *Teutonici*. Greece is sometimes called *Ellade*.
The Balkans were historically called *Schiavonia* (now forgotten).
As for country names that have more than one pronunciation, depending on the speaker, Ukraine is sometimes called ‘Ucr**a**ina’ or ‘Ucra**i**na’.
Not historic per say, but we nickname often France as the Hexagon or the Metropolis.
UK can be Albion, and its people the Anglo-Saxons (although usually it includes the Americans as well).
Belgium has the nickname of being “the flat country”.
Portuguese people are the “Lusitaniens” and Spanish people the “Ibères”.
China can be nicknamed the “Middle Empire” in medias and such, which is kinda an historical name.
Well, in Greek:
France is Gallía. That’s the normal Greek name for France, not a nickname.
Likewise, Switzerland is Elvetía
Other than that, Germany is Germanía which also goes back to Greco-Roman antiquity. Likewise, Egypt is Aígyptos. English uses the ancient greco-roman names for these two countries too, while their native names are Deutschland and Masr respectively.
I mean aren’t all names really historical in one way or another? 😛 that being said in Greek we refer to:
Γαλλία – Gaulia, from the Gauls
Ολλανδία – Holland is used to refer to the Netherlands, not just colloquially but in almost all contexts
Λευκορωσία – Whiterussia is used for Belarus (direct translations are common in Greek)
However, relatedly in Greek there’s a fixation on using the original names for cities, that’s a big thing. E.g. we call all sorts of cities in Turkey by their original Greek names (incl. Instanbul/Constantinople), but not only. Any city that had a Greek name at some point that Greek name is still used in modern-day Greek. E.g. Plovdiv in Bulgaria is called Φιλιππούπολη in Greek even today (Philip-city from King Philip)
We mostly just use the standard names though we tend to say France and the U.S in a different way.
U.S we usually say Bandaríkin or the United States but Ameríka if you’re really old or wanna sound cool.
France is Frakkland or Land of the Franks but sometimes if we feel fancy we say Frakkaríki or the State of the French. It may also share origins with the German, Frankreich.
Really old people would perhaps say Grekenland for Greece. Most people say Hellas.
In slang people refer to all of Germany as Swabia, and to Germans as Swabians.
We have a historic name for Greece, but as I learned later in life, it’s what they still call it: Ellada
Holland
Byelorussia
The Ukraine
Burma
Ceylon
Swaziland
Abyssinia
Kampuchea
Zaire
Bohemia
All of these depend how old you are, you’ll get old people saying Zaire and Ceylon, but some younger people still use Holland and Burma and The Ukraine
In Armenia we have some names that are old or quite different from the modern names.
* Lehastan is Poland (Լեհաստան)
* Vrastan is Georgia (Վրաստան)
* Parskastan is Iran/Persia (Պարսկաստան)
* Hunastan is Greece (Հունաստան)
* Some Armenians still call Turkey Tajkastan (from their origins in Central Asia)
Oh, and we call our own country Hayastan (Հայաստան)
* A rare old name for Australia is *[Ulimaroa](https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/Ulimaroa#Swedish)*.
* A historic name for Finland, when it was part of Sweden, was *[Österland](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%96sterland)* (“Eastland”). Following the same pattern as the other Swedish [lands](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lands_of_Sweden), e.g. *Norrland* (“Northland”).
* An archaic or dated name for the US, from the 20th century, is *Amerikas Förenta Stater* (“America’s United States”). In contemporary Swedish we now just say *USA* (“USA”).
>in Spain Germany is the Teutonic country
Same in contemporary Swedish. *Tyskland* ≈ Teuton Land.
In French, Allemagne (Germany) is the land of the Alaman tribes.
Not that I know of, but some people tend to lately call Russia a “Muskovite state” because historically, Rus was a country what we now call Ukraine.
An interesting onr I ve heard of recently (not common but you can hear it on the tv or sth like that)
Great Britain as “Γηραιά Αλβιώνα” ~Old Albion(Alviona)
The island of Great Britain used to be called that by Greek geographers. I think that’s the oldest name of Britain (used since around 400 BC)
Sports journalist sometimes called France the “land of the Gallic rooster”, Finland the “land of a thousand lakes” and Japan the “land of the rising sun” for the same reason you mentioned. Germany used to be colloquially called the Reich, but it is far less common today. The pre-Trianon Hungary is/was Uhersko, the post-Trianon country is called Maďarsko.
We had historic names for the ethnicities that surround us: *tót* for Slovaks, *oláh* for Romanians, *rác* for Serbs and *sváb* for Germans. However, they fell out of use, and you would most likely only see them in surnames nowadays.
Poland used to called Lehistan. If I remember correctly, Leh was a name of a king.
France – Galya
Greece – Hellas
The Netherlands – Hollanda
Hungary is called Madžarska here, Hungarians are called madžari. Both words come from Magyar.
But Austria-Hungary is called Avstro-Ogrska, Ogrska meaning Hungary and derived from latin as well.
I can’t really think of country names, but we have some old, often Latin derived names for various cities across the continent.
For example:
Ghent – Gandawa
Aachen – Akwizgran
Milan – Mediolan
Naples – Neapol
And lots more.
We call Germany the “big canton” (Grosser Kanton – a canton being +/- the equivalent of a US State).
We call Greeks Yunan coming from the word Ionian, is that count 🙂
Oh also we still refer Greeks that are not from Greece as Rum (Roman)
In Russian and Ukrainian the UK usually refered as GreatBritain( in one word – Великобритания.)
United Kingdom is very very formal name here. Probably, used in usual speech by people who consume too many English language and got accustomed to calling the country “UK”:)
Germany is funny. In Ukrainian it is called Німеччина which means something like Deaf land. It stems from the old times of huge German minority who didn’t speak local language and was seen as deaf.
Aye, we have some “bizzare” names for different counties here in Poland for example :
Germany – Niemcy – comes from a word “niemce” = old phrase for ” mute ” as they couldn’t speak Polish
Italy – Włochy akhem comes from… włosy = hairs as Italians were viewed as having a lot of hairs, everywhere.
On the other hand we have always called Niederlands as Niderlandy (Netherlands)
More like nicknames. Austria is often referred to as “brother in laws”. (Sógor)
When people want to sound poetic they might call England “Foggy Albion” (ködös Albion)
A historical name that is present in some places for Serbia and Serbians is rác from the medieval state of Raška.
A somewhat historical name for Romania and Romanians is Oláhország and oláh. It comes from the name of Wallachia but it’s not in use really anymore.
A historical name for Slovaks, especially the ones who were moved to Hungary by the Austrians in the 1700’s is tót. The etymology is unclear.
An old name for Russia is Muscovy and for Russians Muscovite (muszka) and that is sometimes used in the context of Russian military agression.
That’s it, otherwise we just have the one name we have used for countries and people for centuries.
In Ireland we have An Ioruadh for Norway, meaning land of the red people. This came from the Vikings who had red hair and who brought the Red hair gene to Ireland.
The anthem calls Spain Hispanje instead of just Spanje