This Map of the World Depicts the Names of Countries in Their Own Languages

I came across something very cool today.  Someone made a map of the world, using the language of each individual country to depict it on the map.

map own languages

The creator has his creation on a website he calls Endonym Map–referring to a very specific term.

From the website:

An endonym is the name for a place, site or location in the language of the people who live there. These names may be officially designated by the local government or they may simply be widely used.

This map depicts endonyms of the countries of the world in their official or national languages. In cases where a country has more than one national or official language, the language that is most widely used by the local population is shown.

On the site, you can drag around the map and zoom into specific locations.  (You can also purchase a high quality version of the map for display).

I’ve learned some pretty interesting things from the map.  For example, I didn’t know that Norway and Denmark both refer to themselves as kingdoms in their official names.  And the Island of Iceland ends up being Ãsland in its native language.

I came across this website through the Twitter feed Neatorama, which lived up to its name in this case.

About Jeanne Marie Hoffman

Former bartender, still a geek. One equal part each cookies, liberty, football, music, travel, libations. Stir vigorously. +Jeanne Marie Hoffman Jeanne on Twitter

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4 comments

  1. Um.. Ireland is Eire.

  2. You are my favorite blog. I follow a lot of blogs in ‘The Hobby’, but you always have something interesting, click worthy. Thank you!

    You need to have credit card links so I can support your blog when I sign up for credit cards.

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