How Did The Provinces Of The Roman Empire Get Their Names?

[@NameExplain]

Which province are you watching from?

[@hoangkimviet8545]

I even watch this video when I come from an South East Asian country.

[@belkaisbetterthanosea5490]

Pennsylvania

[@wurzelgnom5760]

Germany

[@aaronodonoghue1791]

Hibernia (not a Roman province I know, but still the name the Romans used for it)

[@massialim4996]

Somewhere between Africa and Mauretania caesariensis

[@IONATVS]

“Superior” and “Inferior” don’t mean “Greater” and “Lesser” in Latin, they mean “Upper” and “Lower”. Generally referring to elevation ie Highlands vs Lowlands or parts of a river system. “Major” and “Minor” are “Greater/Larger” and “Lesser/Smaller” respectively.

[@MisterJang0]

Latin didn't have the letter 'J'; "major" would actually be "maior".

[@IONATVS]

@@MisterJang0 J and U began as a graphical variants of I and V (named ‘u’) and only became recognized as their own letters SPECIFICALLY to disambiguate the consonant I and V from the vowel I and V, IN Renaissance-era Latin text. All evidences shows there was a clear difference between the consonant and vowel versions of the letters even as early as the Roman Republican era, so there is no reason to NOT use J and U for that purpose when writing Latin with modernized grammar and capitalization rules. If writing in period style, sure, but “major” is a perfectly valid way to graphically present the word and makes it more intuitive to understand that the ‘i’ in the word is a consonant, not the vowel they’d otherwise expect. If you insist on writing all ‘J’s as ‘I’ you should be writing all ‘U’s as ‘V’ too.

[@MisterJang0]

@@IONATVS I know about the history, but 'J' has one specific sound to English speakers, and so it would be more accurate to switch it with 'I' in the context of writing Latin words that are meant to be read authentically. 'J' makes a "y" sound in IPA and a lot of European languages, which is generally how 'I' sounded in classical Latin in consonant form, but that's not the case for 'J' in English, and English speakers would be the ones reading what you have to say.

[@IONATVS]

@@MisterJang0 But to an English speaker "maior" is no better--English "i" is nearly always a vowel, suggesting a difficult tripthong, succession of a monophthong and diphthong with no clear indication which is which, or even the trisyllable "ma-ee-or." In either case to intuit the correct pronunciation you need to have some knowledge about the language or comparative linguistics beyond the English surface level, but the I personally feel it is easier for English speakers to parse "major" with a simple tip of "In Latin 'J' is pronounced like an English 'Y' " than to use "maior" and have to explain the difference between consonantal and vowel 'I' and building the intuition required to tell which is which. Using 'J' removes an ambiguity for beginners because that's what it was DESIGNED to do from the very beginning. And same goes for 'V', which I will point out has the exact same intuition problem, since the Latin Consonantal V makes a modern English W sound, not a V sound in Classical Latin: so your choices are (a) use the two variants and just say "but 'V' makes a 'W' sound" or (b) make both the same and have to teach a bunch of intuition about when it's a consonant an when it's a vowel. I'd choose the former any day for teaching the casually interested, and for those who want to dive deeper you can train that intuition and go over the orthographic history of the language at any later time. And as a choral singer, I have had to teach people Latin pronunciation (both classical AND ecclesiastical) at a casual level a LOT. And that's not to mention that the main concern with my original post was making clear the etymology of the English words DESCENDED from Latin, and how 'superior' and 'inferior' are kinda false cognates because of the modern English association of 'higher' with 'better' and 'better' with 'bigger'. And showing them in contrast to 'major'/'minor', the words that actually mean 'bigger'/'smaller' in Latin just demonstrates that connection more transparently than 'maior'.

[@MisterJang0]

@@IONATVS Someone trying to sound out "maior" with the triphthong would naturally make a "y" sound when transitioning between "i" and "o". You were trying to give out a small', surface-level, Latin lesson anyway without going into the role of "J", and there was no "J" in classical Latin, so "I", I think, would've been a simple but effective substitution. I mean, you're trying to teach real Latin words, after all, not their English descendents, am I right?

[@achmedaan]

When he said his Latin pronunciation wasn't good, I was expecting him to use very anglicized pronunciations. I would have been happy had that been the case, instead of just skipping and swapping entire letters like he actually did.

[@Valentina-rj7pf]

Yeah lmao, it was kinda really bad

[@isaac_aren]

I know you're bad with pronunciation, but this time was worse than normal :P C'mon Mauritania is a modern day country!

[@RadenWA]

It’s really funny seeing native English speakers struggle with phonetic languages like literally every letter’s supposed to sound the same and pronounced but they keep guessing which ones should sound different and which ones should be silent Like I heard every C in latin is supposed to be K but we keep confusing it with Ch and S but idk I’m not an expert in Latin

[@samuelalexandrovich6330]

Yeah he also pronounced Crimean Bosphorus as Camarin Bospor

[@unioneitaliana7107]

You have no idea how American kill Italian words when they pronounce our food!

[@ramacandra4554]

@@RadenWA classical latin have the K sound and ecclesiastic latin have the ch sound.

[@MrDexSat]

I KNOW, right? I've barely watched the beginning, but hearing him pronounce the "rr" in "Tarragona" as a fucking L killed me. That and calling the province "terra" instead of "tarra". It's like he's not prepared the video at all

[@johnfelixable]

Noricum is also named after a Celtic tribe, the Noricans. Raetia is more located in modern Bavaria than Switzerland. Superior/inferior doesn't refer to the province size, but to it's location. Upper/lower Germania is located at the upper/lower Rhine respectively. (Watching from Austria/Noricum, btw)

[@Kameliius]

Schöne Grüße aus der Steiermark!

[@jordinagel1184]

Clarification so that some people don’t get confused: “upper and lower” doesn’t refer to “northern and southern,” but rather the altitude (so the Upper Rhine is actually in the south, and the Lower Rhine in the north). Same with Upper and Lower Egypt.

[@lennito5]

Your research is extremely poor. The Inferior/Superior in the two Germanic provinces refers to their position on the Rhine river, not their size. A good translation would be something like Upper and Lower Germania. And the 'Germani' weren't a tribe. Rather the Romans called all the tribes originating from the other side of the Rhine 'Germanic peoples'.

[@John-pk9rw]

I lost it when he said Africa and Mauritania come from Arabic words, 1000 years before Arabs invaded North Africa😂

[@jorder85]

I know you’re bad at pronunciation but if you were to look on Wikipedia and just pronounce things the way the IPA suggest they be pronounced, or just read over the word thoroughly I think it would greatly improve these videos

[@myrddinemrys1332]

Cyprus *may* relate to the cypress tree, however it is unlikely and we can only really relate it with any certainty to the Ancient Greek word Kúpros meaning Copper due to the large copper deposits that exist(ed) on the island.

[@irmaosmatos4026]

latin cuprum and cyprus? With a similar pronouncing? It seems possible

[@myrddinemrys1332]

@@irmaosmatos4026 Probably because Cuprum is borrowed from Kúpros.

[@IONATVS]

Cyprus had THE largest copper mines in the Bronze Age world, and as such was a colossally central trade center for the major empires of the area. It’s likely that Cyprus was named for some other ancient culture’s word for copper, but EQUALLY likely that copper is named FOR THE ISLAND. The two really were inseparable in the imagination of the ancient world.

[@myrddinemrys1332]

@@IONATVS Indeed. That's actually how the Latin word relates to the Greek name for copper, Cuprum meaning the Metal of Cyprus. It is unlikely to be named after the Cypress tree though. We might be able to be more certain on its origin if we could read Linear A as we can see the word that became Cypriot in Linear B.

[@irmaosmatos4026]

As I thought, it is also possible that the cypress tree comes from the island of Cyprus, were the tree was abundant. It seems like the three words are tied to each other.

[@khalilmokhtar5122]

Hello! I'm from the Roman province of Africa (aka Tunisia) and I would like to point out that the name Africa most likely comes from the name of an Amazigh tribe (native people of North Africa) called Afri and I personally don't think it comes from an Arabic word because Arabs only came to North Africa after centuries of Roman rule. This is a very informative and an excellent video nonetheless!

[@khalilmokhtar5122]

@Leonard Lutinies I am an Amazigh too and what you said is true. (TN❤MA)

[@losisansgaming2628]

Ah a carthagenian

[@GazilionPT]

5:31 Inferior and Superior (following Germania, but also Moesia and Panonia) has nothing to do with the respective sizes of the provinces (*), but with their elevation: Germania Superior was at a higher elevation than Germania Inferior. Today we would call them Upper Germania and Lower Germania. And in terms of languages we still talk about High German (Hochdeutsch) and Low German (Plattdeutsch). (*) In the case of Moesia, Moesia Superior was quite smaller than Moesia Inferior, thus disproving the idea that Inferior/Superior was in any way related with their relative sizes.

[@wivota3350]

As far as I know the name Cyprus is related to the Latin word Cuprum meaning copper, because Cyprus was known in antiquity for its copper deposits

[@dnkal2875]

Not really.

[@wivota3350]

@@dnkal2875 well, it is one suggestion tho on where the name Cyprus comes from

[@GazilionPT]

I think most historians think it's the other way around: copper was called Kypros in Greek because that metal was abundant in the island.

[@IONATVS]

@@dnkal2875 It was the single largest Copper mining center in the ancient world. The question isn’t if the words Cyprus and the Greek & Roman words for Copper are related, it’s which was named for the other, the island for the metal it was famous for or the metal for the island half the ancient world’s supply originated from.

[@BananLord]

​@@dnkal2875you say that because you think of the English pronunciation. In Romanian Cyprus is pronounced as chi-proo (written as Cipru), not so different from cupru (coo-proo) meaning copper. Romanian is a romance/latin language.

[@rft9776]

Wow you butchered every one of the names 😵

[@samwill7259]

You might have mentioned that eventually the province of Iudea had it's name changed to Syria Palestina after the Jewish Revolt and the Jewish community's forced exodus from the area. It was an odd name change that was very intentionally crafted by the Romans for political and demographic purposes so it might be interesting to examine.

[@RadenWA]

So apparently we can blame all the way to the Romans for whatever happens in Palestine/Israel rn

[@thadeusgaspar224]

@@RadenWA doesn't really have anything to do with it.

[@joshtobin1014]

@@thadeusgaspar224 I mean, it absolutely does. That's why the Jewish diaspora occurred and subsequently zionism. If the Romans had never expelled the Jews then Isreal would likely have been a far more continuous nation.

[@kl6544]

@@joshtobin1014 continous what? What broke the continuity was the jews coming from egypt and expelling the canaanites, ancient palestinians, forming their kingdom there.

[@benahiezer2295]

Bro there is no such thing as aincent palestiniens wtf😂

[@Flunzia]

The amount of incorrect information (Such as Africa coming from Arabic, despite Arabic being in its infancy in the Arabic Peninsula) or the incorrect pronounciation of stuff, made this video really, really hard to watch.

[@theodorevogiatzis874]

The name of the province of Lycia could very well be derived from the ancient people of Lukka who used to inhabit the area since the bronze age.

[@zobilnik6970]

Jesus Christ man check the pronounciations of these words before recording, its geniunly cringe to listen to you butchering some of these names...

[@Luyspa13]

I can usually get past your pronunciation of foreign words but this video I couldn't finish. Every time you mangled an easy Latin word I couldn't help but think "if he can't be bothered to rehearse these for a couple of takes I don't want to know what kind of effort went into actual research for this." The "superior and inferior refers to size" bit confirmed those fears. You have a nice channel, but given your audience's size you really should do better.

[@thebenevolentsun6575]

They weren't even pronounced how like English. He pronounced Cilicia as Silia. Mauretania as Maurentia.

[@gj1234567899999]

Assyria was an ancient kingdom that conquered almost all the Middle East. However the empire shrunk to that province. There are still Assyrians around and they are a small ethnic group in Iraq in the same area.

[@johnsarkissian5519]

Why should we accept your apology for your mispronunciation of the Latin and other names? All you need to do is to look up the pronunciations before making this video. Besides, if you are clearly misreading a word like Lusitania or Cilicia simply because of carelessness, I wonder why anyone should put any trust into the rest of your “research” that you have put into this video. It’s not that this video is live. You have ample time on your hands to edit it and make all the necessary corrections.

[@bluesquadron8667]

The word bosporus means cow crossing, most likely referring to Europa's journeys across the world

[@yidir6778]

Hi, the word Africa comes from the berber word ifri which means cave, when latinized became ifriqiya. Your claim that it comes from Arabic is ridiculous because the Arabs back then were still in Arabia

[@sabrina1380m]

There are several theories Ifri also supposedly was a punic diety The name apparently also was based on a Berber tribe

[@Flunzia]

Literally what I was thinking, what he just said makes no absolute sense whatsoever...

[@mooshinu]

​@@sabrina1380m Yes, it may have derived from the amazigh goddess "Ifri", an important deity of merchants and fetility.

[@John-pk9rw]

Sprry to disappoint you but the province was called Africa, not ifriqiya. That’s an Arabic pronounciation lol.

[@jonathancurran5366]

According to what I read in Stephen Fry's series on Greek Mythology, Bosporus means something like Oxford as that's where Io crossed when she was turned into a cow.

[@t.a.k.palfrey3882]

Before hurling yourself into Latin (and Greek) names, I suggest you try to obtain at least a hint of the rules of these languages pronunciation rules. An otherwise quite informative video has been totally destroyed by this lack of basic effort. Sorry to be so critical.

[@balonkita185]

He didn't even bother trying. He just used the "sorry I might mispronounce some words" and proceeded to completely trample over the words, skip syllables, etc

[@Omouja]

I agree. At least the 5 vowels pronunciation rules, it's not that difficult to memorize

[@felicepompa1702]

Even the anglo pronounciation is decent enough (for example tarragona would be pronounced correctly in english while he said talacona)

[@Coolducky2]

A boot shaped country that's basically just the lower part of a leg ending up being called calfland if transferred into English is like some unimportant nonsensical cosmic joke playing out and finally landing

[@unioneitaliana7107]

Italia < Vitalia < (land of) Vituli = little cows. In English there is the word Veal with the same meaning reffered to their meat.

[@ronmaximilian6953]

The Cimmerian Bosporus has a fairly straightforward etymology. Bosporus is the name of the straight between Anatolia and Thrace. And then there is the tribe known to the Greeks as the Cimmerians. And Celts aren't from West Europe. The earliest Celtic artifacts come from what is now Austria.

[@gianrc2992]

I thought Celts were from central Anatolia and eventually got to western europe

[@fabiosahadewabrigida9053]

"Sirancia et crita" Bruh

[@hoangkimviet8545]

When many modern countries end with -ia, we can think that Romans have more provinces than they had.

[@jettmclachlan1804]

Normally that's because of Roman influence or the idea of Rome giving future nations and such something to link to, or just European influence. Like Russia for example, since they used the idea of the past Rome as their reason to be an empire that succeeds them.

[@mingtheoofer4101]

The Romans made their way to Colombia by that logic

[@irmaosmatos4026]

-IA is just a suffyx that means land of-

[@Hikaeme-od3zq]

@@mingtheoofer4101 Well of course not, but where does the name come from? Get it?

[@BasicallyIKilledTheCat]

@@irmaosmatos4026 yes, we get it from Latin and I’m no genius but Rome definitely wasn’t known for speaking Russian

[@sidonie6Gamer]

Yeah... Syria and Assyria is not the same thing Syrians and Assyrians are not the same modern people either.

[@KaiserFranzJosefI]

Syria and Assyria were used interchangeably by the Greeks who give those regions their names for the West

[@liravesnovaya242]

@@KaiserFranzJosefI can it be because the prefix as- like in modern Arabic just means "the" and ancient syrian was close to arabic?

[@gr1mmd]

@@liravesnovaya242 hell no

[@sidetracker3496]

ngl the Lusitania one hurt me, since Lu-ZI-tania is what makes part of the modern descriptor of what it means to be someone who speaks portuguese aka a Lusophone

[@theidioticbgilson1466]

15:00 but wasn't a major language during the roman times

[@ahscott2001]

This is like the sequel to every time “that’s just what the Romans named it 2000 years ago” is used as the endpoint of a place name meaning.

[@og_hapsburg7189]

it literally doesn’t make sense for the roman word to have come from the arabic maghreb. arabs weren’t in control of that area for like a few hundred years after the collapse of the western empire.

[@hamzahammami22]

Yeah it comes from Punic, not Arabic but they're both semetic languages so I can see the confusion

[@mooshinu]

@@hamzahammami22 Not Punic, but Amazigh.

[@John-pk9rw]

@@hamzahammami22 Punic? Any source for that?

[@vitorjpereira2547]

Lusitania Mean Portugal Still Today. And The Portuguese People Are Called "Lusitanians". Great Video.

[@bubastis6306]

The name 'Portugal' also comes from the Roman name for the city of Porto, which was called 'Portus', and Villa Nova de Gaia, which was called 'Cale'. Eventually the two cities became one name 'Portus Cale', which turned into 'Portugal'.

[@vitorjpereira2547]

@@bubastis6306 Portugal Is One Roman-Celtic Name. ;) Portu (Latin) Gal (Celtic)

[@DaviusMelleisiusFelix]

I'm sorry mate, but your pronunciation is killing me. I've noticed this issue in some of your other videos as well. For a channel that talks about words and their origins, I really think it would help if you were to do a bit more research on pronunciation.

[@xylerian]

It’s quite ironic. If you are going to run a channel about name origins at least make an effort to properly pronounce said names.

[@Tusiriakest]

And even today, portuguese speaking peoples are called "Lusophones"

[@Whurlpuul]

Interesting that you included south cisalpine gaul in italica on the map, I would have thought you would talk about the province before it was incorporated into Rome

[@jorder85]

Cisalpine Gaul was incorporated into Italia before the empire, Julius Caesar did it, it was only a province for like 80 years

[@laser8389]

Korsis is clearly a corruption of the Dov word Krosis, meaning sorrow/regret

[@ashwinnmyburgh9364]

Drem yol lok joor.

[@aribari2434]

mauretania means “land of the mauri” or moors, which are the indigenous amazigh people of north africa ! watching from mauretania tingitana :)

[@smiedranokatirova5987]

Fake history made by amazigh propagandas

[@pedro24051998]

Yes! Arab peoples and their Islamic empires wouldn't expend to these lands until at least the mid 7th century... Showing an Arab etymology for a Roman province thousands of kilometers (and hundreds of years) away from actual Arabic peoples is actually kind of irresponsible...

[@ashwinnmyburgh9364]

Yup.

[@jovanweismiller7114]

Cyprus may also come from the abundance of copper ore on the island, vitally important during the Copper and Bronze Ages. It has been suggested, for example, that it has roots in the Sumerian word for copper (zubar) or for bronze (kubar), from the large deposits of copper ore found on the island. Through overseas trade, the island has given its name to the Classical Latin word for copper through the phrase aes Cyprium, "metal of Cyprus", later shortened to Cuprum.

[@sparvieronero2473]

4:14 in the portuguese language we still call "belgium" as Bélgica.

[@stefanomartello3786]

Superior and inferior is not related to the size but to the rivers that flows through those regions. Like for upper and lower Egypt, superior means upper and inferior means lower. Upper means "toward the spring" and lower means "toward the sea" which also corresponds to the medium height of the lands, lower near the sea.

[@Kolious_Thrace]

1/3 of the names you said have an explanation in Hellenic or they are written in Hellenic in a way of what we heard the natives’ name when we went there with our ships! 10:20 When that area was named Makedonia (the Bulgarians and other Slavic tribes were back to what is known today as Russia) So, there’s no connection between of the Bulgarians that they live today in Skopje and the ancient Hellenic tribe of Makedonia! Also, the term Makedonia is Hellenic🇬🇷 But you forgot to mention that… Herodotus named these people Μακεδνούς / Makednoùs that in Hellenic means tall. 11:10 Minor Asia because even if it was on the continent of Asia it wasn’t inhabited by Asians but by us🇬🇷 It was like the path to go ti Asia. Παμφυλία / Pamfía Λυκία / Lycía Κιλικία / Kilikía All have Hellenic origin. Mesopotamia literally means between two rivers. 14:05 Aegyptos is also a Hellenic term. Nowadays it is called Misr by the Arab people. Aegyptos means: Aegean + yptios Aegean + under = the county under the Aegean Sea.

[@gr1mmd]

Αἴγυπτος - From Egyptian ḥwt-kꜣ-ptḥ (literally “The temple of the ka of Ptah”), referring to Ptah’s temple in the important city of Memphis.

[@SharpieLEET]

right up my alley

[@zfloyd1627]

If you called a Chinese person in 117 A.D. Asian, they would be confused, since Asia was a roman province at the time.

[@makouras]

Isn't it safe to say that the Crimean Bosporus is named in reference to the actual Bosporus?

[@libriosquare]

it's just that both Bosporuses are straits

[@BrazilianImperialist]

It is

[@talknight2]

Not Crimean, Cimmerian. Kimmerios Bosporos.

[@lianagheorma92]

Pronounciation for Dacia is not with a SH sound, but the Italian pronounciation of CI like in dolci aka chi in English as in Chai.

[@Omouja]

Or as a "K"

[@druf2]

Actually "dah-kee-ah" with the C doing a K sound. This is kind weird from nowadays languages perspective, but the letter C in Latin always had a K sound and it's pronounciation started to change in the middle ages as new languages were been formed.

[@omargerardolopez3294]

Your spanish pronunciation may be ass(for now), but you totally nailed the pronunciation of Guadalquivir, keep up the good work fam, you are getting better and better

[@Rafirafael.1]

Yes have been wanting for this for a long time

[@shadhinov]

Hahah I see the comments section has expressed their irritation on my behalf

[@Hikaeme-od3zq]

Damn you butchered almost ALL of the names lol, just use a translator online next time hahaha you can find a few for latin (if you use the google translator one just remember it has ecclesiastical pronunciation and not the classical one).

[@thadeusgaspar224]

for some reason you gave the etymology of "Maghreb" at the end instead of Mauretania, it doesn't have the same origin.

[@mooshinu]

The only similarity between those two words is that they start with an "m"... That's it. This guy has no idea about he's talking about, I don't know why he keeps on making videos if he goes his way butchering all the names and insert false informations with everything he says.

[@monarchistheadcrab8819]

Video idea: how did the "sātrāp"s of the Achaemenid empire get their names?

[@IONATVS]

Poeniae = Of the Punics (ie the Carthaginians, I’d presume basically meaning “the part of the alps Hannibal crossed”) Cottiae = Of King Cottius (either of a short dynasty of kings in Northern Italy whose personal kingdom was originally a Protectorate of Rome, not a province. The elder was a good bud of Augustus in the Social Wars, the Younger died during the Reign of Nero, who reorganized it into a province soon afterwards, but named the province after these staunch allies whose kingdom he was “benevolently annexing”) Maritima = Maritime (ie Coastal, because it’s on the Coast)

[@thetrain47539]

Hello! Great video, but I just want to leave my two cents behind! The name "Britain" (Coming from Britannia) actually only refers to modern day England and Wales! Scotland and the British Islands are part of *Great* Britain!

[@talknight2]

He did say that

[@thetrain47539]

@@talknight2 He didn't, lol.

[@gabriellavedier9650]

Wouldn't that her the maritime alps, being somehow connected to water? Also, I washed out of Latin in secondary school but I still remember how to say the letters. At the time æ was still pronounced like eye. And all Cs were hard. It's easy to remember 90% of pronunciation if you keep in mind Cæsar = Kaiser almost exactly minus that the e is, of course, an a. See... half the Legion loyalists in Fallout New Vegas, like Ulysses.

[@diegone080]

The a in latin is pronounced a.

[@skippern666]

Cypres was named after the mineral resource making it an important region from pre-roman time and long into the roman empire, Copper. Cypres trees are named after the island, not the other way around.

[@raoufduc1441]

you are wrong about africa is comes from the name ifri/afri a name of a berber amazigh tribe that lived and still lives theire

[@paddaydaddy]

Great video!

[@MishapTrap]

fun fact, the C in all these names was pronounced like a K.

[@areamusicale]

12:16 Cyprus or Cypress ??? Do you the band Cyprus Hill? 🤣

[@Jerry694111]

Video starts at 2:08.

[@Oriki14]

Judah was not the leader of the tribe, but it's mythical father 💙

[@LarsOfMars.]

That's an... interesting list of sources 🤭

[@ekn_38]

As pointed out by others there are many many mistakes in both the pronunciation and the Research of the names. One I will point out is the fact that "Bosphorus" means "Cattle Passage" or "Ox passage". Wikipedia has this to say: The name of the strait comes from the Ancient Greek Βόσπορος (Bósporos), which was folk-etymologised as βοὸς πόρος, i.e. "cattle strait" (or "Ox-ford"), from the genitive of boûs βοῦς 'ox, cattle' + poros πόρος 'passage', thus meaning 'cattle-passage', or 'cow passage'. This is a reference to the Greek mythological story of Io, who was transformed into a cow and condemned to wander the Earth until she crossed the Bosporus, where she met the Titan Prometheus, who comforted her by telling her that she would be restored to human form by Zeus and become the ancestor of the greatest of all heroes, Heracles (Hercules).

[@nazarenosoto3557]

I wasn´t expecting the pronunciation to be this bad...

[@PAI93]

I wouldn't trust the information in this video. It seem shallowly researched.

[@IronWolf123]

Maybe there was Assyria and Syria based on the peoples of the lands that were culturally divided by the Egyptians/Greeks on the modern day Syrian side and the Babylons/Persians on the Iraqi side. With the melting pots there, the names might have changed but still kept the same meaning but with different names. It is like Modern day Guinea and historic Guinea.

[@KaiserFranzJosefI]

We know why Syria and Assyria are similar and its because of the Assyrian use of the Aramaic language caused the Greeks to conflate them and use both interchangeably while referring to the same entity - the Neo-Assyrian Empire

[@flavinhodopneu8645]

Cool video

[@moccus3466]

Just looking at the comments it seems the common consensus with this video is that 1. You did hardly any research. 2. Instead of simply having bad Latin pronounciation, you're literally swapping around/inserting/removing *entire* vowels and letters. If you're really having a hard time pronouncing this it wouldn't hurt to spend 10 minutes or so looking over the IPA guide on wikipedia and then referrencing the phonetic pronounciation often given next to the name of the word you're describing. Please, your channel is called "Name Explain" this is embarrassing if you can't do the bare minimum.

[@GaryFerrao]

what's so hard to pronounce in Latin? it's literally written the way it was pronounced. 😅

[@osamintv6135]

Mauritania is the land of the Mauri the inhabitants of today's Morocco and what people now call moors. It's like you know nothing about the subject

[@rathersane]

Now why were the provinces of Africa and Mauritania getting Arabic names before the Arabic speaking people got there? I don’t recall any mention of Muhammad’s army mastering time travel in any source I’ve examined.

[@xylerian]

Yeah, that’s just one of many errors in the video.

[@alonefromhere]

I will volunteer pro bono to pronounce words for you

[@tseantan]

That Lusitania pronunciation…..

[@Omouja]

"listuani"

[@annazarifopoulou9580]

About the word Bosporus, i think it comes from the greek (Βους / Vous + πέρας/ peras ) => passage of the male cow, as it was described in the myth of Jason and the Argo

[@truecerium4924]

The name Germani for a tribe stems from two words: Ger (meaning spear in old german) and man (of course man), that tribe was named after their weapon similar to the Franks

[@klausjackklaus]

With Cyprus it's believed to come from the word for copper in Latin (cuprum, Cu on periodic table) as the Greeks traded with the Assyrians through the copper/tin sea route during the Bronze Age (bronze=90% copper/ 10% tin) that Cyprus sat in the middle. Y originally was and still is in certain languages a very fronted u, moreso than ü

[@alokinrainborn]

Aquitania was named after many rivers snaking across the flat fields.

[@Emperor_Oshron]

this is a late reply, and i wouldn't be surprised if it's been mentioned before, but iirc "Thracia" comes from the mythical founder of that country/tribe in Greek mythology, Thrax (in Greek, it would've been pronounced with a hard C and therefore they'd be "Thrakians")

[@SvAwesomeness94]

Pretty sure that's a 4th/early 5th century map at the beginning no? The "Prefecure" names kind of give it away.

[@Enric.]

8:09 did he say Australia?

[@yosrihadjayed1930]

No way that Africa and Mauretania names come from arabic. These provinces were annexed and named by the romans way before the arabs conquests.

[@nikolaynikolov2429]

Learned new things today. Most important, Homer was a writer, please give source.

[@dnkal2875]

Very poor work

[@Crawedfish]

"Italia" Supposedly came from a guy named Italius

[@shaggythewriter8185]

Moesia was named for 90s TV character Moesha Mitchell...

[@miguelpimentel5623]

Fun fact: luso/lusitan is still a name used to refer to the portuguese ethnicity

[@DeBroba]

Is it that hard to at least look up a latin google translator pronounciation, at least it would give you some idea on the pronounciation... Still good video tho.

[@harrypadarri6349]

Oh, come on! Latin is a dead language and Google isn’t the great authority for the pronunciation of Latin. As long as I recognise the words I’m fine. I almost never hear Latin words pronounced as I am used from Latin class in school but who cares?

[@KaiserFranzJosefI]

@@harrypadarri6349 Many of these pronunciations are hilariously bad like Lusitania and Mauritania

[@moroccannerd35]

Mauritania wasn't named after the Arabic word "Maghreb", since the Arabs didn't even use it to describe the land until the Islamic conquests of the 7th-8th centuries CE. It actually comes from the Kingdom of Mauretania, founded in modern-day Morocco by the 3rd century BCE.

[@akai4942]

Look man i know you said you are bad at pronounciation but it's almost like you were intentionally butchering them. You either completely skip letters, you swap them, or you pronounce them in a way that would not make sense neither in latin nor in english. IT REALLY is not that hard. At least put the name in Spanish or Italian google translate and just listen to how the thing says it. I wouldn't be pedantic about such a thing normally, but this channel is dedicated to the etymology of many places. You should make the effort.

[@paeshooter7132]

9:59 Man, I wonder what went down here in the year 776.

[@rodrib9136]

I've seen there is a quite debate about the superior and inferior provinces. There's barely XIXth century interpretations like the measures of the province or their elevations. But nowadays we come to the most probably either more surely answer and it's related to the distance of the province to the city of Rome, being the superior the closer and the infirior the farther away. For example the Germania Inferior or Germania Minor, is the province who is located in the current Low Countries, meanwhile the Germania Superior is located in the zone of Alsacia and part of the modern Switzerland which are far closer to Rome than the other. That patrón could be followed in the test of the province whith these names like Moesia and Panonia. Also, and this topic is commonly not addressed, the territory of Hispania was firstly divided in to Hispania Citerior (which could be traslated as Superior and closer to Rome, being these one the province of Tarraconesis) and Hispania Ulterior (which could be traslated as Inferior, which would be the province of Baetica and Lusitania, being them further away then the Citerior).

[@Whurlpuul]

No matter where you roam, you can't escape the influence of Rome.

[@radarbug5390]

Come on most of these words aren’t hard to say you need to practice your pronunciation before making a video absolutely embarrassing

[@BananLord]

Cyprus is most probably named after the large amount of copper they had. Yeah, while it's pronounced with an "s" "c" sound in English, maybe looking at Italian or Romanian would help. In Romanian Cyprus is written as Cipru and is pronounced as "chi-proo", not so different from copper which is written as cupru and pronounced as "koo-proo".

[@thebenevolentsun6575]

In Greek it is pronounced Kypro. Very close to the greek word for copper.

[@roscoehilton8091]

Cyprus (Kupros) comes from ''copper'' which was mined there?

[@erikheddergott5514]

Superior means Upriver and Inferior means Downriver. It has nothing to do with bigger or smaller Areas. Who told you that?

[@mooshinu]

I'm quite disappointed by the poor research you've done yet again. This is an extremely bad video with too many errors, if you intend to make content about something at least be more accurate so you can avoid misinformation... Also the pronunciation is just horrible in general. You attributed two provinces with arabic names when the arabs only came to North Africa after the 7th century only. So this is utterly anachronistic. Mauretania comes from the native amazigh Mauri people who later on became the medieval Moors. They hailed from modern day north Morocco. Mauretania quite simply means "land of the Moors". Tingitana (which names comes from the ancient capital city of Tingi, modern day Tangiers) is also a reference to the Berber Goddess Tanja or Tinga, wife of the giant Antaeus in classical litterature. Africa on the other hand was named after an amazigh tribe that lived in Carthage, the Afri (modern day Ait Ifren), which means "cave" in Tamazight, as a direct allusion to their troglodytic habitations and many rock sculpted tombs & shrines you can encounter in North Africa. It could also have been named after the amazigh word "Taferka" which simply means "land" in reference to the fertile farmlands of the area which later on attributed the province of Africa as the breadbasket of the Roman empire. (It is also quite worth mentioning in the same manner that one of the etymological theories of the modern name of Tunisia comes from the capital city of Tunis which in Tamazight is "Tinast", and means "Key of Fertility".) There is also the theory that the region's name may originate directly from the Berber goddess Ifri (latinized Africa) who was influential across these regions during the roman period and was a war & fortune goddess of fertility and patron deity of merchants.

[@weswhite6058]

Thank you! Someone has to say it

[@mooshinu]

@@weswhite6058 Thank you for your comment, I was really baffled to see how little time he spent and cared to get the informations right, let alone the pronunciation, this is a really bad channel if you want to learn anything from him.

[@andremaster1752]

Im not going to say this is true. But possibly for Armenia i learned at a certain time traders and foreigners refered to the area as Armenia because a certain king had a similar name which adapted later on to Armenia used but Armenians claim they call themselves Hayastan which dervixes from the king Hayk . That could be false

[@areamusicale]

BIGUS DICUS 🤣