Cartograph Exonyms (what each country is called in 51 languages)

What it is for

Germany is Deutschland to Germans, Allemagne to the French, Niemcy to Poles and Saksa to Finns. Names that other languages give a country are called exonyms, and they often tell a story: a neighbouring tribe, a Latin province, a word for “mute” or “foreign”.

This tool shows the name of any of 197 countries in 51 languages, from English and Basque to Arabic, Hindi, Japanese and Swahili. It writes every name in Latin letters, groups the names into name families that share their first consonant sounds, and colours a map: each country gets the colour of the family its main language uses.

Worked example

Hungary gives 9 families in 51 languages:

The map of Europe shows the split nicely: the west says some form of “Hungary”, Czech, Slovak, Slovene and the former Yugoslav languages use names from Magyar, and Russian, Lithuanian and Polish (Węgry) use the old Slavic “Vengr-” form. Polish lands in its own family because its spelling starts with a different first consonant pair.

The tool’s own example for Germany finds 8 families. The largest, with 18 languages, is the Germany family (English Germany, Italian Germania, Russian Германия, Hebrew גרמניה); then come Allemagne (9 languages, including Turkish Almanya and Persian آلمان), Niemcy (9, including Hungarian and Ukrainian), and Deutschland (8, including Japanese ドイツ, doitsu).

How to read the result

The Name families table lists each family with the languages in it, largest first. The Names by language table shows every name as written, in Latin letters, and its family number. Family numbers 1–8 match the colours on the map; grey countries either have a main language that is not among the 51, or use another family.

Families are found from spelling: after transliteration, the first two consonant sounds decide, with similar letters merged (p, b, f, v; t, d; k, g, c; s, z, sh). This finds most shared roots but is not etymology. Two different roots can meet by chance, and Latvian Vācija and Lithuanian Vokietija end up in separate families although they are related.

Tips and common mistakes

• Type the country in English or as an ISO code: Greece, GR and GRC all work.
• Pick Whole world for the map when the country’s names travel far, for example Egypt: the Arabic Misr is also the name in Turkish, Hebrew, Persian, Hindi, Indonesian, Malay and Swahili.
• Chinese names are shown but not grouped; Japanese kanji inside a name are skipped.
• Some Wikidata labels are longer official names (“Central African Republic”), which can move them into their own family.
• The main language of a country is the one most people use officially; multilingual countries are coloured by one language only.

FAQ

Where do the names come from?

From the Wikidata label of each country in each language (CC0, retrieved in November 2026).

What is the difference between an exonym and an endonym?

An endonym is a country’s own name (Deutschland), an exonym is what others call it (Germany). Both appear in the table.

Why is a language missing for my country?

Wikidata has no label in that language for it yet.

Can I see these maps in the app?

Yes. Open in the app opens the Names section of the Cartograph Atlas, where you can switch countries and regions.