When people are still small children, they of course look up to their parents (and to a lesser degree other adults) as fonts of wisdom who know everything and are never wrong. Then they become teenagers and the exact opposite is true. Still, I’ve come to accept after 40+ years, that my Dad does know an awful lot about many subjects and he sent in this answer to my question about sources of real country names:
“The names for some of the countries are left over from ancient times. The name Helvetica comes from the Latin for the tribers that lived in those mountains (Helvetii), Romaniya is an attempt by that country to connect with its Roman provincial history. Croatia is an attempt by others to pronounce Hrvatska, which is what they call themselves. Others are similar to these examples.”
Thanks, Dad!
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