How were countries named in Asia
The name of the country is one of the main and foremost identities of any country. Although how that name comes to existence is a fascinating story in itself. A country can have an exonym which is how it is known to the world (India, Japan) and an endonym which is how it is know to that country’s people (Bharat, Nippon). Taking Asia’s case in point with exonyms, a lot of country’s borrow their names from the ethnic groups or people that have existed in those lands and are of extreme importance, like Kazakhstan after the Kazakhs and Malaysia after the Malay people. Some countries borrow their name from geographical features that define the country, like how the Indus River defines India, how Vietnam was a land in the South of China and how the Lebanon Mountains make up the region of Lebanon. Other countries, refer to their historical regions, cities and kingdoms for their names, like China and the Qin Kingdom, Syria and the Assyrian Region. While a select few have their names as they aspire to be, like how Yemen yearns to be a blessed, fertile land and how Thailand aspires to be the land of the free.