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Comment by nknighthb | Hacker News Reader

> named after the royal family (who does that anyway?)

Depends on the scope of "that", but...

Kingdom of Hanover (defunct), Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, Liechtenstein, Virginia, Maryland, Georgia, Carolina (both), Alberta, Prince Edward Island, Victoria.

And of course Pennsylvania was named for founder William Penn.

Should we start in on cities?

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The Kingdom of Hanover was not named after the family.

Rather, both the Kingdom and the House of Hanover were named after the capital city of Hanover.

This is quite common for Western European royalty. Because they didn't have actual surnames, they used the location of the family seat. For example, the House of Windsor was named after Windsor Castle. The House of Habsburg-Lorraine was named after Habsburg Castle and the region of Lorraine. The House of Hohenzollern was named after Hohenzollern Castle.

I love this game. Ottoman Empire, Bolivia [1], China [2], Philippines, Mozambique.

1: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sim%C3%B3n_Bol%C3%ADvarl 2: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emperor_Chin

May be worth noting that the Chinese didn't name their country China, they named it Zhong guo.

Which is almost more arrogant, since it translates to "The country in the center". It's a little easier to understand why there's a strain of "we are the center of the world, outside our borders are barbarians" when you look at pre-modern borders: China is bordered by oceans, the russian steppes, the xinjian desert, and the tibetan plateau.

Well according to Wikipedia (yeah I know, but I don't feel like searching elsewhere) it may or may not be taken with the meaning "center of the world." And even if it is, it's more of an observation than a boast, since from their perspective they were in the middle of a bunch of other countries like you said. And hey, they call America "beautiful country" so they're not being stingy.

Venezuela is officially the 'Bolivarian republic of Venezuela', so Simon Bolivar actually has _two_ countries named after him (the other being Bolivia).

Washington, D.C. was named after George Washington while he was still an acting president.

I think it's a matter of recency.

If FDR (the US president when Saudi Arabia was named) renamed the US, "The United States of Roosevelt" it would have raised some eyebrows.

The only contemporary item on your list is Jordan.

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