According to research compiled by Quartz from the toponymy reference book Oxford Concise Dictionary of World Place-Names, basically every country on Earth is named after one of four things (though many origins are understandably murky). Do you know which category your country falls under? We’ll give you the first two categories to get you started.
Feature of the Land
About a quarter of the world’s countries got their names from some description of the land.
- Iceland was originally called Snæland, “Snow Land,” but its current name comes from Norse settlers who renamed it to deter visitors.
- Grenada was named by Spanish sailors who thought the landscape resembled the region around Granada in Spain.
A Directional Description
A slight twist on the previous category, this one is more geographically specific. According to Quartz, about 25 countries are named for their location.
- Australia comes from the Greek name Terra Australis Incognita, meaning “unknown southern land,” as a result of the Greeks imagining some faraway place in the southern hemisphere.
- Ireland comes from Iar-en-land, “land in the west,” from the Gaelic word iar, meaning “west.”
The date has been set. Almost 3,000 people have been asked to mark the date on the calendar and RSVP for the wedding between His Royal Highness The Prince of Wales and Ms. Meghan Markle. The problem is…the bride-to-be’s name has been misprinted. 
From the 27th to the 29th of June 2018, the 23rd International Conference of the African Association for Lexicography (AFRILEX 2018) will be held in Cape Town, South Africa. The conference is hosted by the Department of Language Education, University of the Western Cape, Bellville, Cape Town. 
Snake Serum and Dragon’s Blood – not names you’d first associate with a high-end skincare range. When Maria Hatzistefanis decided after several years in business to give her beauty products more eye-catching names she knew it might be risky. It worked, though. Not only did the names create a talking point, they led to the products flying off the shelves. Hatzistefanis, 47, says a key ingredient used in her products, syn-ake peptide, replicates the reaction to a snake bite, resulting in a mild freeze-like effect in facial muscles. “One day, I brainstormed with my team and, as one of the ingredients mimicked the effect of snake venom I said, ‘let’s go crazy and see what happens’.
The language of place names creates a striking snapshot of New Zealand’s history. A new map, created by researchers at Te Punaha Matatini (a centre of research hosted by the University of Auckland) as well as Dragonfly Data Science, shows how Maori and English names are distributed on the North and South islands. 
From the 20th to the 22nd of June 2018, the 25th annual symposium organized by the Language of the Graduate School Language & Literature Munich at LMU Munich will be held in Munich, Germany. The theme of the conference is “Language Variation – Research, Models, and Perspectives”. Among those topics to be addressed include lexicography, dialectology, and identity.
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