There are a total of 22 countries in the world named after real people who have ever existed.
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In some cases, countries were deliberately named after those people. For example, Bolivia – after Simón Bolívar.
In some cases, the origin of country names goes back to ancient times and the connection is very indirect – the modern state of Azerbaijan is separated by more than two thousand years from the person whose name the country’s name evolved from.
In this text, you can get acquainted with the origin stories of the first 11 countries named after people, listed alphabetically. The names are presented in alphabetical order.
Azerbaijan
The name Azerbaijan dates back to ancient Persia and one of Alexander the Great’s generals. This was Atropates – a Persian commander who initially served Darius III and later Alexander the Macedonian.
After Alexander the Great’s death, his empire was divided, and Atropates became the ruler of one of the territories around 321 BC. This state covered the northern part of Iran.
This state, which Atropates’ descendants ruled for several hundred more years, was called Atropatene or Atropatia in ancient Greek. Later, neighboring lands began to call the region Aturpatakan. Eventually, this name evolved into Azerbaijan.
Interestingly, the historical Atropatene is located in present-day Iran, and Iranians also call this region Azerbaijan. So there are two Azerbaijans in Asia – an independent country and a region in Iran.
The territory of the current Azerbaijani state was historically more often called Aran, but some historians and geographers claimed that the territory of historical Azerbaijan also included it.
Since the inhabitants of the territory that became the Azerbaijani state are culturally related to the inhabitants of the Azerbaijani region in Iran and speak the same Azerbaijani language, when Azerbaijan declared independence in 1918, the leaders of the country’s liberation movement chose exactly this name.
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Bolivia
The name Bolivia comes from the surname of the military leader of South America’s liberation struggles, Simón Bolívar.
In August 1825, when the region, previously known as Upper Peru, declared independence, the country’s parliament named it in honor of Bolívar, although he himself opposed it.
He also became the first president of Bolivia and wrote the country’s first constitution.
Dominican Republic
The Dominican Republic in Central America, on the island of Hispaniola, is named after Saint Dominic, the founder of the Dominican Order, who lived his entire life unaware of the existence of the Americas and died in 1221.
In 1496, the Spanish founded the first permanent European settlement in the Americas on the island and named it Santo Domingo in honor of the saint.
When the Dominican Republic declared independence from Haiti, which is also on the island of Hispaniola, in 1844, the country was named the Dominican Republic after the saint associated with it and its main city.
Eswatini
Until 2018, the South African country Eswatini was known worldwide as Swaziland.
However, that year, on the 50th anniversary of the country’s independence, King Mswati III ordered the official country name to be changed to Eswatini.
