If you look for the etymology of the words of the Latin languages, you will find much Greece in them.
In fact, according to the tradition of Latin dictionaries printed in Oxford, 21.5% of the Latin language comes directly from ancient Greek (10,500 Greek words).
The words do not refer exclusively to science and philosophy or theater and the fine arts. That is, almost all terms come from Greek words.
The Greek language has given a lot to the world, even country names.
We will talk here only about the countries that meet the linguists' approval of Greek etymology. Because otherwise the list will be long and endless.
For Scotland, for example, some historians and linguists have suggested that the term "Scoti", from which the country's name comes, has its roots in a tribe of invaders named after the Greek "Skotos" which means "darkness".
There is also a hypothesis that the name Georgia comes from the Latin "Georgius", which in turn has its roots in the Greek "georgos", meaning farmer. "Georgi" was the name given by Roman historians to the inhabitants of what was then (Caucasian) Iberia.
Such theories about the Greekness of place names are actually inexhaustible in science, but let's look at the ones that are rarely disputed.
Egypt
Aegyptus was named by the Latins, who took the word from the Greeks. Despite the fact that the inhabitants of the ancient kingdom named their lands very differently, the Greek name "Egypt" finally prevailed, which is also found in the ancient writing of Mycenae (Linear B').
The Greeks named the country after a word of modern ancient Egyptian, "Hikuptah", which had its roots in a corruption of the even older "Hwt-ka-Ptah", meaning "house of the soul of Pta", as read on a sign in a temple of the god Ptah at Memphis.
Latin dictionaries tell us that the term was only one of the names of Memphis, which the Greeks changed into the name of the whole country. "Black Land" (Kemet) was the name the Egyptians themselves gave to the areas of their empire, probably because of the fertile soil in the Nile Delta.
The Greek adjective "Egyptian" was transformed from Coptic into "gyptian" (and "kyptian"), and from there it later passed into Arabic. Egipte was the Egyptian in Old English and Egypte in French, terms derived from the Greek word.
Ethiopia
Here we have a country whose name came directly from the Greek language. "Ethiopian" to the ancient Greeks was the man with the "burnt face" (aitho + ops) they regarded as sunburnt the people who lived in what is now the Horn of Africa, then Nubia.
Herodotus uses the term to refer to those who lived in that part of sub- Saharan Africa, there at the end of the known world. It is not impossible, linguistics tells us, that the Greek word comes from the Egyptian word "athtiu-abu", meaning "thieves of the heart".
From the Greeks, the word passed into Amharic, the Semitic dialect of the indigenous people of Ethiopia. Homer, Hesiod and Herodotus describe as "Ethiopia" the open country in the south of Egypt.
Eritrea
The Latins called Erythræa, the Erythrea of the Greeks, the territory on the banks of the Red Sea (Mare Erythraeum). In fact, the official name was Erythraia, while today it is known as Eritrea. And for this the Italians are responsible, with their colony there since 1890, Colonia Eritrea.
The name was later passed on to the British and the locals, who reaffirmed it in the 1993 referendum on their independence and in the subsequent 1997 constitution.
As for the Greek Red Sea, the ancient Greeks used this name to describe the wider region, until the Indian Ocean.
Indonesia
The ancient Greeks used India to refer to a wide area, from the Indus River bed to what is now Pakistan, India and even parts of western Tibet. Again, it meant most of Asia in eastern Persia.
Although the term has weakened today, it was known in Greek from the years of Herodotus. And with it in hand, European geographers recognized India and its islands. After the discovery of America, the term changed to "East Indies" as the western ones were now the territories found by Columbus.
At that time (16th century) the need arose for a place name to describe the island portion of the East Indies that eventually fell into Dutch hands, hence the Dutch East India Company.
From the 18th century onwards, this sea part of the East Indies was referred to as Indonesia, and this was before the independence of the state.
The Dutch refused to use the word, but since the early 20th century the rest of the planet has called it like that. Accordingly, names like Polynesia (poly + nisos in Greek, meaning many + islands), Micronesia, etc. have arisen.
Malta
Although there is no scientific consensus on the origin of the name "Malta", and the current version probably comes from the local language, most linguists agree that the name is of Greek origin.
The Greeks called it Meliti and they had a good reason, because the honey that came out of it was irresistible. And ancient Greeks knew it too, because the bee that lives on the island is found nowhere else in the Mediterranean.
Melita was also called by the Romans, which turned the Greek "Meliti" into the Latin "Melita". Or it is derived from the Doric dialect, in which the island was called Melita.
It was also called that in the English Bible translations of the 16th and 17th centuries ("And they that were then saved knew that the island was called Meliti").
Still others believe that the word is of Phoenician origin.
Monaco
The Monegasque principality also has Greek roots and indeed a direct relationship with ancient Greece. This part of the Côte d'Azur was, you see, a colony of Ionian Phocaea from the 6th century BC, Monoikos as it was known by the Greeks, having only one house, the House of Hercules.
The port of the colony was associated with the worship of Hercules, because the Phocaeans, who also lived in neighboring Marseilles, had built a temple in his honor, which is quite rare for a demigod.
Hercules Monoikos of the ancient Greeks still survives in the principality, for that is the very name of its largest port (Port Hercules).
The Greek "Monoikos" later passed as Monoikos to the Ligurian tribes and the Genoese when the Holy Roman Empire wanted to give it as a gift to the almighty city. Both the Greeks and the native Ligurians believed that Hercules had passed there, as Diodoros Sikeliotis and Strabo affirm.
Europe
Europe is a continent, but at the same time a federal union of states called the European Union. Another place name associated with Greek mythology. According to legend, Zeus fell in love with Europe, the daughter of the king of Phenicia, Aginoras.
So he transformed himself into a white bull, seduced her to sit on his back, kidnapped her and transported her to the four corners of the Old Continent. In the end, they landed on Crete, where their wedding took place and they eventually had three children.
As for the etymology of the word, it probably comes from the words "Evris" which means "wide" and "ops", meaning "open-eyed", the one who has big eyes. According to a second interpretation, it originated from the old "evros" (mold, dampness) and "Ops" (looks), which changes the meaning to "wet, damp, one who stays in a shady place".
A third hypothesis traces the word to the adjective "evropos" (broad), a well-known toponym of the ancient Greek world. The founder of the Seleucid dynasty, Seleucus I Nicator, a general and one of the successors of Alexander the Great, also came from the Evropos of Macedonia.
He always remembered his particular homeland and established a Europe in Syria, one in Persia, and one in Mesopotamia. However, it has been argued that the word may even have pre-Hellenic, Indo-European, origins.
