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May 19[edit]

Ý (Vietnamese)[edit]

Why is Italy in Vietnamese merely a single letter: Ý? --Davidøsk (talk) 17:54, 19 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

It's a contraction taking only the first syllable of the literal Sino-Vietnamese transliteration. It's not unique - a number of other major countries are also known in Vietnamese as a single syllable.

It's similar to the practice historically common in East Asia of contracting the names of Western countries - which for example is why the United States is often called "Mei Guo" in Chinese ("Guo" being "country") and "Beikoku" in Japanese ("koku" being "country"). --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 18:11, 19 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

They also use 'Merika' in Japan.

KägeTorä - (影 虎) (もしもし！)

11:03, 20 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

And in Chinese the full name is "Meilijian". --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 12:16, 20 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]