Place name in My Little Pony · 1:02am Sep 16th, 2017

Am I the only one bothered by the lack of a definite meaning to the name "Equestria"? No, seriously, Southern Equestria=Egypt? Anyway, I wondered how to integrate that into my story and then I gave it a local name, things snowballed, and here I am with names for several country for my story as well as canon, so lets get started.

First, we've got Southern Equestria. I thought their language would probably be Coptic, since Saddle Arabia never formed an Islamic Empire as far as I know, thus the Egyptian Horses would have kept their own language. As such, they call Southern Equestria Htokah, from Hto/Horse and Kah/Land.

Next, speaking of Saddle Arabia, their name is Al-'Ard Sarj l-'Arabiyya, or The Land of (the) Saddle Arabia(n). My explanation as to why the country is called Saddle Arabia is that they call themselves "Saddles", in contrast to other species. I don't know which yet, but probably Camels, even though they also have saddles, though admittedly names like this rarely make absolute sense.

After that, we go with the country which had its language spoken in the show but wasn't named (as far as I know), France. Here, it is called Prance, though not for the direct and rather blunt pun. Prance can trace its origin to German prunken, meaning "to flaunt". In the history of the FIM world, a people, corresponding to the Franks, were called the Pranks, which Equestrian Unicorns (Princess Platinum and her people) called the Pranki/Pranci, and their land Prankia/Prancia. As it did with Francia/France, the name eventually evolved to become Prance, which even the people of the land, the Prench, calling it that even if they no longer use the word that gave them the name of their nation.

Obviously, if we have Frenchmen, or Prenchponies, as the case may be, we need Germans. The country is still called Germany, or Germania, though not for the same reasons. While there are many theories about the etymology of the name, one of them propose the Celtic word "Gair", Neighboor, as the origin. I took that and combined it with the closet Celtic word I could get for "mane", in this case being "mwng", pronounced moong, the Welsh word for "mane", which give us Gairmwng, "Neighbour Mane". In my history of the world, those that would become the Equestrian Earth ponies, equivalent to Celts, named themselves and other Earth Ponies as "Manes", per opposition to "Horns", unicorns, and "Feathers", Pegasi. As such, they called the Earth Pony population who was their neighbour, but who spoke a different language, the "Neighbour Mane". Gairmwng eventually gave way to Germania. As for the name the Germane give themselves, it is Deutschmähneland, or the People of the Mane's Land.

Speaking of the founding peoples of Equestria, they all had their own name for it. The Earth Ponies called it Markosbroges, from Gaulish Markos/Horse and Broges/Land, Country, the Pegasi called it Hípposia, from Híppos/Horse, and the Unicorns called it, well, Equestria, which became the official name by virtue of the Unicorns forming much of the government and the highest sphere of culture and science after the Founding.

For something a bit more exotic, we have the China equivalent we saw during 'Campfire Tales', which I call Mǎguó, or Horse Country, due to the fact I'm pretty sure the Chinese analogue would consider itself to be the pinnacle of pony civilization, much more so than those western barbarians.

Finally, considering Cadance's name as well as that of Amore, I'll assume the Crystal Empire speaks Italian, and the Crystal Heart, being an artifact of love magic, serve as an universal translator in order to foster understanding and friendship in those that visit the Empire. As such, its name in its native tongue would be Le Impero di Cristallo, The Crystal Empire, though personally I like to think it was Sombra who made it an Empire and the Crystal Ponies simply forgot because of the curse, and thus the original name would be Le Regno di Cristallo, The Crystal Kingdom.

That's it for now. I hope you found it interesting, and I hope my ramblings will be used by the fandom in order to explain some of the nonsensical name found in FIM.

Report Celesti Lateo · 474 views · #Etymology #Fan Wank #Pedantry

Comments ( 3 )