Why Do Many Countries Have Guinea In Their Name?

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Published 2019-08-13
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SOURCES AND FURTHER READING
Guinea: www.britannica.com/place/Guinea-region-Africa
Guinea On Etymonline: www.etymonline.com/word/guinea
Why The World Has So Many Guineas: www.economist.com/the-economist-explains/2017/09/1…
Guinea BBC Timeline: www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-13443183
Equatorial Guinea BBC Timeline: www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-13317615
Guinea-Bissau BBC Timeline: www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-13579838
Equator On Etymonline: www.etymonline.com/word/equator
New Guinea: www.britannica.com/place/New-Guinea
Papua On Etymonline: www.etymonline.com/word/papua
Guinea: lifeinmathews.blogspot.com/2010/01/guinea.html
Guinea Fowl: www.britannica.com/animal/guinea-fowl
Guinea Pig Etymology: www.grammarphobia.com/blog/2009/12/how-did-the-gui…

Rite of Passage Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

All Comments (21)
  • @NameExplain
    Did I say the word guinea too much? It sounds weird every time I say it now. Guinea.
  • @feyk9638
    "D-Day at Sainsbury's" sounds like some british WWII parody of Breakfast at Tiffany's
  • @sohopedeco
    In Portuguese, we call guinea fowl "Angola chicken" and guinea pig "India pig".
  • @pegeonpera
    Patrick : You are my guinea pigs Everyone : laughs nervously
  • @FlorenciaVM1
    Curious fact: here in Argentina we call the guinea pigs "conejillo de India", which means "little rabbit from India". AND we also use this expression with someone who's being used to test something.
  • Omg it makes sense now ! In Egypt the call the Egyptian pound guineh
  • @CB0408
    "We have no more places called Guinea" Patriotic guinean amateur astronomer looking for new astronomical objects in order to name them after Guinea: hold my typical guinean alcoholic beverage
  • @oggaming2988
    Why is a pound (£) and a pound (lb) called the same thing?
  • @gevensil
    Hello I am Portuguese, I am precisely doing work on this topic. In fact, during the period known as Portuguese discoveries, at an early stage of exploration in Africa the region called "Guinea" referred to the entire broad region of Cape Bojador until Angola. This is why countries in this region have guinea in their names. Book used: Hermano Saraiva, José, Historia Concisa de Portugal, Publicações Europa-América
  • @Child_of_Amun
    The word Guinea was believed to have been a Portuguese mispronunciation of Djenné an ancient city in Mali, West Africa
  • @Whiskypapa
    “So why is the island called new guinea?” Please dont... “When a spanish explorer...” Stop... “They looked similar to the african guinea people” God dammit.... “And papua means frizzy because they had frizzy hair” OH FOR FUCKS SAKE!
  • @taliasilvey7063
    I thought either you or I was having a stroke when you kept trying to say "Turkish merchant's" 😂
  • @deet0109mapping
    “What should we call our country slightly north of the equator?” E Q U A T O R I A L G U I N E A
  • The British guinea was 21 shillings (1 pound plus 1 shilling), not 20 shillings, which was just 1 pound.
  • @m1r2ms4
    There is a Municipality in Nicaragua's Southeast (South Atlantic/Caribbean Autonomous Region) named Nueva Guinea, (nueva means new in Spanish) with its municipal seat, the city, also named like that. The reason it got that name is because of the Guineo tree that grew there. Guineo is like a kind of plantain in Nicaragua (in other parts of Latin America Guineo is the word used for banana), so when the first settlers arrived they noticed the Guineo tree (called simply a Guinea). Suposedly Guineas don't usually grow in that region of the country so it was a curiousity for them to see one lonely guinea, the settlers used to extract resources like wood and rubber from the region and when they took a break they would gather next to the guinea, so people started saying: "let's meet at La Guinea", so that's why the name stayed. It's called "New" Guinea because the original settlement is not where the current city is located. The word Guineo derives from the origin of the bananas and its varieties coming all from western Africa.
  • @TheInglip
    I was under the impression this was a video ready for publication, which would make me not a guinea pig.