If you watched the 2018 Olympic opening ceremony in PyeongChang this morning/afternoon/night, you might have wondered some of these things:
- Why did Macedonia go between France and Finland?
- Wait what did they just call the Netherlands?
- Czech Republic? What happened to Czechia?
I was a huge map and language nerd growing up, and so the opening ceremony is my favorite Olympic sport. Typically they announce the name of each country in three languages: French, English, and the language of the host country — Hangul (Korean) in this case. To make it more fun, the order in which they enter is determined alphabetically in the host country’s language.
I found a list from qz.com that supposedly was the order of countries as they march in, but this list wasn’t quite correct!
The names they used to alphabetize wasn’t quite right, which is understandable — they didn’t actually order them by the listed name. Wikipedia had the correct order, but I wanted to explore some of the reasons behind the order. Here’s how the actual order went, and some notes on why:
- Greece (그리스) — Greece just goes first. Always. If we had sorted Greece using Korean order, they would have actually entered second, right after…
- Ghana (가나) — the Korean version is phonetically identical. “G” is the first consonant of the Korean alphabet, and /a/ is the first vowel, which makes Ghana our first country. Not a lot of “G” countries, so we go on to…
- Nigeria (나이지리아) — “N” is the second consonant. The diphthong /ai/ doesn’t exist in Korean so “Ni” is split up as /na/ and /i/ — which is why it goes before…
- South Africa (남아프리카 공화국) — Wait, why is South Africa filed under “N”? The Korean word for South (남) is /nam/, and in dictionary order this comes after Na (나) in Nigeria.
- Netherlands (네덜란드) — As someone who doesn’t speak French this one caught me by surprise a little. The order makes sense, but I had no idea the French word is Pays-Bas, or literally, “low country”.
- Norway (노르웨이) — You can’t end a syllable with an /r/ in Korean, so you split this into two syllables, and we get /no-rɯ-we-i/. Now might be a good time to introduce you to the Korean vowel order: a-æ-ya-yæ-ə-e-yə-ye-o-yo-u-yu-ɯ-i * so after /no/ comes…
- New Zealand (뉴질랜드) —/ nyu/. Also there is no “Z” in Korean so you get a “J” in there instead — /nyu-dʒil-læn-dɯ/. With that, we go to the third consonant…
- Denmark (덴마크) — D! I’m not sure why it’s /den/ instead of /dan/ as in Danish, but otherwise this one more or less makes sense. But what about…
- Germany (독일) — If you guessed Germany goes under D because it’s Deutschland, you’re partially correct — it’s actually /dog-il/. This one I believe goes back to the colonial days, and comes to Korean via Japanese. The Japanese word for Germany is (was?) 獨逸 , pronounced /doitsu/, but reading the same Chinese characters in Korean you get something that sounds nothing like the original word. Thanks a lot, Hirohito.
- Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste (동티모르) — If you were wondering why /de/ wouldn’t come before /den/ of Denmark, or why this isn’t go with the “T”s later, it’s because we are translating “East Timor” into Korean, so we use the Korean word for East: /dong/. I actually missed this one because NBC cut away to commercials…
- Latvia (라트비아) — We are now on “L”… right?
- Lebanon (레바논) — Still good…?
- Romania (루마니아) — Wait, WTF! How did we get to “R”? We have now entered the consonant that probably gives Korean learners the most trouble. ㄹ is actually both /r/ and /l/ depending on where it falls. At the beginning of a syllable it’s mostly an “R” sound, and at the end it’s an “L”. Sometimes it’s an “N” but you don’t need to know that… unless you want to find out where to watch curling.
- Luxembourg (룩셈부르크) — Otherwise the L/Rs are pretty straight forward… sorry Luxembourgians…
- Lithuania (리투아니아) — Pet peeve: why do we say /ri-tu-a-ni-a/ and not /ri-e-tu-va/?
- Liechtenstein (리히텐슈타인) — /ri-hi-ten-shu-ta-in/ — see, we can say words
- Madagascar (마다가스카르) — The fifth consonant in Korean is “M”. There’s a lot of them, hold on tight!
- Malaysia (말레이시아) — I got nothing…
- Mexico (멕시코) — /me-hi-ko/? Nope, just /mek-shi-ko/
- Monaco (모나코)
- Morocco (모로코)
- Montenegro (몬테네그로)
- Republic of Moldova (몰도바)
- Malta (몰타)
- Mongolia (몽골) — I think /mon-gol/ is closer to what Mongolia calls itself.
- United States of America (미국) — Allegedly, /mi-guk/ is where “gook” comes from. Also, I totally have a jacket with the exact same colors as the ones Team USA is wearing.
- Bermuda (버뮤다) — I can’t believe they wore Bermuda shorts in that freezing weather!
- Belgium (벨기에) — /bel-gi-e/ is the Dutch word for Belgium.
- Belarus (벨라루스) — As you may have guessed, we are now in “B”. “V” also goes here, but since neither Venezuela nor Vatican sent any athletes, we are just doing B. Had Vietnam attended, they would have gone under “no consonants” section as “Wollam”, coming soon at #42.
- Bosnia and Herzegovina (보스니아 헤르체고비나)
- Bolivia (볼리비아)
- Bulgaria (불가리아)
- Brazil (브라질)
- San Marino (산마리노)
- Serbia (세르비아)
- Sweden (스웨덴) — /sɯ-we-den/, not /sɯ-be-ri-ye/
- Switzerland (스위스) — /sɯ-wi-sɯ/ comes from Suisse, the French word for Switzerland.
- Spain(스페인) — Pet peeve #2: WHY /sɯ-pe-in/ AND NOT /e-sɯ-pa-nya/?!
- Slovakia (슬로바키아)
- Slovenia (슬로베니아) — Naturally, these two go together even in Korean.
- Singapore (싱가포르 )— I should mention that “si” is pronounced /ʃi/ in Korean. You can sort of fake /si/ with a double “S” ㅆ, but you don’t really see it in transliterated foreign names.
- Armenia (아르메니아) — ㅇ, like the number 0, represents nothing, or lack of consonant sound at the beginning of a syllable. All countries starting with a vowel-ish sound (including y and w) go under here. We also start the second half of the Korean alphabet.
- Argentina (아르헨티나)
- Iceland (아이슬란드)
- Ireland (아일랜드) — Fun fact! Like Germany above, Ireland used to be called “애란” (愛蘭) from Japanese 愛蘭土, which itself comes from the English word “Ireland”. While 애란 sounds nothing like “Ireland” in Korean, ironically it’s really close to Éirinn, which means Ireland in Irish. Sadly this term is no longer used, and honestly I don’t think anyone under 40 would even know this term in Korea.
- Azerbaijan (아제르바이잔)
- Andorra (안도라) — They have a dozen athletes there — that’s like half the country!
- Albania (알바니아)
- Eritrea (에리트레아)
- Estonia (에스토니아)
- Ecuador (에콰도르) — sorry not a whole lot of interesting Korean tidbits here… these countries are mostly straight-forward readings of the English and Spanish names.
- Great Britain (영국) — /yəŋ-guk/- here’s another odd doubly-imported name. The Chinese name 英國 /yiŋ-gwo/ is supposed to sound like England (not even Great Britain or U.K.!), and the Korean reading of the same characters makes it into something that makes no sense outside of the historical context. On the other hand, Young Gook might make a good Korean rapper name… I’ll show myself out.
- Australia 오스트레일리아
- Austria 오스트리아
- Olympic Athletes from Russia (러시아 출신 올림픽 선수) — With Russia out, OAR athletes don’t go under “R/L”, but under “O”. Because Australia and Austria start with “o” in Korean, “ol” comes right after, and before…
- Uzbekistan (우즈베키스탄)
- Ukraine (우크라이나)
- Islamic Republic of Iran 이란
- Israel (이스라엘)
- Italy (이탈리아)
- India (인도) — /in-do/ not /in-di-a/. Probably historical reasons? Bharat would have pushed them up to number 27, right after Team USA.
- Japan (일본) — “nippon” is written 日本, which read in Korean becomes /il-bon/, wrapping up the countries starting with a vowel
- Jamaica (자메이카) — We now enter the “J” — I’ll use /dʒ/ to denote this sound.
- Georgia (조지아)
- People’s Republic of China (중국) — China’s name for itself, 中國 (“zhongguo”), is pronounced /dʒuŋ-guk/ in Korean, so it comes after Georgia /dʒo-dʒi-a/, and in theory right before “Chinese Taipei”, but more on that later…
- Czech Republic (체코) — We begin the “Ch” (/tʒ/) section. I’m not sure why the English name was spelled out like that after the whole Czechia announcement. I got some angry-ish replies in my twitter feed about it.
- Chile (칠레) — My favorite Texas flag country! 🇨🇱🇨🇱
- Kazakhstan (카자흐스탄) — Onward! To the “K”s!
- Canada (캐나다)
- Kenya (케냐) — Half the Kenyan team is white! No further comment.
- Kosovo (코소보)
- Colombia (콜롬비아)
- Croatia (크로아티아)
- Kyrgyzstan (키르기스스탄)
- Cyprus (키프로스) — Instead of going under “S”, we get /ki-pɯ-ro-sɯ/ to wrap up our “K”s. Also, is that Ricky Rubio with the flag?
- Chinese Taipei (차이니스 타이베이) — Instead of going under “Ch”, we find Taiwan under “T”. It’s impossible to tell if it’s for Taiwan or Taipei. I wonder if Chinese social media would get angry about this.
- Thailand (태국) Thailand is listed as /tæ-guk/. Same as with the U.K. this comes from the Korean pronunciation of the Chinese name for Thailand: 泰國.
- Turkey (터키)
- Togo (토고)
- Tonga (통가) — He actually did it… He went shirtless again.
- Pakistan (파키스탄) — We now go to the penultimate consonant, P. “F” goes here as well.
- Portugal (포르투갈)
- Poland (폴란드)
- Puerto Rico (푸에르토리코)
- France (프랑스) — Hey look, “F”!
- The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (구유고슬라비아 마케도니아 공화국) — This one is weird. QZ got this waaaay wrong. They listed Macedonia at #3, because of the Korean name listed by the IOC. Why is this here at #86 instead? I have two theories here, both involving bad transliterations from English. One is that they took the acronym FYROM and wrote it as 피롬 /pi-rom/. The other is with “former” — if you read it (terribly) as 프머 /pɯ-mə/. Either way that would place Macedonia here, between France and…
- Finland (핀란드) — Another “F”! Had they gone with Suomi, Finland would have marched in position 36.
- Philippines (필리핀)
- Hungary (헝가리) — And we have arrived at the final consonant in the Korean alphabet, “H”. Magyarország would have placed them at 16!
- Hong Kong, China (홍콩 차이나) — Interesting this is “Hong Kong, China”, whereas Taiwan is “Chinese Taipei”.
- Korea (코리아) — The host nation always goes last. This year it was still a little more interesting, because this is a combined group of South Korea (the host) and North Korea. Each refers to Korea with different names (SK: 대한민국, NK:조선), so “코리아” (literally, /ko-ri-a/) seems to be a compromise solution. I’m kind of curious where North Korea would have gone in this list, hads this not happened. The South Korean name for North Korea (북한) goes under “B”, but I can’t imagine North Korea would have been ok with that and would have preferred “조선” under “J”. We didn’t find out, but I’m ok with that!
I hope this was interesting. If you see any mistakes I’ve made, please let me know. I know I took some liberty with the pronunciation guides, but I didn’t want to have to go through how to read IPA and why “y” is actually /j/ and all that.
P.S. Fun Fact™: PyeongChang in Korean is 평창. If you take the initial consonants from each syllable, it’s ㅍㅊ, which is also the logo that looks like a snowflake next to the Parthenon:
P.P.S. My friend Tony noticed -land is sometimes transliterated as 란드, but sometimes as 랜드. My best guess here is, Ireland and New Zealand are considered English-speaking countries, so they (wrongly) approximated the pronunciation of the word “land” and went with /æ/, whereas for Finland/Iceland/Nederland/Poland, they went with a more typical Korean way of transliterating the letter “a” as /a/.
P.P.P.S. My wife just noticed the Olympic cauldron they lit at the end is in the shape of a kimchi urn.
[*] I’m omitting a few diphthongs but I’m pretty sure they don’t matter for sorting in this list.
