How do countries get their names?

By far the greatest plurality—a third—of the world’s countries get their current names from some older group of people. There’s a big cluster in Europe: France is named for the Franks; Italy for the Vitali tribe; Switzerland for the Schwyz people. 대한민국, romanized as Daehan Minguk, is the Korean name for South Korea. “Daehan” means “Great Han” or “Big Han,” after three Han tribes from the 2nd century BC. (“Han” can also mean “big.”) Vietnam means Viet people of the south.