Why so many "A" names?

Question

My Uncle has a question I'm asking for him: Why is it that so many continent, country and state names end in "a"? Africa, America, Antarctica, Australia, China, Indianna, Minnesota, Canada... I know there are many different origins for place names, but is there some meaning to the prevalence of "a"? Particularly among continent names... Anyone know?

Answer 1

Most (but not all) names that end in A are women/feminine names. Land has often been associated w/ women. "Motherland" "Mother Earth" America is referred to as "her" "stand beside her and guide her" etc.
So the names for pieces of land often reflect this femininity when they are given names.

Answer 2

I think I know the answer to your question... Most of the continents names are of Latin origin... English language has Latin roots as well... In Latin a land or a country is of feminine gender... and most feminine names ( I am not talking about languages like French, or Spanish or Italian, I am talking about old dead Latin <> ) - that's Latin for you... and that's where the names end up in 'a'... There are names of flowers (which for the most part are feminine gender themselves unless they are named after another living thing - like "Lady's Shoe") in Latin/ Italian that don't end up in 'a'... and that's an exception to the rule, but for the most part they do... If you were to do a search of each continent's names and find out how they were named that will tell you even more... Just keep in mind that a country or a land (which is called 'area'<> in Latin - hence the word we use today to measure patches of land) is of feminine gender, and that's the explanation for your uncle.
And that's because in Latin everything including people are assigned one of the three genders, feminine, masculine and neutral, and the gender is determined by how the plural form of the noun correlates to the singular form, so a book is feminine, a notebook is neutral, and so on... country is F, earth is F (Terra)... In other languages it developed their own form of feminine or masculine, but in English they simplified it all by assigning gender M, and F to people and the rest of the stuff in neutral, unless they can be distinguished by sexual (like the animals, pets...) characteristics...But the M, F gender in Latin doesn't apply just to people...

I hope that helps.

Answer 3

ouch... got MORE!!!


AIEA (a city in Hawaii),
EIAO (one of the Marquesas Islands),
EA (a town in the Basque section of Spain),
AEAEA (the legendary home of Circe in the Tyrrhenian Sea), AAUAUA (a river in Brasil), AOUEOUA in Mauritania.
AIOUEA (a genus of plants of the laurel family),
ZAOUIA (an alternate spelling of zawiya according to the OED2 - Jeremy Marshall),
a wasp genus THOREAUIA for Henry David Thoreau.
IOUEA is a genus of Cretaceous fossil sponges.
EXONUMIA,THIOUREA,EUCOSIA, EUNOMIA, EUTOPIA,
DOULEIA, EURYOPIA, EYDOUXIA, EURYOMIA, EUMYOBIA, and JOYEUXIA [Stuart Kidd]. SEQUOIA, EULOGIA, EUNOIA

there are only 5 vowels in the english alphabet. the probability of the letter "A" appearing in every word is more

Answer 4

Ancient European cartographers (mapmakers)were from countries whose language was Latin based (IE Portugal, Spain) where you have masculine and feminine derivatives. A country was looked at as female which usually carries an "A", at the end...

Answer 5

People like the letter A.

Answer 6

It is merely a coincidence and not planned in any way. The names that you mention were named by different people at different times.

Answer 7

Acually I thibk it's the letter "C". I f you look at the World Book Encyclopedia, you'll notice that it is the only letter that has 2 volumes.

Answer 8

AAAAH ain't a answer around at all. But probably because most of them were named by people that spoke latin based languages.

Answer 9

MMM maybe thay all like the a latter just thereriying to help

Answer 10

Because it is the first letter of the alphabet.