q14

[dubdobdee]

14: The etymology of which country’s name:

i: rules out mendacity?
ii: describes littoral wealth?
iii: suggests sacred insularity?
iv: recalls the Dude’s favourite cocktail?
v: shows the long reach of a Basque windmill?
vi: misrenders the name of an East India Company captain?
vii: derives from pachydermal slaughter?
viii: derives from crustacean abundance?
ix: warns of shallow waters?
x: has lunar connections?

COMPLETE: confirms needed for viii and x!

Comments

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

ii: my first thought was the GOLD COAST, now ghana, but this is presumably CÔTE D'IVOIRE (littoral = coast, wealth = what you get when you trade the ivory)

[jeff-worrell.livejournal.com]

or COSTA RICA, if 'rica' means rich?

[jeff-worrell.livejournal.com]

and vii. could be Ivory Coast

[(Anonymous)]

Thought vii was Ivory Coast too! (Alan)

[kerrypolka.livejournal.com]

And me!

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

iv. Belarus! The Dude drinks White Russians. (I think this is the only one I knew instantly on the first read-through)

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

I wonder what the cert on Big Lebowski is - would the schoolboys be old enough to watch it?

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

LOL the schoolboys are surely used to getting NUL PUNKT on the unseen test and then again NUL PUNKT on the cribbed test (since all the looking up happens over the xmas holidays, ie none happens)

[ruudboy.livejournal.com]

I thought what actually happened was that the parents do all the looking up?

[jeff-worrell.livejournal.com]

is i. the Trucial States? (Not sure these still exist as a country though)

[alextiefling.livejournal.com]

Aren't they Oman now?

[jeff-worrell.livejournal.com]

The basque for windmill is 'bolu' if that helps anyone.

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

Bolivia? Surely that comes from elsewhere...

[carsmilesteve.livejournal.com]

Bolivia comes from Simon Bolivar, as far as I know...

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

That's what I thought... what was Simon Bolivar named after? :)

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

his dad?

[jeff-worrell.livejournal.com]

Amazingly, it is Bolivia, after Bolivar (which means "windmill valley" appaz - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ziortza-Bolibar#Etymology)

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

Hahah no way! WELL DONE TEAM :)

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

Once again I've done the stupid thing of googled-to-confirm-guesses for vi and x before posting the actual guess here first. One year I'll get the hang of this game properly.

[belecrivain.livejournal.com]

No Google, just putting out some guesses in hopes they spark better answers: Bhutan or El Salvador for iii, Sri Lanka for vi, Argentina for x.

[anatol-merklich.livejournal.com]

i: Pakistan, apart from being a kind of acrostic on (iirc) Punjabi/Afghan/Kashmir/Sindhi-land, supposedly means "land of the pure". Maybe the meaning of "pure" could be stretched far enough for this to work?

viii: I may be misremembering, but I think Cameroon has something to do with shrimps?

[anatol-merklich.livejournal.com]

Oh and mind jogged by belecrivain's post above: doesn't "sri" mean something like "sacred"? Could Sri Lanka be iii?

[alextiefling.livejournal.com]

That sounds about right, yes.

[anatol-merklich.livejournal.com]

New thought!: Kiribati is the local-language transcription of the pre-independence name Gilbert (Islands); could that be vi? Anyone know whether the Gilbert Islands Gilbert was an EIC captain?

[jeff-worrell.livejournal.com]

He was: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Gilbert_(sea_captain)

(+google)

[jeff-worrell.livejournal.com]

A few rival claims to country names with lunar connections but this one seems most likely:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comoros

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

ix) is the BAHAMAS. Some good facts on that website: "The ratio of flamingos to people on Great Inagua is 61:1."