Why Did Russia & Prussia Have Such Similar Names?

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[belisarius]

People can Clickbait suicide without penalty while Name Explain gets his educational video taken off for "misleading tags".

[oliverschonfeld]

Interestingly Prussia in German is “Preußen” and Russia was in older times “Reußen”. So even in German language they are pretty similar.

[lithuanian_mapper]

Old Prussians were BALTIC people who lived in todays Kaliningrad, North East Poland and parts of Lithuania. No more.

[pakabe]

If you take the german name for the Old Prussian you have "Prussen" and if you take the german name for Russian, you have "Russen". This similarity is not only in the english language.

[mpetersen]

Small correction: Prussia is smaller than modern day Germany

[NameExplain]

Hey everyone,

I had to re-upload this video because YouTube are arsehats and decided the last time I uploaded it it had misleading tags. The tags for the video were things like "russia" "prussia" "history" "geography" etc... that's 70, 000 views down the toilet but nevertheless here's the video again. And yes I know Svalbard isn't part of Russia, my bad.

[jonasmuller]

The etnic baltic prussians called themself prūsai and not prussians the teutonic order called the Preußen because they need a Name for Prūsai in German so they called ths tribes Preußen (Prussians)

[Nightsky]

You know, personally, I think the reason as to why Prussia is called Prussia is because english people have a hard time pronouncing its actual name ‘Preußen’
I was kind of skeptical when seeing your video.
I speak danish and german, and both languages just say ‚preussen‘ not ‚prussia‘
Some languages (like danish and German) actually have an old-school way of giving names to different countries. An example of this is Österreich/østrig, literally meaning ‘East kingdom’.
And since english, danish and german belong in the same language family, you’d think they’d all say it the same way, but this is where english stands out, since you say ‘Austria’.
I could come with another example: France. Danish/german people say FrankRIG/FrankREICH, which, as you might’ve already guessed, means ‘French kingdom’
It’s a tricky question you were trying to answer here, and that’s why I was very skeptical.
Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed your video and you talked about some very interesting things I didn’t know at all. But the topic should’ve probably been ‘why do english people call it Prussia?” Or something like that (even though that probably wouldn’t be an attractive title)
Welp, I think I’ve made my case, so I’m gonna fly off now.
(I’d be surprised if anyone ends up reading this Xd)

[mohammadalawneh]

In Arabic as well they have similar names
Prussia is called بروسيا which can be pronounced as "brosya"
and Russia is called روسيا which can be pronounced as "Rosya"

[katybechnikova]

Well, in Czech, the names are also almost the same: Prusko, Rusko.

[tezerd]

The mistakes aren't fixed:
0:44 prussia did come to an end but not because the land was taken away in WWI and WWII. In 1871 Prussia became a state of the german empire, ending it as a country. In 1932 Hitler split Prussia into smaller states. Parts of the land were taken away after both world wars but the biggest part remained in germany.
1:01 Svalbard is a part of Norway not Russia.
2:20 The prussians did not live in what is today the netherlands and northern germany. They only lived in east prussia

[etiennedefilippis]

The original name of prussia in german is preußen and so the names are not that simular

[norvegas]

This is not true... Ancient Prussia is a territory inhabited by the Balts Prussian people in the south- eastern Baltic, between the Vistula and the Nemunas rivers. XIII century during the crusades in Prussia, this territory was conquered by Teutonic Order. As the ordinance subsided, the rest of its territory was secularized. 1525 The Duchy of Prussia was created.

[mehrheitler]

Actually, «Rossiya» is a Greek borrowing, not a canonical endonym which would’ve been «Rus». «Russian» in Russian is «russkiy» and «Prussian» in Russian is «prusskiy», so it’s not an English only problem, I wondered why these words are so similar already during my school history classes. But yes, having «Preußen» kinda beats it…

[thorthewolf]

In hungarian, we have two very similar names for the two countries. Porosz for prussian, and orosz for russian.

[squashgoogolplex]

Me: Wait a minute...
After reading the comment:

[senorwaluigi]

The German pov: in the old days, the russians were also know as the Reußen, der prussians were the Preußen. Also the german word for prussian came from the ethnic poeple of the Prussen, which is in german very near to the word Russen, which means the russian

[vlntnn]

can you do a video about why ArKansas & Kansas (U.S. states) have similar names?
or a video about Idaho name explain?

[hoangkimviet]

After I know that this video is re-uploaded because some misunderstandable reasons of YouTube, I wonder whether YouTube is from Russia :-0

[maxx]

The german noble house Reuß got this name, when the founder of this family line went on a trip to Russia and married a russian woman. The people gave him the nicknames Russe (Russian), Reuß or Reußen and his son made Reuß the official family name. So when back in the middle age Reußen means Russian, the difference is just the "P" in Preußen.