Not something I thought of a lot when I was back in US since USA is… a pretty bureaucratic name by all means. But I just realized that some countries have really fascinating names in their local language
Like how China names itself Central/Middle country in a very grandiose way (as in, we are the center of the world), or Japan being “land of the rising sun”
You already said China so I guess I’ll go Hong Kong.
Hong Kong (香港) means fragrant harbour. The origin of this name is unknown, but there are theories of it coming from a type of wood we produced, a nice river, the wife of a pirate, or some residents just pronounced it with an accent to the British soldiers.