Rakusko

This is the kind of thing that maybe two people will find interesting, but it's my blog and I'm writing it anyway.

When I was in Slovakia last week, I noticed that on all their maps Austria was called "Rakusko." Austria was also called Rakusko in Czech. This is a bit odd, since in most other Slavic languages that I've been exposed to, Austria is just called "Avstria," or something close to that. Rakusko isn't close at all to what Austria is called in German (which is Osterreich, translated as Eastern Empire) so my interest was piqued.

Spent a bit of time looking into this whole Rakusko thing over the weekend. After a bit of time, I found my answer here. I'll extract the relevant portion below.

The Czech for Austria is Rakousko and an Austrian is a Rakušan. This actually comes from a medieval castle on the Austro-Czech border called Radgos, which is today known as Raabs. The Czechs used the name of the castle for the whole country and called it Rakuš or Rakus, which eventually became Rakousko.

So there you go. I thought it was neat anyway.