Albania

Places I saw and recommend in Albania: Drin River, Albanian Alps, Butrint, and the southern beaches.

What Albania and Finland have in common

Albanian couple selling a sweet bread in Tirana, the capital of Albania

There is a world of difference between Finland and Albania, but they both call their country something that doesn’t sound like what the rest of the world calls them. As we saw in the chapter on Finland, Finns call their country Suomi (while nearly all other countries call it something that sounds like “Finland”).

Albania has the same deal: the Italian, Indonesian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, and Spanish languages call the Albanian country Albania. Other languages have a similar phonetic sound: Albanie (French); албания “Albaniya” (Russian, Bulgarian); Albània (Catalan); “Aherbainieya” (Chinese); Albanija (Balkanian, Lithuanian, Slovenian); Albánie (Czech); Albanien (Danish, Swedish, German); Albanië (Dutch); Albānija (Latvian); Albánsko (Slovak); αλβανία (Greek); Albanya (Filipino); and 알바니아 “Albania” (Korean).

So what do Albanians call their country? Shqipëria.

Yeah, I didn’t expect that either. They call their language Shqip.

Why did all that happen? Nobody knows. First, the origin of the Albanian term is an enigma. There are few clues: in the second century BC, Polybius mentioned the Arbon tribe. About 400 years later, Ptolemy marked the city of Albanopolis near modern-day Durrës in Albania. There are other ideas, but nothing conclusive.

Second, scholars can’t agree on where Shqipëria comes from either. One theory is that it comes from the verb shqipoj, implying one who understands.

The other theory is that Shqipëria comes from shqipojnë (eagle). Albanians have been using the double-headed eagle symbol for at least 600 years. The Albanian flag, one of the coolest ones in the world, has a red background and a black two-headed eagle on it.

But why call yourself Shqipëria if everyone calls you and your land something that sounds like Albania? Imagine if Europeans, Africans, South Americans, and Asians didn’t call us something that sounds like “Americans,” but instead called us something that sounds like “Kertians.” At some point, why not just give in to the peer pressure and call ourselves Kertians? We could change our country’s name to the United States of Kertia.

Would stupid pride hold us back? Probably. Fine.

Then why don’t the Albanians (and the Finns, for that matter) promote their real name? Shqipëria is a tongue twister, but we can pronounce Shiperia. The people could be called Shiperians and their language Shiperian. There. Easy, no? Other languages could invent similar sounding words and we’d all be in sync. Problem solved.

Instead, Albanians are insulted when foreigners try to imitate their real name. For example, Balkanians call them Šiptar (sounds like Shiptar). That’s close to Shqip. However, Albanians becomes furious when someone calls them a Šiptar instead of an Albanac. Somehow it’s as derogatory as negro is to a black man. Thus, it seems that Albanians prefer to keep things unchanged. By the way, there’s no mutual sympathy between those from Shqipëria and those from Suomi: Finns call the Albanian land Albania while Albanians call the land of the Finns Finlandë.

Albanian children

This was mid-March 2010 at one of the many beautiful beaches in southern Albania. I liked this photo because it shows the range of what an Albanian can look like: fair skinned to tanned skin. Most are in between.

This is an excerpt of The Hidden Europe: What Eastern Europeans Can Teach Us. Be sure to read about when I first visited Albania in 2004.