Geographical names questions

Bartolomeu Dias originally named the Cape of Good Hope the "Cape of Storms" (Cabo das Tormentas). It was later renamed (by King John II of Portugal) the Cape of Good Hope because it represented the opening of a route to the east.

In all Germanic languages except English the Baltic Sea is called "East Sea" - this includes German (Ostsee), Dutch (Oostzee) and all Scandinavian languages. The name has been used since the Viking age, and was also adopted (through Swedish) into Finnish language, disregarding the geography (the sea is west of Finland).

Tristan da Cunha lies in the south Atlantic Ocean, 2,816 kilometers (1,750 mi) from the nearest land, South Afric. In 1816 the United Kingdom formally annexed the islands, to ensure that the French would be unable to use the islands as a base for a rescue operation to free Napoleon Bonaparte from his prison in Saint Helena. Today, the main island has a permanent population of 275.

Queen Maud Land was the first part of Antarctica to be sighted. The name was initially applied in January 1930 to the land discovered by Hjalmar Riiser-Larsen and Finn Lützow-Holm during Norvegia expedition of 1929–30. It was named after the Norwegian Queen Maud of Wales, wife of the then-reigning King Haakon VII.

The name K2 is derived from the notation used by the Great Trigonometric Survey. Thomas Montgomerie numbered the most prominent peaks of Kararkoram K1 to K35. Next, these were replaced by local names, but K2 appeared not to have acquired a local name, possibly due to its remoteness.

The country name is derived from the Latin argentum (silver - Ag). La Plata Basin (literally "Silver river") does not have any sources of silver, but the first Spaniards arrived to the area following rumors of the existence of silver mountains.