Understanding how the Chinese have named various countries around the world lead to an interesting understand of their beliefs. To understand this, we begin with the Chinese word for "country":
Looking closely at this image and it looks almost like a miniture map. The internal image is actually that for the word "region". The square around it makes it the word for "country", guo.
The Chinese call their own country, zhong guo. Directly translated, it stands for "center country", a belief among the Chinese that their country was the center of the world. While somewhat egotistical in nature, this concept was central to many different cultures in history and lead to some of the European beliefs around the world being flat.
What makes the study of this character more interesting is how the Chinese have used the concept of country since then. Many are derived to sound similar to the country names. However, the character selected brings additional meaning to how Chinese view the different nations.
Mei guo -- beautiful country, a land of hopes and dreams (America)
De guo -- virtuous country (Germany)
Fa guo -- lawful country (France)
Ying guo -- heroic country, images of knights (England)
E guo -- lean country (Russia)
As time went on, the use of guo was not as prominent in naming countries. Some names, such as he lan (lotus orchid) for Holland, had come about to sound closer to the actual name of the country. Others, such as ri ben (single sun), emphasis the country flag or emblem.
Newer formed countries these days tend to have whatever combination of words/sounds make it close to the English pronounciation of the name. The characters are still carefully picked to assure they don't make some offensive phrase.
