Persian (Farsi) :
Poland = لهستان (lahestan)
Germany = آلمان (alman)
I think that both Slovak and Sloven did not have enough imagination when they thought up their names. It is too similar to the general title of the Slavic nations…
I found this:
http://www.ireport.com/docs/DOC-364264
Maybe they are making a mistake.
There are a lot of people in Russia and in Europe, who are thinking that the capital of Lithuania is Riga.
May be the same with Americans 
By the way Russians call Lithuanians “Labus”
Never heard
Latvia is named “Latviya”, a Latvian is latysh (латыш) and the Latvian language is latyshskyi (латышский)
In geography lessons we have to answer the neighbours of Russia with capitals. But I always mixed up Estonia/Latvia/Lithuania and Armenia/Azerbaizhan. So, I just remembered them in order clock-unwise: Norway, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Belarus, Ukraine, Georgia, (Armenia at the left and does not have common border with Russia), Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, etc…
With capitals it was much more difficult. I just drilled them. But then I became a fan of KVN, and learned geography You know there are an annual KVN festival in Jurmala, and everytime they speak about Jurmala, Riga, Latvia. So finally I learned that Riga is the capital of Latvia and Vilnius is the capital of Lithuania (I always knew the pair of Tallinn - Estonia very well). And my favourite RUDN team have a sketch about Ashot’s (he is an Armenian) sushi-bar “Yerevan”, so I remembered Armenia - Yerevan and Azerbaijan - Baku. :)))
Cakypa,
litovets = labus
thats slang
belarus = bulbash
bulba = kartoshka
I though the Baltic states were the former Yugoslavia, somewhere near the Ural mountains. I always got good marks in geography.
I suppose we don’t have many Lithuanians here at Ural, that’s why I have not heard this.
Ну и раз пошла такая пьянка…
US-citizens, do not read this :)))
Americans are “pendosy” (пиндосы/пендосы), and USA is “Pendostan”… Why “-stan”? Perhaps, the USA are too aggressive to Moslem countries.
“I always got good marks in geography.”
I always got good marks in German for 9 years. Now I have a total disability in German.
Original discussion here… Renaming the cities of other countries... (General discussion) Language Learning Forum
Oh, I received even excellent marks in English We usually have to read, translate and retell some text. But the teacher allowed to write the Russian translation on the piece of paper and retell, watching at this translation. She was foresighted and saw only words, that’s why she checked that words were in Russian. Ok, I wrote all words in Russian but in the order of English sentence. And I put a comma for “the” and a dot for “a”, a hyphen sign for have/has/had in Perfect tense and so on, so forth :)) Well, at least I was really good at coding and decoding. Perhaps, it helped me as now I am a programmer.
Ok, I have to write something on the main topic…
At school English lessons every year we have to write and retell an essay about our hometown - MagnitogOrsk. And every time our teachers correct us: MAgnitogorsk. Then, at the University, they started to relearn us to MagnEEtogorsk. Why we, citizens of MagnitogOrsk, should pronounce it other way?..
A little off topic.
I noticed that Cakypa writes very well. Recently I was at one of Lithuanian English forums and I was amazed! They are writing with Lithuanian accent. I don’t know what’s wrong, but something is missing. English people do not write that way…
Ну и раз пошла такая пьянка…
US-citizens, do not read this :)))
You should have written it in Apache. I’m not learning Apache. Oh, the things I learn here…
@ jeff:
Just copy the link above and paste it into your address bar, and remove the space between ‘for’ and ‘um’ …
“pendosy”
To me it sounds not very well… 
But funny
There are several versions of etymology. I really like the third one:
“Это понятие перекочевало из Боснии и Герцеговины. «Пиндосы» на сербско-хорватском языке означает «пингвины». Дело в том, что американские военные всегда ходили в полном обмундировании, в бронежилетах, с фонариками, рациями и т. п., и при этом смешно переваливались с ноги на ногу, подобно пингвинам. Поступая в армию, американцы подписывают договор, где указывается, что если они получат ранение, и при этом на них не будет полного обмундирования, им не будет выплачиваться страховка. Поэтому американские военные никогда не ходят налегке”
Rough translation:
this term was borrowed from Serbian and means “penguins”. The matter is that an US soldier does not receive insurance if he is wounded while he does not wear full military equipment. So US soldiers always wear their full equipment (a flak jacket, a flash-light, radio transmitter and so on), and that’s why they walk like penguins.
You see, it was Bosnian who called US soldiers “pendosy” the first time, and Russians just liked this word and borrowed it. As it really sounds not very pleasantly, at least for Russian ear.
Anar, I don’t have to paste the link (I alread know what it is about) - I posted it here for other members to see where the discussion “originally” came from (maybe you’re a member of HTLAL, maybe not - your first message was nevertheless identical to Cordelia’s).
A reply to Steve on Slovene/Slovak theme…It is very confusing
Slovens name themselves Slovenci. Slovens call Slovaks for Slovaki. Following? Oh, the tricky part is, that Slovaks name themselves for Slovenci too and they call Slovenci for Slovinci.
Slovaks name their state Slovensko. Slovaks name Slovenia for Slovinsko.
Slovens name their state Slovenija (adj. Slovene in neutrum: Slovensko grozdje = Slovene grapes). Slovens name Slovakia for Slovaška.