Why do English speakers call Costa Rica, 'Costa Rica' and not 'Rich Coast'?

by Randerson107

But we call Ivory Coast, 'Ivory Coast' not 'Côte d'Ivoire'. Same goes for Spain, Germany, Italy, etc.

mormengil

For the same reason we call Puerto Rico "Puerto Rico", not "Rich Port".

There actually is no rhyme nor reason why English names are used instead of local names in some instances, but not in others.

Searocksandtrees

hi! Hopefully someone can unravel the history of the English names "Costa Rica" and "Ivory Coast" for you, but just fyi, the question of national exonyms comes up in this sub fairly often (usually wrt "Germany" vs. "Deutschland"). Check these out:

as an aside, there have been a couple of related posts for city names