Other “Belgiums”

[H.Flashman(VC)]

Yes, "les Hauts de France" is really cringe-worthy for a name. I have even seen it translated in English as "Heights of France" - yikes.

The piles of coal are the mountains of "les Hauts de France"

 

[Koprulu Mustafa Pasha]

Transylvania?

 

[Philip]

Some kind of Greater "Switzerland" or Bavaria or anyone ruling all the Alps taking the name Helvetia.

Or the Helvetic Republic survives.

 

[Ultima Ratio]

We're pretty close to this in OTL, the international ISO-code for Switzerland after all is CH, an abbreviation derived from the Latin name for Switzerland, Confoederatio Helvetica.

Haha I always wondered about that. The more you know.

 

[jycee]

If you fool around enough during the Napoleonic Wars it is not difficult to get Helvetia, Ilyria, Batavia, and Lusitania. This, in turn, could establish a precedent for new European (and possibly North African) republics to get Latinized names. And from there we could end up with:

Belgica, breaking away from France or Batavia in TTL
Thracia and/or Macedonia in the Balkans
Dacia for a unified Romanian Republic
Allemagnia / Almania for a new organization out of the Confederation of the Rhine wanting to distance itself from the Prussian/Austrian Deutsch.
Numidia and Mauretania in Africa

 

[Captain Seafort]

we could end up with...Macedonia in the Balkans

We've got several Macedonias in the Balkans. The bickering over the name ended very recently.

 

[jycee]

We've got several Macedonias in the Balkans. The bickering over the name ended very recently.

We have a few of the ones I mentioned, and I guess Macedonia (now North Macedonia) counts as another “Belgium” in OTL.
The point is to expand the list; under a POD during the French Revolutionary Wars we can have separate Hellas/Achaia, Macedonia ( including the Greek parts) and Thracia as Greek/Balkan Republics. Which will likely be a mess as two of those will be multi-ethnic Balkan Republics.

 

[Indicus]

This happened IOTL with India, which revived the ancient Sanskrit name “Bharat” for use in Hindi, rather than use the more common name of “Hindustan”.

 

[Theodoric]

Once Germany's old constituent countries are dissolved/unified into newly-created states, those states could be purposely based on the names of old Germanic tribes. This is the case to a considerable extent in OTL, but could be even moreso in an ATL.

Similarly, an ATL re-organisation of England or Great Britain could see the names of historical Aglo-Saxon and/or Celtic kingdoms restored.

A Germany re-aligned according to the old stem duchies, or a Britain that takes on an organisation along the lines of the old Pentarchy, are both really interesting ideas I've been mulling over for quite a while. Of course, depending on exactly when and why it happens, they might not be very accurate reconstructions, which is all the more interesting. Just imagine the silly ahistorical creations of an 18th century that had seen a Romantic nationalist movement instead of the Englightenment.

 

[Shiva]

We haven't mentioned the best 'Alt-Belgium' of them all, the Seventeen Provinces defeat Philip II of Spain and form the Belgian Republic.