When you think about country names ... OK, let's be honest: You don't think about country names. You just assume that any given place got its name because [insert boring-ass reason you slept through in high school history class here]. But it turns out that maybe you should've chosen to sleep off the previous night's bender in math class instead, because some of the origins behind said names are downright ridiculous. Take, for example ...

5 Greenland: A Name Created to Trick People into Going There

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Should you ever find yourself charged with naming a newly discovered land (because you're reading Cracked via time warp) and you don't want to be a dick and name it after yourself, our recommendation would be to keep it simple -- name it after whatever you happen to find there. Don't see anything but trees? Hey, we hear Treemerica is nice this time of year. Find yourself swamped by murder-bears? Murderbearland would serve as a nice warning to future explorers (a group to which you sadly no longer belong).

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Although, as founder of Murderbearland, you can take comfort knowing your monument will be made of congealed badass.

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Spin a globe and you'll see plenty of places named thusly ... but then you'll see Greenland, which, if you're anything like us, makes you wonder, "Why in the holy hell would anyone take a gigantic, dirt-filled iceberg and name it Greenland? What was that, some sort of sick joke?"

The Crazy Reason Behind the Name:

Well ... yeah, kind of. Greenland's name is credited to Erik Thorvaldsson, a Viking better known as Erik the Red, because the only possible way to make that name sound more badass is to associate it with the color of blood.

ArngrÃ­mur JÃ³nsson, via Wikipedia

Is it just us, or is that not a sword he has sheathed there?

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As the story goes, Erik got himself exiled for three years from his home in Iceland after a few minor altercations, which in Viking parlance means he murdered the shit out of a bunch of dudes after they asked him to return some stuff that he'd stolen. So Erik set sail looking to plunder the unknown north, but instead settled in a barren, frozen land where he spent what we have to assume were the most boring three years of his life.