Países modernos con nombres de reinos antiguos

What does “tocayo” mean, and can countries be “tocayos” too?

Tocayo is what Spanish calls someone who shares your first name, a “namesake.” A history video about country names that recycle old kingdoms borrows the word for a stranger case: the ancient Kingdom of Iberia, in what’s now Georgia, and the Iberian Peninsula, home to Spain and Portugal. Ancient Greek geographers happened to call both “Iberia,” even though the two lands, peoples, and languages had nothing to do with each other.

The video, from history channel El Mapa de Sebas, calls the pair “tocayos sin ningún tipo de relación” — “namesakes with no relation whatsoever” — pointing out that two Greek-coined names collided by chance. Linguists still debate where tocayo itself comes from: possibly Nahuatl tōcāyoh, “one who has a name,” though the oldest written record turns up in Spain, which complicates that theory, so a Latin origin hasn’t been ruled out either.