Korea

First attested as Core in the 1598 English translation of the 1596 Itinerario of Jan Huyghen van Linschoten, from the original Dutch Core, itself from Portuguese according to van Linschoten's account. The spelling Corea was more common in Early Modern English.

Ultimately a sixteenth-century borrowing by Europeans from some variety of Chinese. Compare Mandarin 高麗 / 高丽 (Gāolí) but especially Hokkien 高麗 / 高丽 (Ko-lê), which matches the Dutch-Portuguese vowels exactly.

These are Chinese pronunciations of Sino-Korean 고려(高麗) (Goryeo), Korea's official name between 918 and 1394 and still used by Chinese people to refer to the country for centuries thereafter; this itself being a shortening of 高句麗 (“Goguryeo”), an ancient Korean kingdom in the first millennium. Doublet of Goryeo, directly from Korean.

Some Korean authors claim an Arabic intermediary instead, but this is impossible because the actual medieval Arabic word for Korea was a variant of السيلى (al-sīlā, see also Silla).