words wholly unrelated

asia & malaysia

throughout vietnam, there were only three different commercials that ran on the only english movie station. one was for a brand of point and shoot camera, one was for a brand of toothpaste, and one was for malaysia tourism. its tagline was malaysia: truly asia and after about the fiftieth repetition, i began to hum along as if it was my favourite song on earth and i was really lucky to be hearing it.

i assumed without really thinking that malaysia and asia were related somehow—that malaysia was the “bad asia” the way that malnutrition is bad nutrition. sadly this is not the case. even so, the country rhymes with the continent that it is part of. you can’t blame me! if there were a country in north america called snorth america or a country in europe called blorupe you’d probably fall into the same booby trap.

malaysia comes from malaya (the name of the land) + ia. the etymology of asia is a giant can of worms that i’m not going to open today BUT it assuredly has nothing to do with malaya.