Why does the Chinese name for Poland mean "abandoned honour"? I don't speak Mandarin at all, but I have a Chinese coworker who told me that Mandarin doesn't have nouns per se, it prefers to describe things with their most obvious properties.

I was curious how the Chinese call foreign nations. I found that it's mostly the Chinese people's general impression of them. For example they call the English "brave people", the French "people of law and teaching", and the Austrians "people difficult to make business with". Czechs seem to be the ones "who quickly lose the war". Apparently the Chinese weren't aware that Czechia exists before 1938. My own nation, Hungary is something like "white people for profit", which corresponds to how we are frequented by Chinese merchants since the early 20th century. And the Jews are simply referred as "contradiction". Oh you brutally honest people, you.

Then I found that the Chinese name for the Polish means "abandoned honour". Why is that? The Poles are one of the bravest people in the world. Is this because they were so badly defeated in World War II?

Do the name of nations change over time?

When a country's name is a transliteration of their original name (like Canada or Bulgaria), does that somehow carry a meaning too?
It's all joking lah!

The translation of a nation name is often chosen according to its sound, but Chinese characters have their own meanings as well, so you can indeed explain it somehow that way, which has nothing to do with the characteristics of that nation.

英国 Britain：英勇之国 the nation of bravery

法国 France：律法之国 the nation of law

德国 Germany：美德之国 the nation of virtue

捷克 Czech：捷速攻克 who quickly conquered

匈牙利 Hungary：匈＞胡＞白人+牙利
=white with sharp teeth

etc.