I first learned a bit about nation names as a tad, around the time of WWII, when I began collecting stamps, and found that Finland was Suomi, Germany Deutschland, Austria Oesterreich, etc. In the 60s when people had the oval stickers on their cars identifying their country, most of them were obvious, like FR and IT, but I was able to amaze people by telling them why CH was Switzerland -- it stands for Confoederatio Helvetica.