The Atlas of True Names is a nice project to reveal the origins of place names, even if Language Log has to rain on their parade for etymological gullibility.

I got the impression at some point that a good portion of names for both places and peoples mean either some variant of "us, our people, our land" or "them, those people, their land." There are a few of these visible in the preview images, such as "Here are People!" for Nicaragua, "Land of Fellow Countrymen" somewhere in England, and "The People on the Other Side" for what appears to be the Appalachian mountains.

Tangentially related is the wide variety of names for Germany in different languages (Deutschland, Allemagne, etc.), stemming from the number of different tribes that have invaded or ruled it through the ages.