So fun fact, when learning Chinese I always thought it was weird that America gets to be “meiguo” beautiful country. Like how would the Chinese know America was beautiful, maybe the Americans described their own country this way? Or is mei guo just a rough cognate for Meri-Ca ?

But later I found a footnote that suggested the use of mei here is reflexive, in meiguoren, “people who find themselves to be beautiful” and that makes a lot more sense to me :)