Usually, at least in Europe, if it's not due to linguistic drift or somesuch, it's because the name is just being translated. For example, the French name for t

Usually, at least in Europe, if it's not due to linguistic drift or somesuch, it's because the name is just being translated. For example, the French name for the Netherlands, "Pays-Bas", is just a literal translation of "nether lands". My guess for Germany, which certainly seems the weirdest, is that it's a result of that process happening and the name getting fixed at different times for different languages, combined with the region having a rather complicated political history.