I am dumbfounded.

it's an apple-lation
of which I know nothing...

Apple-lation you say? You could be on the trail of something there...

it means land by the sea in slavic...

That's very cool to know... thank you!

My late father (I know not where he picked it up) thought Australians called Britons 'Pommies' because George III (King when Aus was discovered by Capt Cook) had German Pomeranian mercenary troops. (I am not sure they were used in Australia but German states hired out soldiers as reinforcements in the American Revolutionary War.) I have since heard it supposedly dates from Botany Bay penal colony days, as acronym of 'Prisoner of Old Mother England'.

George III is going back a bit, but an interesting idea. Britishers here in NZ in the 1950's and 60's were called whingeing Poms. Most likely they found the conditions here primitive but would have been attracted here by plentiful work and relatively good rates of pay... back when Britain bought every single thing NZ could produce and the balance of payments favoured NZ.

Update... found this on the web:

 The Godzone Dictionary, by Max Cryer (a listing of Kiwi slang) also says that it comes from pomegranate, which somehow derives from Jimmy Grant (a rhyme for immigrant). Here's a choice bit:

"In the second half of the 20th century, a certain distaste for British ways caused pommy to be very frequently associated with the word whingeing (complaining) and/or b*stard. . . .fanciful developments are sometimes heard: Pom-land, Pomgolia, and sometimes Pongolia, all slang terms for England."

Except for what I've read here
I don't know a thingia.

Same here... and it's way more than I used to know.

i think they're named after a region that's now part of germany... solomon may be on to something there

I just looked it up... Hither (western) Pomerania is now a province of Germany and Further (eastern) Pomerania is part of Poland.

The actual name I'm sure doesn't sound so bad (even the German Pommern is ok) but Anglicized the name is just too dinky...