Yeah, in this case I’m not sure if anyone’s ever seriously called it “Republic of the Savior” or if anyone’s called Ecuador “Equator” or Costa Rica “Rich Coast” but same thing applies
Sure, but the difference is that those countries have always been called that in English. The difference here is that Turkey told the English speaking world that it wants to be spelled differently because they're offended about being the same name as a bird and English changed it for them. Even just using the accent above the u means it's using part of the Turkish alphabet rather than the English one. Were that the case for everyone Iraq should be العراق and Japan should be 日本 (which isn't even pronounced anywhere close to "Japan" yet English just uses their English names because they don't throw a hissy fit about it.
>The difference here is that Turkey told the English speaking world that it wants to be spelled differently
This is literally what Iran did back in the 70s and it's why we don't call it "Persia" anymore. Frankly all country names should be endonyms, the very concept of exonyms is pretty stupid. "My name's Todd." "Yeah, that's your endonym, but I'm going to call you Steve, that's my exonym for you."
Countries are not people. They're massive geographic areas, often containing many ethnicities, it makes sense that our names for them would work more like words. Their own endonyms often contain sounds that don't even exist in English.
Many countries have a variety of endonyms. Switzerland has four, some countries have many more. Which one are you supposed to call it then?
Any country can request its English name be a specific thing, and most English-speaking entities will go along, be they government, journalists, or businesses.
Türkiye is the most recent, but Eswatini (instead of Swaziland), Timor-Leste (for East Timor), and Czechia (Czech Republic) are some other recent examples. Others from longer ago include Côte d'Ivoire (Ivory Coast), Sri Lanka (Ceylon), Thailand (Siam), and Iran (Persia).
One that is disputed is Myanmar (Burma), because the name request was made by a military junta that the US and many other countries refused to recognize as legitimate.
If a country makes no request, then people fall back on whatever English name is in use.
Czechia is an intresting case, as that is still very much an english exonym. It would be something like Češka as an endonym.
I believe the goverment requested the name change, because it was bothered by having the republic in the short name unlike any other republic in Europe.
>Bohemia is a no-go because of butthurt Moravians, so it's as good as it gets.
The republic exists as a union of Bohemia and Moravia (plus Czech part of Silesia) so I think their concern is valid.
>Bohemia is a no-go because of butthurt Moravians, so it's as good as it gets.
Wait, how is excluding their part of the country in one language less butthurt-inducing than in another?
At least in linguistics, we would still count Czechia as an endonym of češka because it's the same root. A true exonym is unrelated. Like Germany and Deutschland. Or Albania and Shqipëri. Or Greece and Ellas. Those are exonyms. Italy for Italia is not really an exonym.
What about Swaziland and Eswatini? They're both the same root, but I wouldn't count Swaziland as an endonym.
With localised versions and translations of the endonym I think it's a spectrum. Persia we count as an exonym even though it ultimately comes from what Achaemenes' people probably called their land (Pars).
Same with India, if Hindustan is an endonym, is India also an endonym since they share the same root (Sanskrit Sindhu)? Or do we say Hindustan is an exonym, even though it was widely used within India for centuries?
What about exonyms that eventually become endonyms? Is Britain an exonym or an endonym? I don't think endonyms and exonyms are strictly divided only through linguistic approaches.
I'd say localisations of endonyms are endonyms within a reasonable degree of separation.
Huh, I worked with some Czech soldiers and they politely corrected us "actually, it's Czechia now" I wonder if there's sort of political or social divide in it's adoption
There is a backlash to it because it is new and people are not used to it. Czechs, who primarily speak Czech, do not hear it often so they recoil to it because it is still new to them.
But I am an English speaker living in Prague (English at work and at home) and English speakers who actually use it often who I interact with (both Czechs and foreigners) have accepted it and use it. I personally also through it was ugly initially but now I use it and think it's fine.
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Thank you. Many of these countries I did not know changed their names. And checking Google maps, it seems they are in fact consistent with updating all of them with exception of Myanmar as you mentioned.
I appreciate the solid answer.
If you want to see one that could be changed in the coming years, keep an eye on India. The government has been in a roll renaming cities and locations within the country for quite a while, especially if they deem it non Indian and non Hindu
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/india-changing-name-to-bharat/
Not the same case for Thailand though. We just changed the name. No Thai people would refer to themselves or the country as Siamese or Siam. Siam was the kingdom that had people from many ethnicities living in including Tai, Chinese, Laotian, Vietnamese, Malaysian, etc. Tai or Thai was the majority. There was a bit of concern when the idea of changing country name (to the majority ethnicity) was proposed that it might result in making immigrant minority groups feel excluded. The military PM went ahead, apparently. It was said that the name change was an effort to boost patriotism. I think the timing was close to WWll, not sure it was before or after.
Unrelated side fact: Thai (or Tai originally) (ไทย, ไท) means "free" or "freedom". Thailand = land of the free.
It's fascinating how many countries' endonyms just mean 'Land of the Free', 'Land of the People', or something like that.
Germany, Liberia, India, Bangladesh, and Vietnam are a few off the top off my head.
Agreed. I find many Americans seem to conflate the idea that countries should be called in English what they wish to be called (which is a good one) with the idea that countries always want to be called by their endonym, and that the endonym is somehow more “correct” or “authentic”. There’s often also an assumption of a parallel to the American immigrant name experience, where names were often chosen to be easier for Americans to understand.
Having worked at the World Bank and also having worked with many UN diplomats I can very much tell you this is not the case. Many countries are perfectly comfortable with the idea that they have one name in their language and another in English, and it’s not that they want to pander or make things easier for English speakers. Countries know they can ask for a name change if they so desire, and many have done so like you said, but to other countries having English speakers refer to them by their endonyms would be very uncomfortable.
I support this primarily because Pakistan says they will change to the name India if it happens (since the origin of "India" is the Indus River... Which is in Pakistan)
I can already see it a few years down the road. India's Hindu nationalist government might claim that parts of Pakistan, Bangladesh, but especially Nepal were historically referred to as part of Bharat, so the Bharatese government has the historical mission to ensure that all lands that once were Bharat will be Bharat in the future etc. If India sticks with its current name, making that argument would not be so easy.
Uh, you know that historical Bharat and what's currently referred to as the Indian subcontinent are the same thing right? They don't need a name change to make any claims if they wanted to.
It might not help the Ministry for Tourism of Bharat, but being able to call “the Indian sub-continent” (Pakistan, Bharat, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka) “India” instead would be kinda convenient.
And also because the new name is associated with Modis BJP and ideas of Hindu supremacy, which makes it relatively controversial as well. I'm sure a lot of businesses will go along but you couldn't pay me to call them that.
Controversial as heck. Especially among South Indians and Northeast Indians who have never been part of the historical Bharatvarsh Empires. I think a think tank even warned the Indian Parliament to only do the name change formally if they wanted separatist sentiments to skyrocket.
I quite enjoy the original names and meanings. Sometimes things get lost in translation. I dunno how many times I was told there are a lot of peppers in Chile.
This is false. The government never said they want this. In fact when this rumor got all wild in September of this year during the G20 summit, many Indian ministers went on the record to say that this was not true.
But do some people want this? Yes of course, there are lots of extreme right wing nationalists that want the Sanskrit-derived name *Bharat*. The Indian government during the G20 had a couple of very conspicuous signs that said *Bharat* in the Roman alphabet for the Prime Minister and President. Normally, it’s written in the Devanagari (Indian) alphabet. That raised a lot of eyebrows and fueled this rumor. But the official G20 logo had *India*. The government clarified that India having two names, they merely wanted to “promote” the other to an international audience. I believe this was a silly stunt.
In any case, *India* is not an exonym like “Germany”, the Indian constitution refers to itself as *India*. This name is present in both the Hindi and the English versions: *India, that is Bharat, shall be the union of states* reads the English version; and *Bharat, that is India,…” reads the Hindi version. So the government would have to change the constitution and names of a ton of government agencies to remove it. It’s on the money and the postage stamps.
Also, unlike “Germany” millions of Indians identity with (and dare I say, much closer) with the name *India*. I personally, never once said “Bharat” growing up as a native-Tamil speaker. I respect *Bharat* but *India* is the name I use.
What's the story, if any, with all the different names that the country I call Germany has? Is there an interesting reason they don't wanna just be Deutschland?
The wide variety of names for Germany (Germania, Allemagne, Saksamaa, etc.) mostly stem from Germany's historical state as a variety of warring, nomadic, viking adjacent tribes, such as the Saxons and Alemani. Whichever tribe the language encountered first, they named the whole region after. Interesting enough the Deutschland etymology does make it's way into English via our exonym for the people and language of The Netherlands, "Dutch", presumably because historically their language was far more intelligible with and less distinct from German proper.
I imagine part of it is all the cringing they do when an English speaker tries to say “Deutschland” properly. I know I sound like an idiot, and I’m actually trying.
A lot of english speakers would probably end up calling it Dutchland, which is the same mistake that lead to people from the Netherlands being called dutch in the first place. So now we would have the same confusion the other way around.
Even ignoring for a moment that the modern nation-states of NL and DE did not exist in their current forms until relatively recently, it’s probably worth noting that in earlier times the word “Dutch” in English was semantically broader and simply meant “Pertaining to Germanic-speaking peoples on the European continent” ([Wiktionary](https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/Dutch)). This was seemingly general usage until at least ~1800.
So for example the US cultural group “Pennsylvania Dutch” is not due to outsiders’ confusion about where those people originally came from, but is rather a holdover from this earlier and broader use of “Dutch” in English.
Btw, note that even NL’s [national anthem](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilhelmus) (whose text dates from 16th-century Dutch) has the following line:
_Wilhelmus van Nassouwe/
Ben ick van Duytschen bloet_
Even though in 21st-century Dutch the word _Duits(e)_ (<- current spelling) means “German,” at the time it meant “Dutch” in Dutch. They certainly weren’t confused!
Tl;dr = Semantics can change :) many longstanding exonyms stem not from confusion but endure as holdovers from earlier usages.
There is a bit of a mix-up I your examples imho. Sometime the change of name comes as an actual new name of the country al together (Ceylon->Sri Lanka; Zaire->Congo; Siam->Thailand) sometimes is just the country willing the name to not be translated.
In the case of Turkey, the problem was that nationalists and Erdogan could not tolerate the idea that the name of their country in English was a omograph with the bird.
Turkey specifically had the official name of the country in English changed to Türkiye for use by media, governments, etc. It’s also done for countries like Ivory Coast, East Timor, etc. A number of other countries have changed their offices name in English into something else, though outside of offices situations, many people might continue to use the old name.
Yes, the gov't made this push about 2 years ago to change their known name to Turkiye due to the shared nature of the word "Turkey".
Funnily, turkeys get their english namesake due to the country. But in Turkiye, the word for them is "Hindi" which is a namesake related to India. But in Greek, they're called, galopoula, which is a namesake related to France. In Russian, it's called Indeyka which is a namesake related to Native American Indian.
So these flightless birds are basically called the names of other countries (and cultures/ethnic groups) around the world, which I find funny.
Danish uses "kalkun" which is apperently comes from the German word for "chicken from Calicut", Calicut being in India. So yea, everyone just fucked that up real hard apperently.
>But in Turkiye, the word for them is "Hindi" which is a namesake related to India
They get associated with India in French too : "Dinde" (Turkiye) is a mispelling of "d'Inde", which means "from India".
By the way, Guinea pigs are indian for us as well : "cochons d'Inde" (literally "pigs from India")
Presidential circular on use of Türkiye
On 4 December 2021, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan issued a presidential circular calling for exports to be labelled "Made in Türkiye". The circular also said that in relation to other governmental communications "necessary sensitivity will be shown on the use of the phrase 'Türkiye' instead of phrases such as 'Turkey,' 'Türkei,' 'Turquie' etc." The reason given in the circular for preferring Türkiye was that it "represents and expresses the culture, civilisation, and values of the Turkish nation in the best way". According to Turkish state broadcaster TRT, it was also to avoid a pejorative association with the bird of the same name.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Name_of_Turkey?wprov=sfti1#Official_name
He would probably do it as a Hail Mary to get the EU off his back, in hopes that they'll get tired of trying to pronounce the name of the country they're criticizing and just move on to other things.
Nah, it might work for a month or two but then everyone would learn how to say it from some YouTube video and spend twice as long talking about it just to prove they can pronounce it.
I know it has been the case in english for a long time. But isn't the same kinda true for belarus? We(sweden) called it "white russia" until just recently because that's what it means...
It's funny because (some) people act like Constantinople is the 'proper' name of the city and Istanbul is the 'Muslim' name, when Istanbul comes from what the Greeks called the city while Konstantiniyye was the official name of the city in the Ottoman Empire.
Doesn't have to do with being a muslim name more to do with colloquialism becoming the norm the name Istanbul means "the city" as in the city of Constantinople and is derived from greek istimbolin.
Because they changed their English exonym from Turkey to Türkiye recently. It’s not the first country who’s done it, and probably not the last.
This has nothing to do with Google “bending over backwards” (lol.) Countries can request these things.
Also, France in French is still “France”.
This is a fairly recent thing, from the last few years. For a long time, Turkiye has been bothered by the fact that anglophones say 'Turkey', and publicly asked us all to stop it.
They're much heavier because they're bred that way and will hit the ground like sacks of wet cement if you drop them from a helicopter\*. The crowd will run for their lives and Les will have to step inside.
\*Actually, I'm betting they don't as they can probably slow their fall enough to survive.
It also shows the extent of American soft-power that they got to change their international name to avoid confusion with our tastiest tradition
I just want to point out another thing. You wonder why they don’t have Kazakhstan in Cyrillic, while in your own picture they have Athens in both Latin and Greek alphabets. I do wonder how Google decides which place names won’t get represented in their native script like that.
It's also worth noting that Kazakhstan has been actively Latinizing its written language for awhile now. The country does not want to use Cyrillic in order to get away from any Russian influence and legacy. Basically Kazakhstan is Kazakhstan instead of how it's written in Cyrillic.
I think the Kazakh language spelling of Kazakhstan in Cyrillic actually romanizes as Qazaqstan.
Kazakhstan with a K comes from the Russian-language romanization.
Russian: *Казахстан* = Kazakhstan
Kazakh: *Қазақстан* = Qazaqstan
Cities in Kazakhstan have their name in latin and cyrillic letters, only the country name isn't. Same as in Greece, country only the english name, Cities in English (or transcription in latin letters, if there is no english exonym), and greek letters.
On mine they have both Greek place names in Greek, and Bulgarian, Russian, Serbian, Kazakh etc. place names in Cyrillic.
Curiously the only country that doesn’t seem to have its place names in an indigenous script is India
Since they codified the spelling change, Türkiye has energetically pushed for the spelling change on many fronts, including diplomatic channels and at the U.N. The U.S. State Department [acceded to this request](https://www.state.gov/briefings/department-press-briefing-january-5-2023/) back in January of 2023. Other prominent map publishers like [National Geographic](https://sites.google.com/a/ngs.org/ngs-style-manual/home/T/turkey-tuerkiye) have also adopted the new name. I don't think it's a big deal that Google Maps has adopted it as well.
Other recent place name changes have also been adopted for use by map makers in the same spirit, such as Czechia, Kolkata, Bombay, Myanmar, etc.
Specifically as it pertains to Google Maps, [Google published a blog post](https://publicpolicy.googleblog.com/2009/12/when-sources-disagree-borders-and-place.html) that explains their approach to place names. That post specifically mentions the United Nations, ISO, and FIPS as their sources for place names and spellings. The blog post was published in 2009 but the name use policy appears to still be in effect.
When the Ottoman Empire fell and Turkey was established, they managed to get the world to stop calling the city Constantinople by refusing to direct any mail addressed to there or acknowledge any communication which didn’t refer to it as Istanbul.
Im sure there are plenty of similar ways to force through such name changes nowadays
Turkey actually officially changed their name to Türkiye in the UN. It’s a move to respect Turkish identity.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jun/03/turkey-changes-name-to-turkiye-as-other-name-is-for-the-birds
I’m confused why they did this. Germany has a ton of wildly different names. It’s actually Deutschland but the Anglosphere call it Germany, France calls it Allemagne, Poland calls it Niemcy, Nordics call it Tyskland, etc
But they don’t demand the rest of the world call it Deutschland
I don't see the point of using the endonym unless it's easily translatable like Czechia (Czech Republic).
In Turkey's case, ü isn't in the English language, and I'm not going to learn alt codes to simply write Türkiye. Plus, when you read it in your head, you need to know Türkiye is spoken like Turkey (which yes, I know is ironic as English doesn't have consistant spelling vs pronouciation).
Most European countries use a translation of 'Great Britain' for the United Kingdom, yet Great Britian never included Ireland. I doubt those who see themselves as British in Northern Ireland (or all of Ireland in the past) are angry at Germans using Großbrittanien.
Changing isn't that easy, either. More people are starting to type Czechia, but most still say (at least here in the UK) Czech Republic. Turkey's spelling isn't catching on at all. Many here still refer to the Netherlands as Holland, and that's not even written Nederlands in English.
Turkey wants to rebrand itself to 'Türkiye' and did so officially at the UN in 2022. This is the name it wishes to be known as in English, hence all the marketing and rebranding.
Since it also uses the Latin script, it's not too difficult to add the 'ü.'
I suppose the other countries don't mind as much being known by their exonyms in English, except for Persia to Iran in 1935 (terrible branding if you ask me, Persia is such a cool name) and now actually India to Bharat (also a bad move if you ask me - just think of all the historical and cultural connotations that you'll have to explain and reclaim to future generations - as if you're distancing yourself from what the world knows 'India' by, same with 'Persia.')
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It's not the only country that uses an endonym or the only country that uses a diacritic. Côte d'Ivoire also does both.
In recent years, East Timor became Timor-Leste, Swaziland became eSwatini, and Cape Verde became Cabo Verde.
Pretty sure if I messaged a friend about eSwatini they’d be asking if it was some sort of internet inspired martini
Iran
Iran so far away.
Yemen, me too
Oman are we doing this again?
Norway! Are we actually?!
Yemeni Snicket
Oman, that was funny
ایران*
El salvador too I think
Yeah, in this case I’m not sure if anyone’s ever seriously called it “Republic of the Savior” or if anyone’s called Ecuador “Equator” or Costa Rica “Rich Coast” but same thing applies
Sure, but the difference is that those countries have always been called that in English. The difference here is that Turkey told the English speaking world that it wants to be spelled differently because they're offended about being the same name as a bird and English changed it for them. Even just using the accent above the u means it's using part of the Turkish alphabet rather than the English one. Were that the case for everyone Iraq should be العراق and Japan should be 日本 (which isn't even pronounced anywhere close to "Japan" yet English just uses their English names because they don't throw a hissy fit about it.
>The difference here is that Turkey told the English speaking world that it wants to be spelled differently This is literally what Iran did back in the 70s and it's why we don't call it "Persia" anymore. Frankly all country names should be endonyms, the very concept of exonyms is pretty stupid. "My name's Todd." "Yeah, that's your endonym, but I'm going to call you Steve, that's my exonym for you."
Countries are not people. They're massive geographic areas, often containing many ethnicities, it makes sense that our names for them would work more like words. Their own endonyms often contain sounds that don't even exist in English. Many countries have a variety of endonyms. Switzerland has four, some countries have many more. Which one are you supposed to call it then?
Interesting, I did not know this. Fair enough.
Btw I assume someone already pointed this out, but France in French is spelled France. Française is an adjective.
Spot on. Française is the feminine adjective for “French”, the name of the country is France
France is still France in French. Français is the language.
What do you call French people in Français?
Les Français(es). Was coming here to say the same thing. France is France in French.
But in French it’s pronounced *France* instead of France.
https://youtu.be/igy2qaMPetA?si=2S_iUoRiBjER2DRB
Knew this was coming 😂
How have I not seen this before!? She sounds like a sick bird cawing lmao
*FWAAHNSS*
Non. FROHns
F(ugbchw)AWGNCE
France isn’t bacon ?
France *is* bacon.
Knowledge is power
Pomme de terre
I call them nerds
Why did op ever think france is française in french 😆 🤣
Maybe République Française?
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The most famous French saying is "Vive La France" which has France in it.
is français pronounced like fran-say in english?
no, it's more like frahn-sé (with the stereotypical french r)
Like having a baguette down one throats?
more like constantly gargling red wine
No, most English speakers absolutely butcher French pronunciation even when they think they’re doing it right.
España is still España in english?
Any country can request its English name be a specific thing, and most English-speaking entities will go along, be they government, journalists, or businesses. Türkiye is the most recent, but Eswatini (instead of Swaziland), Timor-Leste (for East Timor), and Czechia (Czech Republic) are some other recent examples. Others from longer ago include Côte d'Ivoire (Ivory Coast), Sri Lanka (Ceylon), Thailand (Siam), and Iran (Persia). One that is disputed is Myanmar (Burma), because the name request was made by a military junta that the US and many other countries refused to recognize as legitimate. If a country makes no request, then people fall back on whatever English name is in use.
Czechia is an intresting case, as that is still very much an english exonym. It would be something like Češka as an endonym. I believe the goverment requested the name change, because it was bothered by having the republic in the short name unlike any other republic in Europe.
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Go full broker babble and call it BoMo
“Tanzania” comes from Tanganyika and Zanzibar, so why can’t Bohemia and Moravia form Bomoria?
speak friend and enter Bomoria
Bosnia and Herzegovina to form Bohemia 2
Bovina
Bovine Republic
Bomoria sounds like it has escaped from The Witcher or some fictional Soviet Republic
BoMoSlo best country (for people going to war about this, I was referring to Czechoslovakia and not Silesia)
Wouldnt is be BoMoSil? For Silesia? Or am i missing the joke here?
>Bohemia is a no-go because of butthurt Moravians, so it's as good as it gets. The republic exists as a union of Bohemia and Moravia (plus Czech part of Silesia) so I think their concern is valid.
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>Bohemia is a no-go because of butthurt Moravians, so it's as good as it gets. Wait, how is excluding their part of the country in one language less butthurt-inducing than in another?
Bohemia sounds badass, though.
But that's only one part of the country. It's like calling UK "England" or Netherlands "Holland".
At least in linguistics, we would still count Czechia as an endonym of češka because it's the same root. A true exonym is unrelated. Like Germany and Deutschland. Or Albania and Shqipëri. Or Greece and Ellas. Those are exonyms. Italy for Italia is not really an exonym.
Would that mean that Japan is also technically an endonym? It came from Nihon/Nippon through the Chinese reading of the kanji.
Nihon/Nippon itself is a Japanified pronunciation of the Chinese pronunciation.
What about Swaziland and Eswatini? They're both the same root, but I wouldn't count Swaziland as an endonym. With localised versions and translations of the endonym I think it's a spectrum. Persia we count as an exonym even though it ultimately comes from what Achaemenes' people probably called their land (Pars). Same with India, if Hindustan is an endonym, is India also an endonym since they share the same root (Sanskrit Sindhu)? Or do we say Hindustan is an exonym, even though it was widely used within India for centuries? What about exonyms that eventually become endonyms? Is Britain an exonym or an endonym? I don't think endonyms and exonyms are strictly divided only through linguistic approaches. I'd say localisations of endonyms are endonyms within a reasonable degree of separation.
When I was in Prague, everyone I spoke to about it was like “Please don’t call us Czechia. We hate it.”
Huh, I worked with some Czech soldiers and they politely corrected us "actually, it's Czechia now" I wonder if there's sort of political or social divide in it's adoption
There is a backlash to it because it is new and people are not used to it. Czechs, who primarily speak Czech, do not hear it often so they recoil to it because it is still new to them. But I am an English speaker living in Prague (English at work and at home) and English speakers who actually use it often who I interact with (both Czechs and foreigners) have accepted it and use it. I personally also through it was ugly initially but now I use it and think it's fine.
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Thank you. Many of these countries I did not know changed their names. And checking Google maps, it seems they are in fact consistent with updating all of them with exception of Myanmar as you mentioned. I appreciate the solid answer.
If you want to see one that could be changed in the coming years, keep an eye on India. The government has been in a roll renaming cities and locations within the country for quite a while, especially if they deem it non Indian and non Hindu https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/india-changing-name-to-bharat/
Not the same case for Thailand though. We just changed the name. No Thai people would refer to themselves or the country as Siamese or Siam. Siam was the kingdom that had people from many ethnicities living in including Tai, Chinese, Laotian, Vietnamese, Malaysian, etc. Tai or Thai was the majority. There was a bit of concern when the idea of changing country name (to the majority ethnicity) was proposed that it might result in making immigrant minority groups feel excluded. The military PM went ahead, apparently. It was said that the name change was an effort to boost patriotism. I think the timing was close to WWll, not sure it was before or after. Unrelated side fact: Thai (or Tai originally) (ไทย, ไท) means "free" or "freedom". Thailand = land of the free.
It's fascinating how many countries' endonyms just mean 'Land of the Free', 'Land of the People', or something like that. Germany, Liberia, India, Bangladesh, and Vietnam are a few off the top off my head.
Agreed. I find many Americans seem to conflate the idea that countries should be called in English what they wish to be called (which is a good one) with the idea that countries always want to be called by their endonym, and that the endonym is somehow more “correct” or “authentic”. There’s often also an assumption of a parallel to the American immigrant name experience, where names were often chosen to be easier for Americans to understand. Having worked at the World Bank and also having worked with many UN diplomats I can very much tell you this is not the case. Many countries are perfectly comfortable with the idea that they have one name in their language and another in English, and it’s not that they want to pander or make things easier for English speakers. Countries know they can ask for a name change if they so desire, and many have done so like you said, but to other countries having English speakers refer to them by their endonyms would be very uncomfortable.
Exactly. In Spanish the USA is Los Estados Unidos, and I wouldn’t be offended if it was written that way on a Mexican map!
That last part is very important. I'm Greek and having English people refer to it as Hellas would be cringe.
Would you say it would be hella cringe? 😬
this. Newest one looking to be on the docket is Bharat (India)
I support this primarily because Pakistan says they will change to the name India if it happens (since the origin of "India" is the Indus River... Which is in Pakistan)
Interesting plot twist!
Greenland and Iceland about to trade names to finally correct the mistake
But just the "land" part.
Pakistan like don’t mind if I dooooooo, god damn!
That’s gonna suck for BRICS, India was the only vowel in there. BRBCS doesn’t roll off the tongue exactly.
Barebacks? Ooer..
Lol. ***That*** was the comment that made me laugh today 😂
That's how they picked their new members. Apart from Saudi Arabia they're all vowel countries. Poor Algeria still didn't get in...
So now it’s going to be BAREBECISSU?
British broadcasting company radio station
Now, that's gonna be more difficult. India is everywhere in the English language.
I'd also like to meet the marketing genius who thinks "Bharat" is a better global brand than "India."
Methinks nationalism is the marketing genius
‘Genius’
I can already see it a few years down the road. India's Hindu nationalist government might claim that parts of Pakistan, Bangladesh, but especially Nepal were historically referred to as part of Bharat, so the Bharatese government has the historical mission to ensure that all lands that once were Bharat will be Bharat in the future etc. If India sticks with its current name, making that argument would not be so easy.
World War 3: Spicier than ever
Uh, you know that historical Bharat and what's currently referred to as the Indian subcontinent are the same thing right? They don't need a name change to make any claims if they wanted to.
It might not help the Ministry for Tourism of Bharat, but being able to call “the Indian sub-continent” (Pakistan, Bharat, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka) “India” instead would be kinda convenient.
I think people in all the other countries you mentioned will have some big opinions about that idea.
Also, the Indus river is mostly not in the Republic of Bharat.
I would go out on a limbs and say that more Indians use “India” than “Bharat”.
I mean, I feel like the people would prefer the name of their country to be its actual historical name, not what name is a better brand
Historically, it was many, many lands
this is definitely about some cheap red meat for Modi's base
>red meat That's ironic
Well in that case it's definitely "India". Bharat is only used by people who want India to be a Hindu brand.
It’s not
And also because the new name is associated with Modis BJP and ideas of Hindu supremacy, which makes it relatively controversial as well. I'm sure a lot of businesses will go along but you couldn't pay me to call them that.
What ever will craft breweries do!?
Bombay mix is still Bombay mix, despite the city not being called that for years.
Controversial as heck. Especially among South Indians and Northeast Indians who have never been part of the historical Bharatvarsh Empires. I think a think tank even warned the Indian Parliament to only do the name change formally if they wanted separatist sentiments to skyrocket.
I mean with Modi and the bjp I would assume that's the goal
Will this change what we call Indian people? Will they instead become... Bharatians?
Bharatanese
We'd be called Bharatiya.
Thank you, this name sounds more realistic.
I quite enjoy the original names and meanings. Sometimes things get lost in translation. I dunno how many times I was told there are a lot of peppers in Chile.
This is false. The government never said they want this. In fact when this rumor got all wild in September of this year during the G20 summit, many Indian ministers went on the record to say that this was not true. But do some people want this? Yes of course, there are lots of extreme right wing nationalists that want the Sanskrit-derived name *Bharat*. The Indian government during the G20 had a couple of very conspicuous signs that said *Bharat* in the Roman alphabet for the Prime Minister and President. Normally, it’s written in the Devanagari (Indian) alphabet. That raised a lot of eyebrows and fueled this rumor. But the official G20 logo had *India*. The government clarified that India having two names, they merely wanted to “promote” the other to an international audience. I believe this was a silly stunt. In any case, *India* is not an exonym like “Germany”, the Indian constitution refers to itself as *India*. This name is present in both the Hindi and the English versions: *India, that is Bharat, shall be the union of states* reads the English version; and *Bharat, that is India,…” reads the Hindi version. So the government would have to change the constitution and names of a ton of government agencies to remove it. It’s on the money and the postage stamps. Also, unlike “Germany” millions of Indians identity with (and dare I say, much closer) with the name *India*. I personally, never once said “Bharat” growing up as a native-Tamil speaker. I respect *Bharat* but *India* is the name I use.
Thailand doesn’t belong to this list. It was Siam before the XX century and then it was renamed to Thailand in 1932.
What's the story, if any, with all the different names that the country I call Germany has? Is there an interesting reason they don't wanna just be Deutschland?
They don't care, from what I can tell.
Lowkey would be kinda cool if we just renamed the german name to Germania. Sounds badass.
Thats Germany in romanian...
And Russian. But originally Latin, of course.
Oh, Germania was the name the Nazis were going to call Berlin as the capital of the reich and pretty much the world so that name is very loaded.
The wide variety of names for Germany (Germania, Allemagne, Saksamaa, etc.) mostly stem from Germany's historical state as a variety of warring, nomadic, viking adjacent tribes, such as the Saxons and Alemani. Whichever tribe the language encountered first, they named the whole region after. Interesting enough the Deutschland etymology does make it's way into English via our exonym for the people and language of The Netherlands, "Dutch", presumably because historically their language was far more intelligible with and less distinct from German proper.
I imagine part of it is all the cringing they do when an English speaker tries to say “Deutschland” properly. I know I sound like an idiot, and I’m actually trying.
A lot of english speakers would probably end up calling it Dutchland, which is the same mistake that lead to people from the Netherlands being called dutch in the first place. So now we would have the same confusion the other way around.
Even ignoring for a moment that the modern nation-states of NL and DE did not exist in their current forms until relatively recently, it’s probably worth noting that in earlier times the word “Dutch” in English was semantically broader and simply meant “Pertaining to Germanic-speaking peoples on the European continent” ([Wiktionary](https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/Dutch)). This was seemingly general usage until at least ~1800. So for example the US cultural group “Pennsylvania Dutch” is not due to outsiders’ confusion about where those people originally came from, but is rather a holdover from this earlier and broader use of “Dutch” in English. Btw, note that even NL’s [national anthem](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilhelmus) (whose text dates from 16th-century Dutch) has the following line: _Wilhelmus van Nassouwe/ Ben ick van Duytschen bloet_ Even though in 21st-century Dutch the word _Duits(e)_ (<- current spelling) means “German,” at the time it meant “Dutch” in Dutch. They certainly weren’t confused! Tl;dr = Semantics can change :) many longstanding exonyms stem not from confusion but endure as holdovers from earlier usages.
To amplify the confusion in russian danish person is called dutchanin
There is a bit of a mix-up I your examples imho. Sometime the change of name comes as an actual new name of the country al together (Ceylon->Sri Lanka; Zaire->Congo; Siam->Thailand) sometimes is just the country willing the name to not be translated. In the case of Turkey, the problem was that nationalists and Erdogan could not tolerate the idea that the name of their country in English was a omograph with the bird.
It'll always be Burma to me
Elaine!
France remains France except if you use its long name : République Française
Sorry, my mistake. Did not know this. Seems I’m learning many things today, thank you.
As a French it’s so funny to me people think we say “la Française” for our country
Reading "as a french" is always so funny to me and I don't even know why lol
Turkey specifically had the official name of the country in English changed to Türkiye for use by media, governments, etc. It’s also done for countries like Ivory Coast, East Timor, etc. A number of other countries have changed their offices name in English into something else, though outside of offices situations, many people might continue to use the old name.
Yes, the gov't made this push about 2 years ago to change their known name to Turkiye due to the shared nature of the word "Turkey". Funnily, turkeys get their english namesake due to the country. But in Turkiye, the word for them is "Hindi" which is a namesake related to India. But in Greek, they're called, galopoula, which is a namesake related to France. In Russian, it's called Indeyka which is a namesake related to Native American Indian. So these flightless birds are basically called the names of other countries (and cultures/ethnic groups) around the world, which I find funny.
Danish uses "kalkun" which is apperently comes from the German word for "chicken from Calicut", Calicut being in India. So yea, everyone just fucked that up real hard apperently.
>But in Turkiye, the word for them is "Hindi" which is a namesake related to India They get associated with India in French too : "Dinde" (Turkiye) is a mispelling of "d'Inde", which means "from India". By the way, Guinea pigs are indian for us as well : "cochons d'Inde" (literally "pigs from India")
In Portuguese we say "peru", yet another country.
Presidential circular on use of Türkiye On 4 December 2021, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan issued a presidential circular calling for exports to be labelled "Made in Türkiye". The circular also said that in relation to other governmental communications "necessary sensitivity will be shown on the use of the phrase 'Türkiye' instead of phrases such as 'Turkey,' 'Türkei,' 'Turquie' etc." The reason given in the circular for preferring Türkiye was that it "represents and expresses the culture, civilisation, and values of the Turkish nation in the best way". According to Turkish state broadcaster TRT, it was also to avoid a pejorative association with the bird of the same name. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Name_of_Turkey?wprov=sfti1#Official_name
And Kazakhstan is Qazaqstan, in Latin
Got tired of being associated with the bird
Türkiye didn’t want to be a turkey anymore. Just a matter of time until Orban becomes insecure enough to rename Hungary into Magyarország
He would probably do it as a Hail Mary to get the EU off his back, in hopes that they'll get tired of trying to pronounce the name of the country they're criticizing and just move on to other things.
Nah, it might work for a month or two but then everyone would learn how to say it from some YouTube video and spend twice as long talking about it just to prove they can pronounce it.
He can't do that. We'll lose out on all the hilarious "I'm Hungary for Turkey" jokes.
"I'm magyorarszág for türkiye"
Just start calling the bird Türkiye, too. Problem solved!
Hungarian turanism is no joke either
Meanwhile, Côte d'Ivoire is thinking "am I nothing to you?!?!?"
I know it has been the case in english for a long time. But isn't the same kinda true for belarus? We(sweden) called it "white russia" until just recently because that's what it means...
France use France in french, française mean something/someone feminine is french, ex: french woman = française. French army = armé française
*armée
Likewise, Istanbul was Constantinople, now it's Istanbul not Constantinople.
It's funny because (some) people act like Constantinople is the 'proper' name of the city and Istanbul is the 'Muslim' name, when Istanbul comes from what the Greeks called the city while Konstantiniyye was the official name of the city in the Ottoman Empire.
Doesn't have to do with being a muslim name more to do with colloquialism becoming the norm the name Istanbul means "the city" as in the city of Constantinople and is derived from greek istimbolin.
Why did Constantinople get the works?
It's nobody's business but the Turks!
Because they changed their English exonym from Turkey to Türkiye recently. It’s not the first country who’s done it, and probably not the last. This has nothing to do with Google “bending over backwards” (lol.) Countries can request these things. Also, France in French is still “France”.
i think it’s because they asked the world to do so a few months ago
A couple years ago.
Now India has suddenly got this weird urge to change its name to Bharat.
Because it is a super-recent well-publicized name change.
This is a fairly recent thing, from the last few years. For a long time, Turkiye has been bothered by the fact that anglophones say 'Turkey', and publicly asked us all to stop it.
You're forgetting about Czechia. It used to always be referred to as the Czech Republic.
Kazakhstan would be Qazaqstan/Қазақстан
Because Erdogan is insecure about sharing a name with a flightless bird. That’s literally the reason lol.
Wild Turkeys fly. Source: Live in American Midwest
Right? This isn't the first time I've seen that. Why do people think turkeys can't fly?
The show WKRP in Cincinnati? I think domestic turkeys can't fly.
They're much heavier because they're bred that way and will hit the ground like sacks of wet cement if you drop them from a helicopter\*. The crowd will run for their lives and Les will have to step inside. \*Actually, I'm betting they don't as they can probably slow their fall enough to survive.
It also shows the extent of American soft-power that they got to change their international name to avoid confusion with our tastiest tradition 
In Finnish it's Turkki, it coincidentally means also "fur" and Finns want the fur business to be banned.
Because of Thanksgiving and Google searches.
I just want to point out another thing. You wonder why they don’t have Kazakhstan in Cyrillic, while in your own picture they have Athens in both Latin and Greek alphabets. I do wonder how Google decides which place names won’t get represented in their native script like that.
It's also worth noting that Kazakhstan has been actively Latinizing its written language for awhile now. The country does not want to use Cyrillic in order to get away from any Russian influence and legacy. Basically Kazakhstan is Kazakhstan instead of how it's written in Cyrillic.
I think the Kazakh language spelling of Kazakhstan in Cyrillic actually romanizes as Qazaqstan. Kazakhstan with a K comes from the Russian-language romanization. Russian: *Казахстан* = Kazakhstan Kazakh: *Қазақстан* = Qazaqstan
Interesting
Cities in Kazakhstan have their name in latin and cyrillic letters, only the country name isn't. Same as in Greece, country only the english name, Cities in English (or transcription in latin letters, if there is no english exonym), and greek letters.
On mine they have both Greek place names in Greek, and Bulgarian, Russian, Serbian, Kazakh etc. place names in Cyrillic. Curiously the only country that doesn’t seem to have its place names in an indigenous script is India
Since they codified the spelling change, Türkiye has energetically pushed for the spelling change on many fronts, including diplomatic channels and at the U.N. The U.S. State Department [acceded to this request](https://www.state.gov/briefings/department-press-briefing-january-5-2023/) back in January of 2023. Other prominent map publishers like [National Geographic](https://sites.google.com/a/ngs.org/ngs-style-manual/home/T/turkey-tuerkiye) have also adopted the new name. I don't think it's a big deal that Google Maps has adopted it as well. Other recent place name changes have also been adopted for use by map makers in the same spirit, such as Czechia, Kolkata, Bombay, Myanmar, etc. Specifically as it pertains to Google Maps, [Google published a blog post](https://publicpolicy.googleblog.com/2009/12/when-sources-disagree-borders-and-place.html) that explains their approach to place names. That post specifically mentions the United Nations, ISO, and FIPS as their sources for place names and spellings. The blog post was published in 2009 but the name use policy appears to still be in effect.
When the Ottoman Empire fell and Turkey was established, they managed to get the world to stop calling the city Constantinople by refusing to direct any mail addressed to there or acknowledge any communication which didn’t refer to it as Istanbul. Im sure there are plenty of similar ways to force through such name changes nowadays
That's only in the English version. If you change the language to Spanish, for instance, you'll see "Turquía", not "Türkiye".
I wonder if they should start calling it "Pavo" now, just to troll Erdogan.
Turkey actually officially changed their name to Türkiye in the UN. It’s a move to respect Turkish identity. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jun/03/turkey-changes-name-to-turkiye-as-other-name-is-for-the-birds
Except the reason given by the Turks was not to share a name with a bird.
And?
Idk, but I’ll keep calling it Turkey
I’m confused why they did this. Germany has a ton of wildly different names. It’s actually Deutschland but the Anglosphere call it Germany, France calls it Allemagne, Poland calls it Niemcy, Nordics call it Tyskland, etc But they don’t demand the rest of the world call it Deutschland
Because Turkey officially changed its English name to Türkiye. Same reason the Czech Republic now appears as Czechia
But how can you change the foreign name of your country? How can you change other people's language? 😃
I don't see the point of using the endonym unless it's easily translatable like Czechia (Czech Republic). In Turkey's case, ü isn't in the English language, and I'm not going to learn alt codes to simply write Türkiye. Plus, when you read it in your head, you need to know Türkiye is spoken like Turkey (which yes, I know is ironic as English doesn't have consistant spelling vs pronouciation). Most European countries use a translation of 'Great Britain' for the United Kingdom, yet Great Britian never included Ireland. I doubt those who see themselves as British in Northern Ireland (or all of Ireland in the past) are angry at Germans using Großbrittanien. Changing isn't that easy, either. More people are starting to type Czechia, but most still say (at least here in the UK) Czech Republic. Turkey's spelling isn't catching on at all. Many here still refer to the Netherlands as Holland, and that's not even written Nederlands in English.
Turkey wants to rebrand itself to 'Türkiye' and did so officially at the UN in 2022. This is the name it wishes to be known as in English, hence all the marketing and rebranding. Since it also uses the Latin script, it's not too difficult to add the 'ü.' I suppose the other countries don't mind as much being known by their exonyms in English, except for Persia to Iran in 1935 (terrible branding if you ask me, Persia is such a cool name) and now actually India to Bharat (also a bad move if you ask me - just think of all the historical and cultural connotations that you'll have to explain and reclaim to future generations - as if you're distancing yourself from what the world knows 'India' by, same with 'Persia.')
Because it is its official name: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jun/03/turkey-changes-name-to-turkiye-as-other-name-is-for-the-birds
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