Should We Stop Using Exonyms?
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So... do you think we should stop using exonyms?
Of course not. They don't hurt anyone.
Only if the country asks.
@Random User 5443 Greece Asked Rn
@@FlashThanim not seeing any news about it.
Unrelated the US has a ship named Helena which is nearly identical to the official greek name
You cannot say our endonym friendly; DaeHanMinGuk(S) or Choson Minjujui Inmin Gonghwaguk(N)
Will still need to transliterate. We can't type endonyms that use different writing sytems at the same time.
Not just type. Often, you won't even be able to pronunce it correctly because you don't know the phonemes.
@@Llortnerof
Especially if you don’t know the writing system. For example, I’d only be able to read names using a variant of either the Latin or the Cyrillic alphabet.
Looking at YOU Turkey. The ü isn't used in English, so you can't tell us, "um yes we'd like to be called Türkiye," and expect us to know what that means.
It is enough to see the accents etc. in some names. When you extent this on cities, no one speaks about München and Köln aside from people german speaking. They speak of Munich and Cologne.
@@Quintarus1794 It has become the official name
Fun fact about Polish name for Germany. "Niemcy" etymologically comes from pre-Slavic word meaning "unable to speak/communicate". Ancient Slavs found German speech ununderstandable, gibberish and just decided "Yeap, those guys can't speak" and this just stuck around
Same with the Māori name of France (Wīwī), used because French sailors couldn't understand the language and answered to every thing the natives said with "oui, oui".
Is ununderstandable a real word? Cool if it is
@@DrFerno727 Based Māori!
That's also how the Greek invented the word "barbarian" - those were people who only said "br br br".
So basically the Slavs call us Germans barbarians xD
There's a lot of that going around. The names for Welsh and Wallachians comes from a Germanic root meaning "strangers". And a lot of the commonly-used tribal Indian names in America were nicknames (often unflattering) given them by *other* tribes. A la... "Hey who are those guys who live across the river?" "Jerks, that's who they are!"
Name Explain butchering a bunch of endonyms in this video makes a great argument for exonyms.
Subtext: his butchering is an argument for exonyms. Enough said.
He butchered a lot of the exonyms too
@@RadenWA fr, what the hell is "pelu"
I wonder if part of the motivation behind them officially changing Turkey to Türkiye was that in English the word "turkey" is often more associated with a large bird that has nothing to do with the nation it is named after.
I think that's more Erdogan trying to use nationalism to make people overlook his other issues.
I don't think using exonym for a word that is technically just phonetic writing of the endonym is really justified anyway.
I mean, context is a thing that exists, surely it's not too hard to understand the context the word "Turkey" is being used.
By that logic Peru also would have to change it's name, since peru is portuguese for turkey.
@@legeul And what is Portuguese for Peru?
@@reddwarfer999Peru. Turkey is Turquia. The bird, turkey, is also peru.
@@reddwarfer999 It's Peru.
In short, as long as an exonym is not deliberately derogatory or offensive then it should be kept. Languages are different for a reason and this should be appreciated. It is like asking to erase John, Juan, Ian... And replace them all with "Yohannan"!
Exactly. Poles have a reason for calling Germany something like "the mute ones", it would be senseless for them to call Germans "Deutsch" when that literally meant "the people". Countries have historic reasons for calling their neighbours what they call them - reasons just as important as the endonym.
Maybe your neighbours are Brutish and constantly attack you. Maybe you call them "Twatians". Maybe you therefore name them after that fact. It would be bizarre if 2000 years later they politely ask you "please call us this word you've never used and actually means "super kind awesome people" in our language but means nothing in yours".
No, just, use your exonym. Don't let other people decide what you should and shouldn't call other countries, it's cultural oppression.
@@calum5975 But it would be senseful for them to call Germans "Dzieci" what means "children".
@@calum5975 Also, In Poland, when Polish are using words with German endonym in casual conversation, its usually derrogative and most likely alluding to stuff from WW2.
The unfortunate thing is that English already uses Deutsch, just for the wrong people, kind of.
@@vladprus4019
Basically all regional terms for Eastern European peoples in Austrian German are outright slurs, usually going back to anti-immigration sentiment from either 1850-1900 or 1960-1990. Wouldn't be pretty to use those instead of the native/latinized terms.
I'd rather hear people saying the exonym, rather than completely butchering the endonym
I've heard some CZcamsrs mess up the names of my country's neighbours, Lesotho and Eswatini. I couldn't imagine how they would attempt uMzantsi Afrika.
@@Ryan-ho4hf It was fairly recently by comparison when Eswatini was still known as Swaziland.
I say "Peking" because I can never get tones right in Mandarin. I learned the tones for Cantonese, which is where we got "Peking" from anyway. And it's an unaspirated P, as n French, not voiced like B.
@@kenaikuskokwim9694 Most attempts just leave me rolling my eyes, but I buy 'em. I thought "Bombay" was a pronunciation of the Portuguese "bom bahía" (beautiful bay), but I could be wrong. Still, what's the likelihood that "Mumbai" is the original name -- it sure sounds like the Portuguese. Another one I don't know how to handle is the Peking mentioned above. In recent years, people say "Beijing duck". Okay, I'll give that one a pass too -- but what about my Pekingese dog? Is that to become Beijingese as well?
Most people saying "Beijjing"
Pronounceability is a big factor. I have no idea how to pronounce a lot of endonyms. It would be a bigger problem if the language is tonal.
I note as far as the -land suffix goes, England in French is Angleterre, so it's just a translation.
I think funny that in Portuguese, England is the only country that has a translated suffix. It becames Inglaterra. But other countries like Thailand, simply are Tailândia, with 2 suffix of place (land + ia) so Thailand in Portuguese is basically "land of land of Thai"
@@yaagodourado Probably because the exonym is ancient, in time where everything is writed in latin and translated in another country from latin.
Even just completely ASCII-compatible names like "Hrvatska".
You very much do it even now. For example, you take the spelling, not pronunciation, for French, Yugoslavian words.
@@matt92hun Is the H a ch sound as in "loch"? I ask because 'cravat' as in necktie gets its name from Hrvatska (possibly spelt different at the time).
bro that is the least accurate Peru pronunciation I have ever heard
I have no idea why he's using an L.
This guy has a track record of being bad at pronouncing foreign names lol
@@lihnsshouldnt make videos about geography then.
Yeah. His bad pronunciation is an argument FOR exonyms. Just say it in English if you're speaking English.
@@lihns Yeah, bro really said "doyshlahnde"
Exactly Switzerland has 4 Endonyms, which one should you use?
The Latin one, Helvetica. Or the full CH.
@@Alias_Anybody But is that an endonym, i think not because its Latin
@@Alias_Anybody Not an endonym, Latin colonialism.
@@sarban1653
The Romans were long gone when Switzerland was founded. They picked that one themselves.
@@Alias_Anybody Internalized colonialism.
I personally think that as long as we have different words for "mountain" or "man" there is no problem with calling countries by whatever exonym your language has for them.
Today we're dealing with issues of sometimes-cruel colonial legacies and how to live that down. We can strive to jettison old attitudes without dumping dignity altogether. However it got that way, and sometimes the sausage was very unappetizing to make, English in particular is become close to a universal language and its native speakers belong to countries with great geopolitical clout. We can but hope and pray God that we would use this clout wisely and considerately to good ends.
@SeekingTheLoveThatGodMeans7648 all those people crying about colonial names are just doing nationalist political stunts. The name India or at least variations of it, is much older than the British empire. It was just the generic name given to that part of the word by the West (and by West I mean mostly anywhere west of india). In arabic it's "Hind". Turkey's case is the stupidest thing ever. It's just regional adaptations of the same word. It comes from latin Turk-ia. I highly doubt that Turkiye has a turkish origin, I'm pretty sure it's an exonym. Erdogan just wanter to do a political stunt and acted offended that the country is being called same as a bird. But that issue is only in english, and the reason is because the bird was called after the country (which has to do with ancient trade routes and nothing more). Now for Myanmar, I beleive they completely changed the name of the country, including in the local language.
@@SeekingTheLoveThatGodMeans7648
English has advantages in structure with usually two forms of a noun, a singular and a plural form, and modifiers that don’t have to agree.
However, standard English spelling is frozen in time but any attempt to make a non-phonetic language into a phonetic language just creates more confusion.
English is probably not a good example of a base language. I’m an Australian speaker of English and spelling can be hard for many native speakers.
So what happens next?
English is the language of the colonisers, which is how it became so widespread, and it has some technical advantages by limiting the need for internal agreement. So could an English version of each endonym work as a Lingua Franca exonym, so that they are all based in the same foreign language, English?
For example: India > Barath. Would English use the letter H or drop it? I’m not sure of the correct pronunciation, but if it is not pronounced with English ‘TH’ but is ‘T’ or ‘D’ or ‘Dh’, would it be better to represent the sound instead of the character spelling?
@@tonymouannes Two places in Australia adopted dual names with locals preferring to use the endonym: Uluru/Ayers Rock and K'gari/Fraser Island.
@JamesDavy2009 endonyms are usually the name used by the locals shen using their local language. I don't see what's special about those Australian towns.
I don't think considering "Turkey" or "Tyskland" true exonyms is fair, because they stem from the same etyomological root as their endonym, they are just adapted for a diffrent language.
1:31 it is pronounced almost exactly like the English pronunciation. Your Spanish pronunciation put the stress on the e when it should be on the U
Last I looked, the acute in Spanish indicated stress.
@@JamesDavy2009 right, the stress is supposed to be on the vowel it is placed on. He moved it away from it
how is he actually so bad at pronouncing names when he’s a channel called name explain. it’s embarrassing
@@matthewluck9077I think he doesn’t look up the pronunciation of words before using them, it seems quite lazy. It’s kind of disrespectful since it seems he isn’t even making an effort to get the correct pronunciations
@@tomsmithok I agree. And if he doesn't know the pronunciation and doesn't want to look for it, then he shouldn't even try to pronounce the country in the native language
I am from Polska. Now I am in Sverige. I traveled through Deutschland and Danmark. My neighbor is from Shqipëri. I love Suomi/Finland. My cousin works in België/Belgique. My other cousin works in Norge/Noreg. My other cousin is on vacation in Suid-Afrika/South Africa/uMzantsi Afrika. My sister, who is a great traveler, has been to Sakartvelo and Hayastan.
And now I don't have any Idea what the last ones are. Why not just use the words a language already has agreed upon, so people who haven't got a PhD in Toponomy or Geography also get to know what you are taliking about. I only know the Albanian one because I was researching if they speak an indogermanic language
@@propagandalf123 sakartvelo is georgia, hayastan is armenia
South African here. We usually shorten "uMzantsi Afrika" to just "Mzansi"
Great point!
HAYASTAN MENTIONED 🗣️🔥🔥🙏🙏
More unsolicited Finnish info: some countries and capitals are homonyms of everyday words, such as
Peru - delete or abort
Lima - phlegm or slime
Malta - hold your horses
Val(l)tta - lying
Ankara - severe
Turkki (Turkey) - fur coat
Puola (Poland) - spool
Varsova (Warsaw) - giving birth to a foal
Norja (Norway) - limber
Lima is also Indonesian for 5.
In Czech as well:
Peru - I wash [clothes]/I fight
Malta - mortar (for connecting bricks)
Otava (~Ottawa) - second haymaking
TORILLA TAVATAAN
Varsova (Warsaw) - giving birth to a foal
And people say German has hyperspecific words...
Thinking about it, there actually is a word like that, "kalben", giving birth to a calf. I guess the one for foals just isn't as common.
@@JamesDavy2009austronesian languages has "lima" or its derivatives as 5, like rima, limo, etc.
Just curious... does "Saksa" relate to the "Saxons", the Germanic people who settled in England?
Yes and they´re now in the East of Germany, so Finnish people call us Saksa.
It does but not (directly) to those in England but those who inhabited most of Northern Germany and traded and crusaded in the Baltics, interacting with the Finnic people. They are still called "saksit" in Finnish and the state of Saxony is "Saksi" (compared to "saksalaiset" and "Saksa" which is likely just a dialectal alteration).
We can't stop using exonyms. Not those like "Italia" in Italian and "Italy" in English. Even if we try, we will pronounce the names wrong if we don't speak the language properly. For example: In the video, "Deutschland" is not pronounced the way German would pronounce it. So technically it is still an exonym.
Mispronouncing a name accidentaly is not an exonym. Also people learn when they are taught.
Before in Finland we used to localice names of leaders of the world. For example we would call and write "Charles" "Kaarle" the prononciation was entiry different made for Finnish mouths.
Now that people are educated better, we have started to peoples real names and their real prononciations. Charles is Charles and München is München.
The question is should we abaddon exonyms? Sometimes yes and sometime not. For example in Finland we call Belarus "White Russia". This should be changed closer to the original name. Then England is Englanti, so basically same, we just replace the "d" so it is easier to use in our sentences. In Finnish we don't end words on "d"s. These kind of exonyms should not be changed.
@@Ostvalt We still do that with Popes-- he's "Francis" in English, "Franziskus", "Franciszek", and "Francesco" in the tongues of his immediate predecessors, "Francisco" in his birthplace, and "Franciscus" in his new home. We do this with saints as well. The Kings of both Spain and the UK are "Carlos" in Spanish publications, and Elizabeth II was "Isabella". I think they still refer to "Carlos Marx".
I think if a country formally requests other countries to change an exonym which is nothing like the original, the other countries should be allowed to create a new version of the endonym which conforms to the language rules / pronunciation. For this reason, I personally don't like Turkey being changed to Türkiye in English, because it just doesn't really fit and uses characters English doesn't really use.
Also, not everyone wants other countries to use endonyms. As a Dane, I really dislike hearing Danish words (even pronounced correctly, which most likely won't happen,) in other languages, because it just doesn't fit in. I would hate to hear people say "I just went to København this Summer" as opposed to "I just went to Copenhagen this Summer" for this reason, and should our government formally request other countries to call our capital København, I'll continue to call it "Copenhagen" in English.
As a Pole, same. I'd hate it if everyone suddenly started calling Poland 'Polska' in English. It would feel very nonsensical and out-of-place.
@@DogDogGodFog I feel that the idea of "getting rid of exonyms" is entirely misplaced. If a country wants to change its name or make exonyms align with the original as much as possible while still fitting the target language, I'm for it, but just saying it's disrespectful to use exonyms on behalf of others seems more disrespectful to me.
The Turkey/Türkiye/Turkiye thing is only changed to distinguish it from the bird turkey, so i guess thats reasonable since the pronounciation doesnt change and Turkiye is a valid change of spelling because it just adds 2 letters
@@ycasto1063 Perhaps Turkey/Turkiye did this because the word "turkey" had gained a pejorative sense in the English language as something awkward or ungainly, not just its previous sense as the game bird or farmed poultry. This is just a surmise on my part. Anyhow Turkey/Turkiye has its own bugs and distinguished features, as every land in the world does.
Perhaps the worst case of this is Ivory Coast, who insist on being called Côte d'Ivoire. I don't know a single language except for french that could possibly try to pronounce it without it being a complete slaughter of the name. Even french from France wouldn't pronounce it like the Ivorians do in their dialect, which also is a form of their colonizers' language, so which one is "correct"?
It bugs me when Ivory Coast insists that its name be in French, even though it's made up from easily translated nouns.
I agree, but it caused postal problems. "Ivory" and "Coast" come out very different in various languages-- Elfenbeinküste in German, Bereg Slonovoy Kost' in Russian. Where Kost' means "bone", not " coast".
East Timor and White Russia-- i.e., Belarus-- have the same problem.
@@kenaikuskokwim9694exactly. people only complain about ivory coast, meanwhile:
belarus = white rusia
ukraine = the border
montenegro = black mountain
venezuela = little venice
etc.
It's because Ivory Coast has historically been called Ivory Coast. I still call it that. Any other name is gibberish in English. Besides some government somewhere has no right to impose speech--bad precedent.
And quite amusingly they insist on using a colonial language and name instead of anything local, opposed to their neighbours Burkina Faso.
In Irish , the name changes depending on the context/ Grammer of sentence which wouldn't work in all languages
That's a very valid point in many languages. I don't know how drastically things change in Gaeilge (I've tried learning a bit but I found it's more complex than I can learn on my own), but it it's something simple like a prefix/suffix change, that could be part of a compromise: you could use the closest approximation of the endonym as rendered in your language as the base name and then adapt it to fit the grammar cases as needed.
man, slavic languages mess up all the names like that too ugg
An Fhrance, An tSvergie, An Dheutchland, An... 中h国...!?!
I discovered that my grandfather and the Arabs in general before 1910 used to call foreign countries names different from the current names. For example, today we call Germany by the name that is used today is almaniya, but my grandfather used to call it (duitesheh:دُوِيْطِشَه), and France today is called farnsa, but the Arabs in the past were They call it (Franjieh:بلاد إفرنجه) and Spain today is called isbania, but in the past it was called (keshtalah:قشتالية)and so on, the old people still use these old names, But modern generations use modern names For countries.
Isn't this just different Arabic dialects though? (Leave the Spain example aside - that is probably from the Islamic-Ladino dialect)
@@user-jd5zt4of8qthat's not from ladino, it's just historic, referring to the kingdom of Castille, or Castela in Spanish, which was the biggest one of the Christians kingdoms in Iberia, and conquered most of the remannents of the Arabic speaking Al-Andalus.
The same is for France as Faranji used to refer to the Francs, specifically those in the crusades
There are a few cities that get foreign names. Praha used to be Prag in Norwegian, like it's still Prague in English. These things often just change over time. When the name is perfectly pronouncable, it feels a bit odd and archaic to use such old names.
@@Mnnvint it's the famous saying, don't fix what is broken, also it was the Czech langauge that changed, the Name was Always Praga, but in Czech they lost the G sound in most words that then was transformed into H. So Praga -> Praha
Transliteration from another alphabet necessarily takes you another step away from the endonym.
6:39 Japanese doesn't lack an "l-like sound"; it doesn't distinguish between /l/ and /ɹ/. If you ask a japanese to pronounce "l" they would just pronounce it as something between /l/ and /ɹ/.
I'm glad someone said this, I was thinking it as well.
I'm Croatian, and I don't expect anyone to pronounce "Hrvatska" if they don't need to. Even from a native perspective, the name is a bit...weird.
The problem with only using Endonyms is that several countries (DRC, Mali, South Africa, etc.) have multiple languages that all have loads of speakers, and it’d be difficult to choose which to use the endonym from.
The one with the most speakers
We would also have this problem in Switzerland, so the only fair option in my opinion is all names from all native languages are considered endonyms.
@@FlopFan69 That isn’t always easy to do. Take South Africa. If you go by native speakers the most spoken language is Zulu, but that’s still only 25% of the population. The name is essentially the same in every language, only translated for grammar (eg Suid Afrika in Afrikaans and iNingizumu Afrika in Zulu). Having no official endonym helps not show favouritism between languages.
@@dionemoolman Yeah this is the other problem - it's sometimes blurry what is a proper name and what is a word.
I think we shouldn't stop using them, the act of abolishing them and using endonyms instead feels like a political move itself, trying to regulate how words should be in other languages. And I personally think it's nice to discover how your nation is called in another language, especially if it's something that differs from the endonym a lot. Plus since we live in the age where we could easily translate anything, why not include place names in that too? What actual benefit would there be if everyone called Finland as Suomi in their respective language? Should we also apply that to various regions, cities, rivers and so on?
With pronunciation issues and lack of knowledge of proper spelling, you'd end up with new exonyms shortly anyway.
Rises the question, what do we call a river if it goes to several countries?
Burma is an alternative derivative of both mranma and brahma desha. The adjective Burmese is still used. The leader of Myanmar has stated that both are correct, and Myanmar is just a recent stylistic prefence. The names derive from Sanskrit and are far, far older than English.
It's a popular idea that the older form of the country's name - Mranma - comes from Sanskrit "Brahma desha" but it's more likely not. But yes, either Burma or Myanmar can be used, it just depends on register. Myanmar - mjəmà - is more literary and "upper" then Burma - bəmà.
@@hughanquetil2567 Why is it more likely not?
@@sarban1653it just doesnt make sense.
@@rizkyadiyanto7922 Why not?
If the rule is ALWAYS endonyms, then we must spell Sumer in cuneiform and Khnum (Egypt) in Hieroglyphics, Hellas in Greek letters and Rossia in Cyrilic
It doesn't apply to different scripts.
@@sarban1653 turks dont think so
@@bsod111 Turkish uses the Latin script, just a different variation. Same script though.
A general solution is always bad, instead each country decides by itself
A current dispute in the US is just what to call various Native American groups. Do you use the English version of what their neighbors called them, as with Sioux. Or Dakota, which is closer to what they call themselves? Of course, neither is quite right. It gets worse in Canada, with some groups coming up with names using transliteration schemes that are unpronounceable in both English and French.
Sioux in particular originated from a slur so maybe not that one.
"Sioux" looks very much like a French word.
@@ob_dowboosh As I understand it, Sioux is a French transliteration of an Ashinabe word for their neighbors (and enemies), meaning something like “the rattlesnakes”.
There's a people called Dogrib, which is a translation of the endonym. In Russian it's called Догриб, which is a transliteration of the translation, and so wrong. Either call them Собакоребреци or Псоребреци, or say Тлѧчѫ. And never mind that Russians don't yus those letters anymore!
JJ McCullough has a good video about that one.
One big point of exonyms that you have not mentioned is that the “original” name may change overtime due to political issues. E.g. former Belgisch Congo was changed to Zaire and then some decades latter back to Congo. Egypt is the English erosion of a name originating from Ancient Greece and Roman times way back in time before Arabic speakers settled there. Sometimes a country even may have benefits from a well established exonym, e.g. Made in Germany is globally accepted as something valuable, Hergestellt in Deutschland would sound rather strange in the Non-German speaking markets.
Like the whole Kiev/Kyiv thing exists because while Ukrainian pronunciation changed over time, Russian retained the name Ukrainians used to call it back in the day.
Cambodia used to be called Kampuchea.
I find it interesting so that even though "Germany" was not a cohesive unit in the past and all of the surrounding peoples were interacting with different Germanic tribes, everyone was able to recognize the Germanic peoples of that region as a distinct enough entity that they needed to create their own word to describe those peoples as a unit.
We also similarly had/have words to collectively refer to Slavs as a whole. In Old German, they were called Wends. And in Old English, the were called Winds.
I can see a few possibilities:
1. We rewrite exonyms to be as close to the endonym as possible.
2. We keep the status quo, but require that both endonyms and exonyms be taught in classrooms.
3. We let diplomacy do its thing, and we use either the UN or create a new treaty organization to standardize the names of countries in a legally binding resolution.
We should just use the ISO 3-letter or 2-letter codes as they are universal no matter the language.
Who is the globalised "we" that you are referring to? It's crazy that any move towards a unified globalism would marginalise, suppress, and obfuscate various ethnic characteristics as already exercised by ethnic minorities-shouldn't these individual rights be upheld instead of slating them to be paved over by the royal "we" of globalism? I'd just say leave it all alone and let people stay free to exercise their own decisions within their own particular ethnic culture: which is to say, leave everyone to continue with free speech.
@@harrisonofthenorth please refer to my 2nd proposal. Just teach children the exonyms and endonyms in their geography classes. Just print the endonym on the map next to the exonym. Not that difficult.
4. Stop trying to "fix" something that isn't a real problem and would just make things worse. You won't pronunce most endonyms correctly anyway to the point where you're effectively still using an exonym.
@@Llortnerof
I agree. Languages do "evolve". So, when a certain name is used often by the speakers, if exonym or endonym, it will be used. Pressing thing into a language is seen very poorly by me at the time.
Let's be honest, Türkîyé (or however tf it's spelt) still hasn't caught on
The Czech Republic going to Czechia still hasn't caught on and that's an older change than the Turkiye change. Most things are alow to catch on, unless it's a stupid tiktok trend
Anything that's difficult to pronounce will be slow. I still say Ivory Coast and East Timor because I've zero clue how to pronounce Côte d'Ivoire or Timor-Leste.
It's spelled like in German Türkei. T, the I from girl, rk, I.
@@saisamsuri Portuguese has no recognized standard for pronunciation. Timor may be pronounced like Timor or like Timur, and Leste like Lesht, Leshte (schwa), Leshti or even Leshtchi. In Germany we say Osttimor (=East Timor). French pronunciation has a standard.
hopefully, it never does
I love how the english/german pronunciation of Peru is more accurate than the supposed peruvian pronunciation
Are exonyms causing a problem? As countries change their official names, it is sensible to change the names for formal matters, but below this does it really matter? To carry it through all the way, we would have to write, say, Bhaarat as भारत. How many alphabets are we all going to have to learn?
Probably a lot as that's not how the country's name is spelled in the Gujarati alphabet or in the Punjabi alphabet (actually, Punjabi has two scripts, the Arabic-based Shahmukhi script and a Sikh-derived script, Gurmukhi) or in Bengali. And, not even all languages native to India use "Bharat": In Tamil, the country is "Intiya" (and Tamil has its own script as well). There are, after all, 22 languages recognized in India as official using 12 different scripts.
We could all switch to a phonetic script together, now that would actually make sense.
@@josephwest124 And Intiya is either the root or a cognate of "India", so you could say that the exonym is just a pronunciation adaptation for ease of use of a valid endonym.
We also have "हिंदुस्तान" (Hindustan) as an endonym for India. And भारत ("Bharat"; even though the second a in "Bharat" is heavily misleading when it comes to pronunciation, but whatever), Hindustan, and India are names commonly used by us Indians (well, at least by us North Indians).
For some countries it is an issue. I imagine that over time more countries will ask we use their endonym as the word they want to be used.
A few countries have already done this - Turkiye, Cote D’Ivoire, Timor Leste, Cabo Verde for example. It is not that hard to use these names not the English.
If India wants to be referred to as Bharat, then that is something we can get used to. Schools will start using that and in 20 years it will be common place.
I think a halfway measure, whereby people used as many endonyms as possible. The ones that are reasonable within language groups. e.g. Italia, is easy for German (Italien) French (Italie) English (Italy). In Mandarin, Japan is ribenguo (land of the rising sun) and nippon/nihon mean origin of the sun. So you could argue that is the same name. If you say nihon in mandarin (it can easily be heard as nihong) it would mean "you are red" or "fat is overflowing" depending on the tone.
"fat is overflowing"
I see the issue: it would be easy to confuse it with USA.
@@rgbx6923 🤣🤣🤣 and "you are red" describes Brits in Ibiza
Plenty of exonyms are just older variants of endonyms. Or in case of Japan its because they insisted on writing the meaning of their name using chinese characters which was then read based on a certain chinese dialect from a region that regularly interacted with Japan. Many supposed Endonyms are refering just to parts of the country or single groups of people. Or in case of Myanmar it replaced the word the people actually used with the "correct" way that was mainly used in writing.
Closer to my home some cities have english names which conserve the names from before the native low saxon was replaced by high german and I must say, Brunswick is a better name than Braunschweig.
The only cases I support the switch is when for some reason only a formal name is used (Czech Republic instead of just Czechia) or if the name is based on a slur from a neighbor. And the city of Nissa should be named using the local dialect, hearing about the Nice attack was unnecessarily funny for what happened.
There are a few countries, such as Central African Republic, that need to be translated simply because they have very specific words in their names. But on the other hand, "Netherlands" is often translated to something like "low land" in other languages. I think there should be a mix of endonyms and exonyms, depending on the wants and needs of the people living in that place and the speakers of the various languages. Korean, for example, has no "F" sound, so Fiji becomes "Pi-Ji", and no "V", so Vietnam becomes "Beh-Teu-Nam".
Isn't Korea a perfect example of this as well, which should be called Hanggul?
@@user-jd5zt4of8qHangul is the name of the writing system. The actual country is called Daehan Minguk
@@KaitouKaiju LOL - a brain fart from me... Still my point stands though
Either they should be called Low Lands in English or Lower Saxony should be called Nether Saxony
@@DatAlien It's already got a second name: Holland.
I'm going to continue to refer to Burma as Burma, because screw military junta's.
3:32 it's curious how in some languages we have both "land" and "ia" suffix placed together in a lot of country names.
In Portuguese for example, Thailand is called Tailândia, that literally means "land of land of Thai" (yes, 2 times)
England became Inglaterra but Ireland became irlanda not irlaterra. This probaly beacause beacause english influence.
Also Scotland had it second dropped.
Don’t forget Portlandia!
"land" is not a suffix. It is the second root. And the suffix "-ia" doesn't necessary mean land. Mafia, magia, fantazia.
in indonesian:
polandia
irlandia
islandia (iceland)
skotlandia
Just get it over with, and use ISO 3166-1 codes. 🤣
No, we shouldn't. Maybe the major ones, but I don't think a name ending in -y or -ie causes much confusion. Names also need to adapt to the launguage's pronounciation. I can't imagine saying things like Magyarország all the time
If Hungary would change to Magyarorszag you would probably shorten it to Magyar or Magyaror
@@user-jd5zt4of8qMageezak? Magyaria? Magyarland? Magyarzach?
Language isn’t about what we “should” do. That’s prescriptivism.
Los humanos siempre pronuncian las cosas como les suenan, si de desgarran las vestiduras por eso, aunque se establezcan los endónimos se van a acaban modificando.........
I think the only realistic change is that if a country finds itself wanting a new name, they must go through the process of having it officially changed, like Burma > Myanmar. Then, with the new name, each language is responsible for either adopting the endonym or (in the case that it conflicts with pronunciation/spelling) come up with a suitable exonym for it. Ideally the exonym should be identifiable enough to the endonym in my opinion, so Germany/Deutschland wouldn't fit, instead turning into the perhaps unfortunately confusing "Dutchland".
Personally I disagree with Turkey changing to Türkiye in English. The umlaut Ü is not a feature of the English alphabet, so it is extremely out of place. It also doesn't feel necessary to maintain the spirit of the name. Turkiye or (perhaps easier for English speakers) Turkiya, I think would be appropriate exonyms.
What do you think about Ivory Coast officially having their English name being changed from Ivory Coast to Côte d'Ivoire?
@@sarban1653 Oh yeah that's kinda silly too. Not like it changes much either except being more difficult to understand and pronounce lol.
Mandatory Finn self insert: we have very distinctive names for our neighbours and historical friends/foes:
Sweden - Ruotsi
Estonia - Viro
Russia - Venäjä
Germany - Saksa
This. Who is a Russian or Swede to tell Finnish people to please use our local, native name.
Finland has very good reasons to call those countries what it calls them, reasons that go back in some cases millennia.
@@calum5975 russians and swedes just wont care at all, they dont have any inferiority complex about their country names. most of those who dont know already would react like "ah, cool, interesting, so that's how you call our country in your language" and this would be it
They are almost the same in estonian
Sweden:Rootsi
Russia:Venemaa
Germany:Saksamaa
Finland:Soome
Estonia:Eesti
i'm surprised he didn't even mention Crna Gora (Montenegro). he didn't even try to pronounce Hrvatska either
Where do you come from? Where is your accent from? It seems that you sometimes attach an "eh" at the end of some words, e. g. language-eh, has-eh, Deutschland-eh, them-eh, people-eh, accord-eh, world-eh, too-eh
I think that reflects his somewhat affected (and irritating) intonational practice with falling nuclear tones.
That thumbnail shows four exonyms for Germany. In Vietnam there is a fifth one: Hít Lẹ. It is derived from a famous Austrain chancelor whose name is still widely known.
The real name for Germany in Vietnamese is Đức. I researched to be clear that it's for real or just a joke
@@Sonilink713 To be precise, nước Đức means Germany. Đức alone just means German. But Hít Lẹ is also understood.
It's not just language issues, but even accent issues.
For example the host of Name Explain has an accent where he says "TH" as an "F", and usually appends "were" to the last word of a sentence. Listen to the last 2 words in this video at 13:16 he says "Fank You-were" (instead of "Thank yoo").
So the country of (say) "Lesotho" probably would be said "Leso-fo-were", so it's not just language barriers (such as with Japanese and "L" sounds) but accent barriers too to be able to say the endonym.
Lesotho isn't even pronounced using the dental fricative, the "H" is silent as if a New Yorker is saying it.
@@JamesDavy2009 ok I gave a bad example.
My point is still that accents might deviate from a globally agreed name, even if language difficulties like Japanese and "L" were worked around.
So how do you feel about "France" versus "France"? Let me IPA: "frɑːns" versus "frons"? It gets even trickier with East Asian languages that need inflection to denote meaning, a surprising amount sometimes. We're pretty keen on dropping "Peking", but how many people are too lazy to say "Beijing"? (Hint: There's no "sh" or "jh" sound in there - it's not a French word!)
But where do we draw the line? Can some words be deemed "too hard, impossible" because of the sounds they use?
What if some native speakers can't say "θ" - not a problem for Nederland or Thailand, or even Lesotho, but what about "Ethiopia" or "Athens" for that matter?
Lesotho is not pronounced with "θ", the "H" is silent.
@@JamesDavy2009 I think I already made that point. Re-read what I said.
I do believe it is better to keep exonyms, as a South African I agree with the last point, as we do not have a single Endonym, but multiple, and it would definitely not go over well trying to decide which one to use
I think hink we need to distinguish between translations and completely different names.
For example, Italia, Italy, Italien, etc. are obviously all based on the same word root. The different languages only adjusted the word to their own linguistics rules.
But Germany, Allemagne, Saksa, etc. are all completely different words. And neither one of them is the country's actual name.
I do think that any country has the right to expect others to use its proper name.
But I they should not attempt to enforce any one specific form of that name; especially because this specific form might be problematic for certain languages to pronounce or to write down.
Man I love this dude . Taught me more than those 13 years of school did .
To add on that discussion: In the indigenous language of central Cameroon, Éwondo, France is called Plési (with voiceless "s"). It is not an exonym. It is the French pronunciation of "France" transliterated into to the sound inventary of Éwondo. An "f" gets replaced by a "p", an "r" by an "l", the nasalized "an" becomes plain "é" and an additional "i" has been fumbled at the word´s end.
My personal take on this is to use exonyms but still try to use endonyms whenever I can.
As German wouldn’t judge people for not knowing the endonym for our country. But it’s always nice to hear people making the effort, atleast trying to say it correctly. I.g. I appreciate people trying to speak another language for better communication. So out of respect I try to remember endonyms whenever I can. And as a history and linguistics enthusiast I feel this is a win win. But that’s my take. You do you
The issue is also that Germany is such a historically relevant place that it makes entire sense for different people to call it different things, and who is modern Germany as a country to tell say, the English that "uhhm actually, we'd like to be called Deutschland now, even in English".
Firstly, Deutsch literally means something like "the people", which as you imagine is kinda meaningless for non Germans. Secondly, English already uses that word for the Dutch for our own historic reasons that matter to us.
Thirdly, "Germany" is a very old name for the country which arguably is just as valid as Deutschland and definitely more culturally and historically important for English speakers than "Deutschland" is. No one is getting confused over this either.
It just feels very very condescending and rude to believe your endonym is any more valid than another people's exonym in general, right? German history has impacted more people than just Germans.
This applies for like any exonym, Germany is just a fairly good example as it has so many exonyms
@@calum5975 you do you. I said I would never judge. Greetings from alemaña
I say split the difference:
Use endonyms whenever possible, and if a language has trouble saying it, use an exonym that's as close as possible.
If there's internal political turmoil, you'll just have to wait until there isn't I guess.
We used to translate personal names too. John, Johann, Juan, Jean etc. And then we stopped that. Why exactly I wonder?
An example of an exoym is the United States of America or as they call it: "THUH UNARDED SDAYDES ARV AMURICAH"
This is an epidemic on the news in the US and Canada. Latin American reporters who speak Spanish CONSTANTLY pronounce the names of Latin American countries with a Spanish accent: Guatemala, Honduras, Venezuela, but the NEVER say France with a French accent or Nihon in Japanese. If you're speaking English, use the English name of the country. If you're speaking Spanish, use the Spanish name. Don't use the Spanish name in English - otherwise you have to use the Russian name when referring to Moscow (Москва) or the German name when referring to Nuremberg (Nürnberg). Ugh.
ive never seen this (in the US).
@@sammymarrco2Watch NBC with Jose Diaz Ballard. He pronounces them in Spanish but pronounces Los Angeles in English.
@@passatboi How does he pronounce Texas?
@@sarban1653 It generally goes like this "Tonight, our reporter Luís Miguel Rodríguez (pronounced in Spanish, but that's okay since it's a person's name) is in Tegucigalpa, Honduras (pronounced in Spanish) with the governor of Texas (pronounced in English)." No one says "Tejas". But "Honduras" has an English pronunciation. Why not just use it, since you're speaking English? He never says "France" with a French accent or "Hamburg" with a German accent.
But all these Latin American names are Spanish (or hispanized forms of native American names) so it's only correct to pronounce them in Spanish. Honduras is literally a Spanish word meaning "Depths/Deeps". Would you try to pronounce Washington by French pronunciation rules if you were speaking French?
Many exonyms result from adaptations based on phonetics. When you hear a Swahili person say Kanada or a Belarusian say Канада, it sounds very much like a Canadian saying Canada. In many languages a C is never hard like a K, so if you change the spelling you will end up with a different pronunciation in different languages.
"Finland" is an endonym! - in Swedish. It's a minority language in Finland, but it's official.
Entered using Linux, which was started by a Finland-Swede.
Exonyms are a *compliment*! Every two-bit village is called by its native name as no one ever bothered to come up with an alternative.
Whereas *important* places need a convenient name in every language.
This is an incredibly uninformed take. Places with exonyms are not always neutral or positive in vibe. Just look at Japan's name history: it's original name that was given by China was more or less directly insulting the inhabitants. In a world filled with bloody history, a lot of people named places in various ways that designated them as "the enemy" or used some derogatory word used to belittle them, or have an offensive origin through ignorance
Very few exonyms are insulting, and those that are are often changed without issue-- Samoyed to Nenets, Eskimo to Inuit. The Slavic name for Germans is an insult, but the Germans don't deign to care. "Deutsch" itself is awfully close to "deutlich", or clear. So they insult everybody!
No.
I definitely used exonyms intentionally to be disrespectful before 😅
What about countries where the people speak more than one native language? For instance, should it be Wales or Cymru? Or Ireland or Éire? Or Scotland or Alba? Or Belgique, België, or Belgien? Do you want to start civil wars over the names of a country?
You covered this point, but it's relevant to many countries, some very close to home.
I think a more relevant consideration concerns exonyms for cities. For instance, the Italian exonym for München (Munich in English) is Monaco, which could be very confusing given the small country of that name.
Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch was shortened for obvious reasons.
@@JamesDavy2009
Actually, as I understand it, the name was originally shorter and was extended as a publicity stunt in the 19th century when the railway station opened.
@@jerry2357 Makes sense to me.
Well, seeing as 'Welsh' comes from a Germanic word which basically meant 'foreigner', I think Cymru would be preferable for the name of the country.
But do we also have to learn a new adjective for each country we refer to with an endonym (e.g. 'Cymreig')?
belgia isnt a real country/people.
I think keeping exonyms makes most sense because even if we did use endonyms we would likely still drift from the original after a significant period of time. That said, a nation electing to changing their name for diplomatic purposes and being adopted by the wider world makes sense like the Myanmar example, or how Thailand was once called Siam
Make that "after a few weeks". If they can even pronunce the endonym correctly to begin with. I already cringed at the Deushland in this video.
No we shouldn't. 1984 kind of stuff with all that changing words
Totally canon 😮
Everything I don't like is 1984
@@ljr6490 I gave an exact example. Newlang is 1984 stuff
In a country full of indigenous people like Brazil (where I live) forcing everyone to use exonyms would be extremely disrespectful and borderline racist.
There are some countries where the endonym and exonym are the same like the USA and UK sometimes canada Mexico is another one. Also here’s a fact china is called Zhōngguó in mandarin and Beijing is Běijīng
I Was Waiting For You To Hellas (Which Is Greece) After You Mentioned Croatia, Albania And Turkey.
Also The Greek Alphabet Is Way More Similar To English Then People Think.
So The Languages That Have Different Alphabets Would Still Be A Problem, But Others That Are Similar Like Greece, Wouldn't Be Problematic At ALL.
You really don't need to capitalize every word
It's not just about alphabet, it's about pronounciation. E.g. Hrvatska is difficult to pronounce even for fellow Slavs. I'm Polish, and it's incredibly uncomfortable to pronounce. Even we say Chorwacja (horvatsyia).
@@DogDogGodFog how lol im polish too and its easy
6:55 You're _really_ underselling how difficult Lietuva would be for a Japanese person to pronounce.
Li -> there's no L -> Ri
Tu -> while the T sound exists, but it can not be followed by a U, and it must become a CH
-> also, the u isn't even exactly the same sound as the one we all use
Va -> there's no V -> Ba
Lietuva -> Riechuba
(Though modern Japanese is definitely opening up to foreign sounds, it is a _slow_ process.)
I would have thought it would be transliterated as, 「リーツバ」
@@JamesDavy2009 Realistically, it'd be something like that.
But this video's prompt was about taking the words _exactly_ so we have to get as close as possible
I use endonyms whenever it doesn't hinder communication (i.e. when the other person knows the word).
Edit: I usually don't mind though when the exonym is just a translation or changed slightly to fit another language's sound system.
That's just an endonym with extra steps.
No. If some countries ACTUALLY PREFER to be addressed internationally using one set of phonetic and morphologic unit, they can. but to enforce it across languages with no regards for their phonotactics would just be overkill. especially if some countries did not even think of this as an issue.
the main issue i see is: when places have multiple endonyms (because of multiple languages), which one do we use?
also, some languages have sounds that other languages don't have. spain has ñ in its endonym. that sound (not 'ny', but [ɲ]) doesn't exist in english, for example.
It does exist, when you pronounce lasagna you use it in the *gn* .
@@LuchoCastle_11 lasagna is an italian word. unless the word is pronounced 'properly' (for lack of a better word) it will probably sound more like 'lazaniya'
Even within a single language it’s possible to have more than one endonym for a country, if the national language has more than one written standard, and choosing to use one over the other internationally can be a really charged issue, far more than letting other languages use their own version of the name.
@@cfgp English _can_ support an "ny" sound, like in the word "new".
What? You don't hear a y-sound in that word? Oh ya, it was lost at some point in various accents. (Or maybe you _did_ hear the "y" sound, in which case you have an accent that doesn't do it in that word.)
@@ragnkja also the different “endonym” based on the “official” or “common” way of calling - Japan in Japanese can be both “Nihonn” (common pronunciation in everyday usage) and “Nipponn” (official pronunciation, as designated by the Ministry of Education, Culture, and Science; or in full, Nippon Koku--Nippon country)
As a Croatian I like it how you don't even bother trying to pronounce "Hrvatska". ♡ Ehehehhe
It's okay, I understand not every language has that sound combinations where "r" can be treated as a vowel (DO NOT CONFUSE it with "considered as a vowel", though. "R" is a consonant, it's just that sometimes it acts as a vowel in a phonological sense in some words, because of the use of a sound that we don't write and is somewhat similar to Korean 으).
So, yeah, I'm bilingual from birth, with both Croatian and Italian being my native languages. This is also why I know from the start that not all languages can adopt certain pronunciations. So, when it comes to "Hrvatska" in particular, I know it's a difficult name to say for most of foreigners, while the Italian version "Croazia", regardless of painful historical events, is definitely the one easier to pronounce for most people internationally. And, in fact, English has adopted this Latin version too, and so did most countries world wide (the non Slavic ones, at least).
On the other hand, I've been living in Korea for a decade and a half now, and not so long ago Croatia had a boom in popularity here. I really and truly appreciate the enthusiasm, I really do. However, they try to mention the names of the places they visited, and they try to use endonyms, also because, for many of these places, an official exonym might not even exist and they struggle, they're having a hard time with names such as Dubrovnik, for example. The results are kinda cute, but I really don't want to make fun of them for heavily mispronuncing names that are virtually impossible for them to say, because their language is not equipped with certain sound combinations.
So, in my opinion, there's no all-or-nothing approach to this matter. What we can do, is:
1. Stick with what we have for each respective language
2. Use endonyms for new discoveries and MODIFY them according to your target language.
That's the most natural thing to do, really.
Korea has three endonyms. It's Hanguk in the South, Joseon in the North, and some form of "Korea" internationally. I believe the last is actually the oldest of the three. So the rest of the world gets it right, while the locals are wrong!
@@kenaikuskokwim9694 In case of Korea, it's not a matter of "wrong vs right" or what's oldest. The word "Korea" comes from 고려 (Goryeo), which is one of the countries of the peninsula whose documented existence was from 918 to 1392.
If we start calling India "Bharat", would we have to start calling Native Americans "Bharatians"? 😄
11:55 I said the same thing about time zones. It can be confusing when a streamer says they'll be online at 3PM, and you have to remember where they live, so you can calculate the time difference.
try this: The name I use for a certain west Pacific geological feature is, “Beautiful Sweet Potato Island.” It is an island, obviously. It is shaped like a sweet potato. Formosa in Portuguese, Hermosa in Spanish, and Taiwan in native Siraya all translate into English as, “Beautiful.” Beautiful Sweet Potato Island is not immediately politically prejudiced. (Except for the proposed flag containing a green sweet potato outline.)
So this is what Prince Philip meant when he referred to Africa as bongo bongo land
Gotta love that guy.
No, we should not stop using exonyms. You can't change MY language and what words I AM using. I will not use French name for Ivory Coast when I am speaking my mother tongue. Neither will I use umlauts to write Turkey's wanted name because Gollum (Erdogan) said so.
One problem with trying to use endonyms is that modern countries do not always fit neatly into older geographical concepts. Australia has multiple indigenous languages, but I doubt there is one that has a word that matches with the concept of the current nation. Similarly native American tribes will not have had a name specifically for Canada, the United States or nay other modern country. (There is also the question of whether a city should have the same name as the native land on which it was built, especially when it expands and encroaches onto other named areas.)
Regarding other countries insisting on using their preferred endonym, we have adapted to Myanmar and Sri Lanka (though our accents may butcher those names), but for Turkey to insist that we start using diacritics, which are virtually unknown in English may be going a step to far. I don't even know how to type these letters.
Your finnish pronounciation is pretty good!
Just use the word that's in your language. It's so cringe to suddenly drop a foreign word/accent while speaking your native tongue. It's like when people unnecessarily roll their R's when ordering food at Olive Garden.
No, please continue to say Norway, not Norge or Noreg (both official spellings).
'Norge' would sound so funny if someone accidentally pronounced it with English pronounciation, lol
Consider this:
If your native language is Japanese, how would you write the endonym "United Kingdom"? Japanese doesn't have an "ng" phoneme, and japanese characters (except for n) end in vowel sounds.
In reality, Japan calls the UK "Igirisu", from Portuguese "Inglês", and I've also seen "buritisshu" be used. If you wanted to transliterate "United Kingdom" to Japanese, it would be "Yunaitedo Kingudomu" (ignoring slight differences because I don't speak japanese well enough to do this properly. The point is it *has* to change to fit the writing system)
Another reason why I don't support endonyms is because right now supporters for it almost always do so for overtly nationalistic reasons, often intended to exclude some people.
You´re right. "France" for example excludes everyone non-French. Same thing for Italy, Croatia,...
@@ruedigernassauer But nationalistic always push for the ethnicity, not for citizenship. For example, Nazis excluded lots of people that were born in Germany for generations because they were different from the "true Germans"...
@@madjames1134 Apparently you took my response as serious. What´s your point? Sould we rename France, Italy and Croatia?
don't end every sentence with a schwa, please
No
Constantinople / Istanbul forced us to use their preferred name. Formosa and Taiwan? I believe in freedom of speech. Call countries whatever you want, like some keep calling the United States, America.
i speak english. my german family adopted it. i have a word for you and your people, and you have a word for me and mine.
In this video, you've only covered countries, but cities also have endonyms and exonyms and I think they're also very interesting, for example: why is a random H added in the English exonym of the city of Gent? I think because English speakers are tempted to pronounce the G here as you'd spell it, but with the H, it is more accurate but still miles away from the native pronunciation
No, next question...
Why?
Rude
@@erdood3235 Look, if a country asks to be called by a new name that is more than fair, does matter if it is the Endonym, or a whole new name, but some leeway needs to be given in pronunciation.
But we shouldn't just change all countries names just because...
Oh yeah, sure, let's erase mirriads of words from the vocabulary and the millennia of colorful history, linguistic formation and culture behind them for the sake of political correctness.
I don’t think it is particularly “politically correct“ to use the same name that the people in that land called themselves. I mean I guess if you want the rest of the world to say land of the shitty fatsos as their exonym for United States of America, then I guess that’s their right. But I would prefer they say the United States of America.
I’m sure that sometimes it’s very difficult to pronounce the names of other countries, but why can’t we just call people by the name that they call themselves? I don’t think this has anything to do with politics or even wokeness like the pronoun stuff
Weird way to say: "Let's not be assholes", but: okay.
Has nothing to do with political correctness, stop crying npc
So I guess you want to remove _myriads_ of correctly spelled words when you lecture us on how dumb we are?
@@scotthannan8669 many names have the meaning of "our land" or "homeland" etc. If everybody calls your country "our land", would you like that?
Interesting video. My question is what about denonyms? Should they change to be the endonym of the inhabitants also? (e.g. if we were to change the English name of India to Bharat, would an Indian person be a Bharati, or some other term?) Just wondering.
I think we should arrive to a compromise. Every language should use an exonym that resembles as closely as possible the endonym of a country while still being relatively easy to say and respecting the rules of the language. For English Perú would be called Peru as it’s currently called, Argentina would keep is endonym, and 日本 would be called Nihon instead of Japan.
sometimes i write country names in Qazaq as if my grandparents who barely speak Russia would call ORIGINAL endonym names of those countries
so Germany is Doyshlan
In Spanish "German" is actually a name, pronounced more like "herman" probably, so it's gotta be really funny going in a vacation, the person at the airport asks your name and they tell you "I wanna know your name, not your nationality" xD
I can get to Georgia (Atlanta) in a few hours, and have been there. I've never been anywhere near Georgia (Tbilisi). I think it should be called Kartulia. This is not the endonym, but it's made from the endonym of the language by adding "-ia", rather than "sa- -o" as in the Kartuli language.
Exonyms can be more enduring than endonyms as Country X may persist in using an exonym for Country Y while the Country Y changes its name several times. Kountry Y, Kountri Y, Kuntri Y, Kuuntri Y, and finally glottal stop Y.
Or Asia to Turkey to Turkiye.. and several distinct city states in Asia had their own names for the peninsula.
No, it´s Türkiye. "U" is another letter.
@@ruedigernassauer you bring up another point, that many endonyms are difficult to pronounce in other languages and may be difficult or impossible to spell in foreign alphabets. Add that to the frequent changing of names. Also since even countries that share the same or similar alphabets often pronounce the letters or groups of letters differently similar spellings can yield diverse pronunciations and voice versa.
I think it is better to reduce the number of distinct names for a country whenever possible to reduce confusion, and to attend to requests by the majority of a country’s people to call it by a certain name (or NOT to call it by a certain name!). 😊