So... do you think we should stop using exonyms?

Will still need to transliterate. We can't type endonyms that use different writing sytems at the same time.

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

I'd rather hear people saying the exonym, rather than completely butchering the endonym

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.

Name Explain butchering a bunch of endonyms in this video makes a great argument for exonyms.

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.

bro that is the least accurate Peru pronunciation I have ever heard

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"!

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.

Exactly Switzerland has 4 Endonyms, which one should you use?

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.

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.

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.

In Irish , the name changes depending on the context/ Grammer of sentence which wouldn't work in all languages

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

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

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.

It bugs me when Ivory Coast insists that its name be in French, even though it's made up from easily translated nouns.

Just curious... does "Saksa" relate to the "Saxons", the Germanic people who settled in England?

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 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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

I love how the english/german pronunciation of Peru is more accurate than the supposed peruvian pronunciation

Let's be honest, Türkîyé (or however tf it's spelt) still hasn't caught on

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?

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.

Language isn’t about what we “should” do. That’s prescriptivism.

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".

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)

Just get it over with, and use ISO 3166-1 codes. 🤣

I'm going to continue to refer to Burma as Burma, because screw military junta's.

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

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.

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.

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

We used to translate personal names too. John, Johann, Juan, Jean etc. And then we stopped that. Why exactly I wonder?

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?

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.

Mandatory Finn self insert: we have very distinctive names for our neighbours and historical friends/foes: Sweden - Ruotsi Estonia - Viro Russia - Venäjä Germany - Saksa

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 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.

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.

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.

i'm surprised he didn't even mention Crna Gora (Montenegro). he didn't even try to pronounce Hrvatska either

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

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.

Answer: NO WE SHOULD NOT. That is a TERRIBLE idea. That is, unless the country itself asks to change its name. The main reason is that it requires speaking a different language, and while some people might enjoy the challenge, it's not actually comfortable to do that. I speak Portuguese, and switching between that and English takes some amount of effort that I don't want to have to expend when I'm talking to someone in Portuguese about, say, the Estados Unidos (the US) or Nova Iorque (New York). There's a sense in which the so-called exonym is really just the endonym but imported. For example, maybe Peruvians stick an accent on their U, but that doesn't make Peru and Perú meaningfully different. Same with Brasil and Brazil. I have to say that I don't understand the Z in the English name; maybe it's just a remnant from an era before standardized spelling. But who cares? It's the same thing. Don't make me use a French accent when saying "Fronss". I think it's very American to believe that names should be pronounced in their original language and their original accent. Do people with foreign names actually want that? Don't pronounce my name with an accent, please! The whole endonym thing just completely overlooks the fact that switching phonologies is neither comfortable nor welcome. You'll either be butchering a pronunciation you can't do or you'll be massively code-switching. Just stay in your language!

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.

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.

Man I love this dude . Taught me more than those 13 years of school did .

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.

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.

No.

Okay, but I still support encouraging people in English to start using "Sakartvelo" for the country south of the Caucasus to avoid confusion with the US state of Georgia.

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.

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

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 don't think we need to change ALL exonyms, but we should start calling Georgia (the country) "Sakartvelo" so it can't be confused with the US state.

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.

No we shouldn't. 1984 kind of stuff with all that changing words

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.

I’m from canada and I’m not certain it’s EVERY language, but every single language I’ve ever heard refer to my country always basically just says “canada” with a slight accent

I definitely used exonyms intentionally to be disrespectful before 😅

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.

So this is what Prince Philip meant when he referred to Africa as bongo bongo land

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.)

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.

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.

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.

No, please continue to say Norway, not Norge or Noreg (both official spellings).

The thing is - exonyms make sense for the people saying them. English speakers have historic reasons for calling Germany "Germany", reasons that arguably are as valid as calling Germany "Deutschland". I dont think any country has the right to enforce its name on speakers of a foreign language. So what, in Scottish Gaelic they call England something like "Saxonland", that's a meaningful and historic name for them. It would be pathetic if England demanded Scottish Gaelic speakers started to call it England. Unless the name they're using is derogatory, and i mean in the sense its like actively insulting, not something like polish for Germany meaning "mute ones" because German is unintelligible for Poles, you frankly have no right to ask to be called something. Its not a personal name, its a country name, and countries matter to people outside of that country - not just those within it.

The Old Turkey of Turkey wanted us to stop calling Turkey Turkey cold turkey!

If we start calling India "Bharat", would we have to start calling Native Americans "Bharatians"? 😄

don't end every sentence with a schwa, please

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.

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.

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.

No, next question...

I'm curious now, if English speakers were to use the endonyms of a country that uses a gendered language (not sure if that's the correct term) would the English speaker include the gendered article or not. For example, would we call it "La France" or just "France" with a French accent?

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.

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.

If this guy was in charge of country names's we'd be saying "Italy-uh" and I wouldn't know if it's the exonym or the endonym

I love this video. It's a topic I think of often. It's similar to names as well. My given name is Jesus (Spanish) but my Muslim friends call me Isa and I have some Christian friends that aren't comfortable with calling me Jesus (even if pronounced in Spanish) so they call me Josh or Joshua. I had one person call me Jesu. I like exonyms because they allow us to just move on to the important topics. But honestly if I had a choice I prefer my name in Spanish, Jesus (Heh-soos).

In Sweden we call Germany --> Tyskland. Was surprised how many other versions in different language it have. Even if my own country (Sweden) have a few exonyms (Sverige in Swedish) I think it is no good arguments to not continue using exonyms.

Here in Norway Germany is called Tyskland, a sort of translation* of Deutschland. Granted, it is still an exonym, but at the very least it doesnt make German heads implode. * Both "Deusch" and "Tysk" comes from the Proto-Germanic Þiudiskaz or some such, morphing into these two different spellings. The meaning is "popular" or "of the people" in both versions, so maybe not a direct translation, as the word Tysk now only means someone from Tyskland.

To be fair this exclusive to the English language. Because English is now the global language, we have all made English "our language", sort of. And we'd like to hear the name of our country/city pronounced our way in English. Nobody cares about french or spanish speakers saying Pekin instead of Beijing

I believe the reason for the many foreign names of Deutchland, is that it's relatively new, and its many of the former nations that make it up are still used as names for it. For example, Saksa is clearly a reference to Saxony. Germany in english is a reference to the german culture group that dominate the region. It's Neighbor Nederland, goes by the Netherlands internationally, which is the same meaning translated: the lowlands. Except, some countries still call it by one of its contituent originator nations, Holland/Hollandia. Most of the time it does no harm, it's just a way to make the place more pronouncable to that language's native speakers.

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.