There are many countries in the world that don’t care what English speakers call them. Germany doesn’t seem to mind that we don’t call them Deutschland, and China doesn’t seem to mind that we don’t call them ZhongGuo. So why is it such a big deal for Iran and Thailand that we don’t call them Persia and Siam?
Because they deliberately changed their names, and relatively recently, as a political signal. It’s not just a matter of linguistic habit.
Same with Burma/Myanmar
from Myanmar - Wikipedia
It can be a political statement as to which name you use. For example, some publications continued to use Burma because the name had been changed by a dictatorial military regime.
The Khmer Rouge changed the official name of Cambodia to Kampuchea, a version of the name of the country in Khmer. This name was not widely recognized due to the genocidal policies of the Khmer Rouge. After their ouster, the official name of the country in English reverted to Cambodia, although Kampuchea is still used internally.
It seems to me that, for example, Persia could be seen as pretentious or as an insult, depending how it is used. When the Shah, who got his position because his father (or the CIA, depending who you believe) engineered a military coup, but pretentiously considered himself the continuation a millennia-old empire. Pretentious. However, labelling a country by a thousand-year-old empire’s name could also be seen as implying it is stuck in that era rather than finally making it into the 20th century, as Iran seems poised to do.
The change from Siam to Thailand was made in 1939 as a signal of modernization as well as emphasizing its Thai ethnic makeup, especially with regard to its Chinese minority. (Also, historically Siam had also included all or parts of Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, and Burma. After these were lost to the French and British it became more homogeneously Thai.)
“Myanmar Shave” doesn’t have the same ring to it.
Actually, it was the father who, in 1935, started asking people to start using “Iran” instead of “Persia”. It was not an ancient versus modern thing. It was a “what foreigners call us” versus “what we call ourselves” thing.
nm
What’s the deal with “Rumania” and “Roumania” becoming “Romania?”
Lamoral, those spellings are outdated alternative spellings in English; “Romania” is the official spelling in English these days.
French used to have an outsized influence similar to that now enjoyed by English, and the country’s name in French is Roumanie, so that may have played a role in the popularity of “Roumania.” I still sometimes see English documents that use the Arabic term for a gully or wash, spelling it “ouadi.” Because the French colonized North Africa and because I happen to know some French, this spelling makes sense to me. But it’s now much more common to see it spelled “wadi” in English, which works with American phonetic conventions.
(I definitely don’t know Arabic, though. Any insights or corrections from people who know Arabic are more than welcome).
Ceylon, Sri Lanka.
AKA Taprobane or Serendip.
Upper Volta --> Burkina Faso
Central African Republic --> Central African Empire --> Central African Republic.
Dahomey --> Benin
Rhodesia >> Zimbabwe
Northern Rhodesia >> Zambia
Nyasaland >> Malawi
Japan is really called Nihon, but the Japanese people don’t seem to mind it being called something else by most of the world.
Japan seems divided as to whether “Nippon” or “Nihon” is the correct pronunciation of the kanji that form the Japanese name of Japan. In English there is a tendency to avoid using “Nippon” unless it’s part of a name of an organization that officially uses that pronunciation, but “Nippon” is regarded as a more formal version as it dates to an earlier time while “Nihon” is somewhat of a neologism (though still quite old by now).
Not that this has much to do with the rest of the thread, other than the fact that according to that article, the government decided that either one is fine, and so they really don’t care.
Recent ones:
Swaziland is now (Kingdom of) Eswatini (April 2018).
The Czech Republic did not change their name, but started accepting the short form Czechia in 2016. In my experience many Czechs don’t really care.
The Ivory Coast is officially Côte d’Ivoire even in English, but that one’s not really sticking.
Here’s one country that cares what it’s called. According to wikipedia,
"in April 1986, the government declared that Côte d’Ivoire (or, more fully, République de Côte d’Ivoire) would be its formal name for the purposes of diplomatic protocol, and since then officially refuses to recognize or accept any translation from French to another language in its international dealings.
Despite the Ivorian government’s request, the English translation “Ivory Coast” (often “the Ivory Coast”) is still frequently used in English by various media outlets and publications."
The CIA Factbook does abide by this request and lists “Ivory Coast” only as the country’s former name.
Oops, ninja’d by thelurkinghorror!
I’ve heard that Ukrainians get annoyed if you call their country the Ukraine rather than Ukraine.