Up until the late 2000s or early 20teens, this country seemed to be referred to as Ivory Coast. Sometime in this period, it seemed fashionable to refer to it as Côte d’Ivoire (CUT-DEE-VWAA is the closest I can make of it In French for anglophiles though for the past ten years I clumsily called it “Coat-de-Ivory”.) understandable since it is a French speaking nation. As a matter of fact, over the past few World Cups, the team was refereed to as representing “Côte d’Ivoire” instead of “Ivory Coast”.
I imagine the turmoil this country suffered a decade ago might have had something to do with this movement.
What brought this up was I was under the impression that “Ivory Coast” was an old-timey and maybe somewhat offensive way to refer to the nation (Ivory seems to refer to mass murder of elephants even though it translates the same in French) but tonight, lo and behold, CNN had an interview with the controversial President of the country, and the interviewer threw “Ivory Coast” around like a drunken sailor.
Am I overthinking this? Is it just “Côte d’Ivoire” is used for the World Cup because there are so many French speakers around the world? Or do most countries refer to this nation as that?
Was CNN in any way being insensitive in referring to it as “Ivory Coast”? Is there a deeper political/social/linguistic issue I am missing here?
As an English speaking American, will I get in trouble if I visit this country and refer to is as “Ivory Coast”?
A substantial proportion (probably the majority?) of non-English-speaking countries are not referred to in English by using the exact foreign language name, and even when they are we don’t usually attempt to pronounce it exactly like a local. I think a straightforward translation like this is fine, unless for some reason the locals strenuously object. I think a problem would only arise if you referred to (say) the D.R.C. as the “Belgian Congo” or something ridiculous like that.
Here’s a list of countries showing English and local names.
With big international events like the World Cup or Olympics, competing nations decide for themselves what they wish to be called. The rest of the time it’s pretty much up to the speaker or their organisation to decide.
There have been a number of changes in recent years: Peking/Beijing, Bombay/Mumbai and Calcutta/Calicut to name a few. There are also many places that are widely pronounced differently to the way locals say it: Paris/Paree New Or-le-ans/Noo Or-linz and many many others.
Wikipedia covers this. Essentially, the government of the country has requested other governments to use the French version for diplomatic purposes, and it would be considered discourteous to to follow that request. So most foreign ministries/state departments now use “Côte d’Ivoire” for international dealings, and this is now also followed by most media outlets. There were similar developments in other countries, such as Timor-Leste, or Burma’s renaming to Myanmar.
But I think that policy appears a bit inconsistent. Côte d’Ivoire is the only African country that retained the old “xyz Coast” name that was frequent during the colonial era - see, for instance, Ghana (formerly Gold Coast). Apparently the country didn’t (and doesn’t) consider the name offensive enough to rename itself entirely; it is only the translation from French into other languages that is taken offence at. But the general principle is that countries decide for themselves what their name should be (with few exceptions where the name causes international controversy - the prime case here is [North] Macedonia), so the rest of the world is well advised to just follow suit.
Nitpick: the city formerly known as Calcutta is now usually referred to as Kolkata; Calicut is the former name for the completely different city now called Kozhikode.
I understand the Greek government has now agreed they can officially use the name “North Macedonia”, but this was a sticking point for several years.
Yes, that was the compromise. The dispute is now settled, and the old interim (well, lasting for almost two decades) name FYROM (“Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia”) is, fortunately, a thing of the past.
That’s not really a renaming. The name of the city consists of two Chinese characters, the first of them meaning “North” and the second meaning “capital”. So Beijing is the “northern capital”, the southern one being Nanjing. The first character is pronounced something like “bei” in Mandarin but something like “pe” in Cantonese, another Chinese language in the south of China. The second character is something like “jing” in Mandarin and “king” in Cantonese. So Beijing is the Mandarin pronunciation and Peking the Cantonese pronunciation, but they’re two ways of speaking the same name. In the 19th century, European colonisation of China started in the South, where Cantonese is spoken; that’s why Europeans at the time adopted the Cantonese pronunciation. But nowadays Mandarin has become more prevalent, also owing to its official status in China.
Does that extend to countries getting to decide what their name should be in all different languages? Because, of course, there are lots of countries whose name for themselves is not the same as the word we use in English, and nobody complains.
Should be be pissy that it’s “Etats Unis” in French, and “Estados Unidos” in Spanish, and that nobody calls us the literal “United States” in English?
That’s the same thing as Cote d’Ivoire/Ivory Coast, after all. They’re pronounced differently but mean the same literal thing. Or Royaume-Uni vs. United Kingdom for that matter. Or Ecosse/Scotland. Or a lot of other examples.
Ultimately I suspect the Ivoirians call their own country Cote d’Ivoire, so that’s what the official name is in international sports and diplomacy.
China provides most of the English Language translations for Chinese place names, and they decided to use one particular transliteration. So yes, they got to decide how Peking would be spelled.
I was a migrant: people laughed at my language and told me that I didn’t speak correctly. From that, I made the observations that Australians do not own English, and that other pronunciations and spellings, as used in America and India, are equally valid. The flip side of that belief is that India and America do not own my English either: I don’t tell them what words to use.
(FWIW, like most of the world, China doesn’t use English letter pronunciation rules. The Chinese pronunciation may be different than the English pronunciation, even when Chinese spelling is used.)
The “name change” that wasn’t really a name change from Peking to Beijing was part of the process of China both adopting the Mandarin dialect as a national language, and adopting a new romanization for that dialect, Pinyin. The romanization they chose for some phonemes is not very natural for native English speakers, leading to much mangling of Chinese names. The pronunciation just needs to be learned. But the phonemes in Beijing are pretty natural.
No ignore list here. All good. I think Acsenray and I, both searched the forums with similar terms.
Just to make sure we are on the same page, the city name changes in India are just the endonyms getting more accepted than the exonyms.
Italy in Europe, in my opinion, has a lot of Endonyms for its cities. For example :’Naples is Napoli and Florence is Firenze. If Italy decided to make Napoli and Firenze as official names, then it would be equivalent of what happened in India.
Not just countries. I once asked why the BBC seemed to have started referring to the “Berliner Philharmoniker” all of a sudden, and got the reply that the BP were insisting on it. Presumably that’s the price of getting them to perform in your concerts.
I was told something similar about soccer on one of the TV channels here: in order to get rights to televise matches, they had to agree that the word ‘football’ means Association football, aka soccer.
So although the two main codes in Australia are Australian Rules and League Rugby, on that station ‘football’ only ever means something else.
I would suppose that if Americans got really, really upset about others translating the phrase “United States of America” into other languages, and if, as a consequence of that, the US government formally requested other countries to use that phrase also in other languages, then the other governments would act accordingly. Not because of any special treatment of the United States, but as a matter of courtesy that was also extended to Côte d’Ivoire. It’s just that, so far, Americans haven’t been bothered about this.
For similar issues, here is the list of UN member states from the UN’s website. You will see that there are several instances of countries where some term that is part of the country’s official name is included in the list - for example, you have “Bolivia (Plurinational State of)”,“Iran (Islamic Republic of)” and “Venezuela, Bolivarian Republic of”. That is because those countries attach great ideological importance to these styles and requested the UN to use them. Other countries don’t attach the same degree of importance to their official names. Mexico, for instance, is officially styled the “United Mexican States” but sees no issue in other countries or international organisations using the shortened term “Mexico”.
We can’t rule out the possibility that the country prefers “Côte d’Ivoire” because it’s a much classier name than “Ivory Coast” (which sounds like someone slipping on a bar of soap).
For much the same reason, snooty gardeners growing a popular variety of perennial catmint refer to it as “Souvenir d’Andre Chaudron” rather than “Blue Beauty”.
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