Peking is now Beijing, Bombay is Mumbay, Burma is Myanmar (but that was a political decision by the junta), Ayers Rock is Uuluru and I even see Roma, Milano and Napoli on US/British maps of Italy.
So when did this practice start of calling a place what the natives call it?
'Cause in Icelandic (where we change every word to something indigenous), we still *Icelandify *names of places.
Seems to be a recent usage, e.g. the translation by the British Foreign office of the Peace of Westphalia contains a lot of toponyms (Bergstraet, Mayence, Treves, Spires, etc.) which in English nowadys are referred by their German names (Bergstraße, Mainz, Trier, Speyer, etc.) Also I think Frankfurt (Main) was often referred to as Frankfort as late as the 20th century.
It has to be quite recent, cause I remember hearing Peking and Bombay on english TV/films when I was growing up - and I’m born in 79.
For what it’s worth, I still use the old names, with the exception of Beijing (although I tend to use the Wade-Giles or Chinese Postal Map Romanisation system of translation for Chinese names, so I’d refer to Chairman Mao Tse-Tung and Tsingtao instead of Mao Zedong and Qingdao, for example).
Partly it’s because the older names mean something to me. Mumbai? Sounds like a Japanese cartoon character. Bombay? Ah, big city in India, British Raj, etc.
Ayer’s Rock/Uluru is a contentious one; there’s rather a lot of people (like myself) who still call it Ayer’s Rock because that’s its English name. Similarly, Burma is still referred to as such partly for reasons of disagreement with the ruling junta, and partly because again, that’s the country’s English name.
I can sort of understand the whole Rome/Roma thing perhaps being a result of EU regulations, but even so, I’m still a geographical traditionalist when it comes to that sort of thing, and prefer the “English” version of names where they’re well established and have been for a long time.
Very recent, though things like Paris and Moscow still seem acceptable.
Watching an American series about the Korean War, which constantly referred to Peiping rather than Peking seemed a little weird.
Martini Enfield, I completely agree with your view on the matter! I always have to think twice when someone mentions Mumbai and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with the name Burma 
But Mk VII, Paris is spelled Paris in French, so I don’t quite follow you there.
Wikipedia says:
As for Roma, Napoli and so on: rather logical on maps, if you’re going to be using them in Italy, because it’s no good looking for road signs to ‘Naples’. (Or, for a better example, try visiting Auschwitz, without knowing that you need to head to Oświęcim.) I’ve never heard of anybody using anything other than the English names in speech, though, and I’m sure there’s no EU regulation about it.
Indian city names were shortened by british to whatever they can pronounce easily. A sudden sense of nationalism ,to reverse whatever remained of colonialism made the politicians push for name change of major cities, airports almost 15 years ago.
Ah, cool! Then it all makes sense to me in regards to India.
Even so, I’m still using the English names.
Mumbai is also an exception, as English is an offical language in India, and Shiv Sena (Marathi nationalist party) officially renamed it in English to “Mumbai” in 1996.
Not to mention that referring to Roma or Moskva in ordinary English conversation would make one sound incredibly pretentious.
(My mom drove me crazy this summer by trying to do this and getting it wrong when she kept referring to Istanbul as “Ishtanbul.” When I pointed out to her that that’s not what it’s called, in any language, she got really offended because I shouldn’t “point out her ignorance.” What? It’s not like I was correcting her common English pronunciation with a pretentious proper Turkish pronunciation, I was correcting her completely-made-up attempt-to-sound pretentious.)
The point being that we don’t go around saying “Par-ee” or “Moskva”, or if you did you would be thought incredibly pretentious.
ah, sorry - gottcha.
My vague memory is that Mao Tze-Tung became Mao Zedong long before Peking became Beijing. I was going to suggest that if we collectively try to come up with other examples, maybe we can pin this thing down.
But then I found this article on Wikipedia, and realized that this is not a recent phenomenon, but that transcription and transliteration styles have been evolving constantly over the centuries.
That’s because it was the Communists who changed the name from Peiping to Peking, and since we didn’t recognize that government as legitimate…
Plus, Bombay is a Portuguese name, not an English one. It just happened to be the one in place by the time the English took over.
Generally, English changes the names of cities when the cities or countries officially make a change.
Mumbai was officially named “Mumbai,” so that’s what we use.
Beijing did not change its name. The government just switched to Pinyan transliteration for all English documents.
It was Istanbul, not Constantinople. That was nobody’s business but the Turks.
As for places like Paris or Moscow, the names of those cities have not changed recently, so there’s no need to change the English form.
The situation in India is more complex. Several of the most prominent cities – Bombay, Calcutta, Madras, for example – were actually founded by the colonialists. To the extent that there might be an “original” name, the colonial one might be it.
Furthermore, the natives of these cities often still use the colonial name. I have direct experience with Banaras, Bombay, and Calcutta. The people actually living there don’t use Varanasi and Mumbai in casual conversation.
Calcutta is a bit different. “Kolkata” or “Kolikata” has always been the Bengali name. People there say Calcutta when speaking English and Kolkata when speaking Bengali.
I just started reading a book published in 1987 and they referred to Peking rather than Beijing and I found it jarring.