The talk about Trump wanting to rename the Gulf of Mexico made me think: how are locations given their English-language names? Who decided that “Deutschland” should be “Germany,” or “Nippon” should be “Japan”?
In English, the answer is “no one”.
Other languages take a more perscriptivist approach.
For example, the Académie Française decides what things are called in French.
I can’t offer any perspective on the Académie Française, but I can tell you that Israel has the Academy for the Hebrew Language, and in theory they are the ones who decide what things are called in Hebrew. So they’ll wag their finger and tell us that a hippopotamus is called a “sos yeor” (lit river horse, same as the Greek meaning of Hippo) or that a cell phone is called a “sach rachok” (lit distant communicator, same as telephone). And we all ignore them and say “hippopotam” and “pelephon” anyways.
Cecil Adams tackled the multiple names for Germany back when the earth was green. “Germany” seems to descend from the Romans’ name for the people there.
As far as names used by the US Federal government, there’s the Board on Geographic Names.
I was just wondering this the other day when thinking why don’t we use foreign place names that the native speakers use like Roma instead of Rome or Greece for Hellas.
My understanding is that the situation in France is the same as far as ignoring the official diktats of the Academie.
Yep. And the same answer as to “who decides the Rules for American grammar and Spelling” unless your boss has his/her own requirement.
Most of these names were fixed very early on. Samuel Johnson’s dictionary includes “German” (not Germany, not yet a country) and “Japan”.
His sources, of course, were earlier writers who had made individual decisions on naming, not an official body. However, dictionaries, of which there were several before Johnson’s, served as quasi-official repositories of correctness for English.
Most of today’s country names, not just German, are historically modern. It’s fun to look at Webster’s Dictionary from 1828 and see these.
GREECE, noun [Latin gressus. It ought to be written grese, but it is entirely obsolete.] A flight of steps.
GER’MAN, adjective [Latin germanus, a brother.]
1. Cousins german are the sons or daughters of brothers or sisters; first cousins.
Knowing that definition once helped Nero Wolfe solve a murder.
Webster did also say it was “A native of Germany.” Germany as a term is not in the dictionary. Countries apparently did not need definitions.
JAPAN’, noun [from the country in Asia, so called.]
This name is given to work varnished and figured in the manner practiced by the natives of japan
By the 20th century, most writers deferred to official names used by the government. In the 21st century, though, a trend to use names decided abroad can be seen in most newspapers. Mumbai for Bombay, Kolkata for Calcutta, and Türkiye for Turkey. These, especially the latter, may need time to spread through casual speech, though.
Because place names are part of language, and languages differ from each other.
Japan is a good example of how these things happen. European explorers went to China first, and when discussing the archipelago east of the Chinese mainland, they heard the Chinese pronunciation (not sure, it may be the same two characters used today, which mean “Origin of the Sun”, i.e. easternmost land), which of course got corrupted into something Europeans could pronounce, and they took that back with them. By the time Europeans made their way to Japan themselves, their version of the country’s name was already set in stone for them. (I am pulling this from memory, so it is entirely possible the accepted version of these historical events has changed.)
Even Japanese use two different pronunciations, Nihon and Nippon, for the same 2 characters. If I’m not mistaken, Nippon is more favored by right-wing uber-patriots.
Not to mention Beijing was once Peking, based IIRC on old French pronuciation corruption of what those early missionaries called it. Once the various media style guides adopted the new spelling, it took a few years to eventually replace the old.