# Why can't we call folks what they want to be called? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [December 7, 2004, 4:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-cant-we-call-folks-what-they-want-to-be-called/278567 "2004-12-07T16:45:20Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![mrklutz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ebca7d/32.png) [@mrklutz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mrklutz)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2004, 10:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-cant-we-call-folks-what-they-want-to-be-called/278567/21 "2004-12-07T22:25:38Z")
And of course, in addition to all the linguistic peculiarities already mentioned, there’s the whole aspect of political change. We call it Germany, the locals call it Deutchland. Well, centuries past, before there was a nation named Deutchland, those pesky Latin-speaking people called the area “Germania.” (Where that came from, I don’t know right offhand.) I’m sure there are plenty of examples of similar holdovers. Language is a funny thing, and English even moreso. ---
**Author:** ![pravnik](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/8edcca/32.png) [@pravnik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pravnik)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2004, 10:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-cant-we-call-folks-what-they-want-to-be-called/278567/22 "2004-12-07T22:49:24Z")
> [@Jomo Mojo](#): > > “How you gonna keep 'em down on the farm / After they’ve seen Paree” > > As for Navajo, that comes from a word in Tewa (one of the Pueblo Indian languages) meaning ‘an arroyo with cultivated fields’. Whoops…I meant Apache, Zuni for “enemy.” The Mexicans called the Navajo “Apaches de Navajo,” enemies of the cultivated fields–they were Apacheans, but agriculturalists. ---
**Author:** ![scr4](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/59ef9b/32.png) [@scr4](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scr4)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2004, 11:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-cant-we-call-folks-what-they-want-to-be-called/278567/23 "2004-12-07T23:02:32Z")
> [@Giles](#): > > The romanised form of the Japanese name for Japan is “Nihon”. > The romanised form of the Japanese name for the Japanese language is “Nihongo”. > The romanised form of the Japanese name for Japanese people is “Nihonjin”. > > I don’t know where this word “Nipponese” comes from, but it doesn’t come from Nihongo (otherwise known as Jaoanese). _Nippon_ is an alternative pronunciation of _Nihon_ in Japanese. And _Nipponjin_ is a valid alternative of _Nihonjin_. (But _Nippongo_ is not - not sure why, it just sounds weird.) ---
**Author:** ![Jayrot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/3ec8ea/32.png) [@Jayrot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jayrot)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2004, 11:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-cant-we-call-folks-what-they-want-to-be-called/278567/24 "2004-12-07T23:22:44Z")
Yes I know all of that. What I was remarking is that using Nipponese doesn’t make any sense in the context of the OP’s examples (Munchen, Deutchland). Indeed, as Giles said, the analogous term would be _nihonjin_. Why don’t we say _nihonjin_? It doesn’t fit with our naming convention for nationalities. Though it’s far from a perfect rule, we recognize -ese, -er, -ite, etc. as suffixes signifying “a person from —”. We don’t recognize -jin for this meaning. At best Jin is a character from Tekken. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2004, 11:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-cant-we-call-folks-what-they-want-to-be-called/278567/25 "2004-12-07T23:47:41Z")
> [@Jayrot](#): > > Yes I know all of that. What I was remarking is that using Nipponese doesn’t make any sense in the context of the OP’s examples (Munchen, Deutchland). Indeed, as Giles said, the analogous term would be _nihonjin_. The OP was confused, thinking Nipponese was what Japanese call themselves. That’s the only thing that makes sense. _Wakarimasu ka_? ---
**Author:** ![gum](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/bbe5ce/32.png) [@gum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gum)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2004, 6:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-cant-we-call-folks-what-they-want-to-be-called/278567/26 "2004-12-08T06:38:00Z")
Originally posted by **Bear\_Nenno** > [@](#): > > - > > ``` > Are people in your country still refering to themselves as Dutch? Or is this something that just the rest of the world (or maybe just we 'Mericans) do?* > > ``` We call ourselves _Nederlanders_! The rest of the world is soooo wrong. Pah. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Gary\_Robson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gary_robson/32/3448_2.png) [@Gary\_Robson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gary_Robson)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2004, 6:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-cant-we-call-folks-what-they-want-to-be-called/278567/27 "2004-12-08T06:39:30Z")
Yep - I was confused on “Nipponese.” Those of you commenting on “cultural sensitivity” are missing the point of my post entirely, and the Nipponese confusion is a great example of what I’m talking about. I’m not trying to be sensitive, I’m trying to be sensible. A great deal of confusion could be eliminated if we stopped trying to rename people and countries. You want to call your country Fredland? Fine. Let’s update all the maps and have everybody call it Fredland. No problems in airline reservations, newscasts, or anything else. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2004, 6:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-cant-we-call-folks-what-they-want-to-be-called/278567/28 "2004-12-08T06:48:53Z")
I’ve got a better solution. If all those dern furiners would just learn to talk American, we wouldn’t have this problem in the first place! ---
**Author:** ![Dijon\_Warlock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a9a28c/32.png) [@Dijon\_Warlock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dijon_Warlock)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2004, 7:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-cant-we-call-folks-what-they-want-to-be-called/278567/29 "2004-12-08T07:30:36Z")
> [@Jayrot](#): > > At best Jin is a character from Tekken. No, at _best_, she’s a [quite fetching artist from Texas](http://www.jinwicked.com/en/index.html). And we (or, at least, I) miss her here. ---
**Author:** ![Excalibre](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/898d66/32.png) [@Excalibre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Excalibre)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2004, 9:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-cant-we-call-folks-what-they-want-to-be-called/278567/30 "2004-12-09T21:00:20Z")
> [@iamthewalrus(:3=](#): > > Nippon is the proper name for Japan. Thus, the people and language we call Japanese should rightly be called Nipponese. Unless you implement that as a universal policy, and refer to every group the way it likes, then it’s even worse. And if you do, I’ll point and laugh. Especially when you discover that half the people out there are going to demand something different, and you have to figure out whether that Moldovan is actually Transnistrian. Besides, “Nippon”, at least in the opinion of this native English speaker, is a really stupid sounding word. Naturally sound associations are different in different languages - but while Nippon might work find in Nihongo, it sounds like crap to me. Isn’t it better that I use a word that doesn’t sound stupid in referring to foreigners? ---
**Author:** ![Gary\_Robson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gary_robson/32/3448_2.png) [@Gary\_Robson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gary_Robson)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2004, 9:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-cant-we-call-folks-what-they-want-to-be-called/278567/31 "2004-12-09T21:49:42Z")
> [@Excalibre](#): > > …but while Nippon might work find in Nihongo, it sounds like crap to me. Isn’t it better that I use a word that doesn’t sound stupid in referring to foreigners? I think “sounding stupid” is a rather subjective way to pick words. English has plenty of words that sound stupid to me, but you may like them. Hmm. That would make an interesting thread: Stoopidest-sounding English words. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Mister\_Rik](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mister_rik/32/491_2.png) [@Mister\_Rik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mister_Rik)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2004, 1:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-cant-we-call-folks-what-they-want-to-be-called/278567/32 "2004-12-10T01:58:36Z")
> [@Roches](#): > > I agree that pronunciation is the most important reason. The ‘x’ in _Mexico_ or _Mexicano_ is not a sound most English speakers can produce easily. Actually, I’ve been told by a number of my Mexican friends that “Mexico” is an Aztec word, not a Spanish word, and that it is properly pronounced “MECKS-i-ko” (just like we say it in English), not MEY-hee-ko (as the Spanish pronunciation would have it). ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2004, 2:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-cant-we-call-folks-what-they-want-to-be-called/278567/33 "2004-12-12T02:22:11Z")
In medieval Spanish, the letter _x_ was used to represent the “sh” sound (as it still is in Portuguese). But around the time of the Renaissance there was a sound shift in Castilian pronunciation, and the former “sh” sound changed to a “kh” sound. The original Nahuatl name of México must have had a “sh” sound which the Spaniards wrote with “x” as the only letter in their alphabet that could represent that sound. Sure, nowadays they say mé-hi-ko or mé-khi-ko in modern Spanish pronunciation, but the original may have been me-shi-ko or something like that. The nearby location Xochimilco is another example. In modern Spanish it’s pronounced Sochimilco, but if the original Nahuatl had been pronounced that way, the 16th-century Spaniards could have just written it with S. If it had been pronounced Shochimilko, that would explain the spelling with X. Modern Spanish has lost the “sh” sound, that’s all. In the case of Xochimilco, they substituted the nearest approximation, the “s” sound. The Turkish government recently had a campaign to get everyone to call their country Türkiye, complete with 2 dots over the u, but it seems there are no takers. Hey, it had worked for them years ago, when they got everyone to change Constantinople to Istanbul, Angora to Ankara, Smyrna to Izmir, etc. But it seems country names are more resistant to change than city names. The demand of Ivory Coast that all English speakers call it Côte d’Ivoire has had at least partial success. The U.S. State Department is now using the French form of the name officially. ---
**Author:** ![scr4](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/59ef9b/32.png) [@scr4](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scr4)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2004, 2:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-cant-we-call-folks-what-they-want-to-be-called/278567/34 "2004-12-12T02:43:16Z")
The title of the thread is “Why can’t we call folks what they want to be called?” Have you considered the possibility that what people want to be called is not necessarily what they call themselves? I’m Japanese and when I’m speaking in Japanese, I refer to my country as Nihon or Nippon. But when I’m speaking in English I prefer to use the English words “Japan” and “Japanese”. The English word referring to that country has always been “Japan,” and I see no compelling reason to change a functional, inoffensive and widely used word. > [@](#): > > I’m not trying to be sensitive, I’m trying to be sensible. A great deal of confusion could be eliminated if we stopped trying to rename people and countries. What exactly is the confusion? When you learn to speak a foreign language, you’ll learn what the natives call their country. But when you’re speaking English, all you need is the English name of that country. It would be far more confusing if we started borrowing foreign words. ---
**Author:** ![habs](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/ecae2f/32.png) [@habs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/habs)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2004, 4:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-cant-we-call-folks-what-they-want-to-be-called/278567/35 "2004-12-12T04:13:32Z")
I’m Hungarian, and the Hungarian word for the people who live in Hungary is “Magyar,”, and the Hungarian name for Hungary is “Magyarország” (“ország” means “country” in Hungarian). Where and how the English language got “Hungary” from “Magyar” is beyond me. 🙂 In Hungarian, we also have our peculiarities for naming certain countries. Some are fairly close to their English equivalents, such as “Franciaország” for France, “Norvégia” for Norway, and “Kanada” for Canada. However, it’s “Németország” for Germany, “Olaszország” for Italy, and “Oroszország” for Russia. 😕 I’m just curious … how is the country of Hungary pronounced in other languages? I know it’s “Ungarn” in German, “Hongroise” in French, but how is it pronounced in other languages, such as Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, etc.? ---
**Author:** ![gum](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/bbe5ce/32.png) [@gum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gum)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2004, 6:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-cant-we-call-folks-what-they-want-to-be-called/278567/36 "2004-12-12T06:34:31Z")
It’s Hongarije here. Pronounced: Hon gggggaaaaa [hard g, long a] ri yuh. What’s ‘the Netherlands’ in Magyaran? 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2004, 7:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-cant-we-call-folks-what-they-want-to-be-called/278567/37 "2004-12-12T19:32:37Z")
In Turkish, Hungary is Macaristan. (C is pronounced j in Turkish, so it’s pronounced Majaristan.) In Turkish, Poland is Lehistan. That means the land of Lech, as in Walesa. ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2004, 7:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-cant-we-call-folks-what-they-want-to-be-called/278567/38 "2004-12-12T19:34:45Z")
In Hungarian, the Netherlands is called Németalföld. That ought to drive you crazy, **gum**. ---
**Author:** ![habs](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/ecae2f/32.png) [@habs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/habs)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2004, 7:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-cant-we-call-folks-what-they-want-to-be-called/278567/39 "2004-12-12T19:55:40Z")
Gum, similar as in English, the Hungarians tend to call the Netherlands “Hollandia”, in addition to the official name that Jomo Mojo gave. Jomo Mojo, that’s interesting that the Turks call Hungary (more or less) by the name of its people, namely “Magyar.” Not many languages use “Magyar” in their pronunciation of Hungary. Just as an FYI, we call Turkey “Törökország” (the “o” with the umlaut over it is pronounced like the “o” in the word polite, but round your lips). ---
**Author:** ![coilycat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/8edcca/32.png) [@coilycat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/coilycat)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2004, 11:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-cant-we-call-folks-what-they-want-to-be-called/278567/40 "2004-12-12T23:34:21Z")
I’ve noticed that newscasters started saying, “Keeyoto” making it 3 syllables, instead of Kyoto with two. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m pretty sure it’s Kyoto w/two. I’m basing this on the Korean (well, Korean-in-America for a long time which is not necessarily Korean from Korea) pronunciation of it, which barely acknowledges the “yuh” sound. The emphasis is definitely on the long “o.” Is there a good reason for the newscasters switching the pronunciation? I read a book “is there a cow in Moscow” which promised to give me all the derivations & alternatives & authentic pronunciations of various words, from a stuffy British type, but was very disappointed. I ended up disagreeing with the author over the “correct” (read “snobby”) pronunciation, although I think we both acknowledge that even if there is a “correct” way, it’s not worth much in the end. Anway, when I start rolling my eyes at the KEEyoto thing, am I being even more of a putz than they? :rolleyes: [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-cant-we-call-folks-what-they-want-to-be-called/278567.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-cant-we-call-folks-what-they-want-to-be-called/278567.md?page=3)