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PaperclipPerfector  8mo ago (text post)   28075 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 11, 2023

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A Moon landing, by any other word, would be as beautiful, wouldn't it?

The invitations to the recent G20 summit refered to Droupadi Murmu as "The President of Bharat". While the prime minister of the host country was delivering the inaugural address, the placard in front of him said "Bharat".

No, a new country didn't emerge and somehow got the right to host something as prestigous as a G20 summit, "Bharat" is actually an endonym, explicitly established, in Indian constitution:

India, that is Bharat, shall be a Union of States.

This move to use Bharat in internationally visible context can be seen as normalizing and laying the ground work to a full-on name change. The motivation behind is by some commentators impugned to be Hindutva, the ideology of, in the opinion of these commentators, of "othering" non-Hindu groups. The logic being that India being an English word privileges English speaking-Indian, but since they lack an Asabiyyah, this isn't as dangerous affirming the Hindu name, empowring Hindus who do not lack it.

A more concrete explanation also proposed, has been to make the name of an opposition coalition (I.N.D.I.A., yes their name is the just name of the country) seem more foreign and less Bharatian.¹

One is drawn to make comparisons with recent country renaming, the country of Cahit Arf. Both Bharat and Türkiye are at least regional powers, so their renaming is expected to be reported more widely and considered of greater importance than Swaziland or Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia "getting the works". And as in both cases the name change would be the result of the countries free will², the comparison seems even more salient.

Homeland of baklava is a bit further along, already notifying international organizations "Turkey" is a deadname. It seems media organizations haven't followed suit; out of the following only the last two affirm the new name: CNN, WaPo, NYT, NPR, CBC, NHK English, Al Jazeera, BBC, Reuters, USA Today, AP, The Guardian, Fox News, Euronews (the tag for stories pertaining to this country is called "Turkiye (Turkey)"), CGTN³, ABC Australia. But FYROM was abandoned by news media in favour of NM, that the former official name was so long probably played a part. Yet Czechia is still mostly commonly called Czech Republic, despite the latter being longer.

1: Particular political parties appropriating symbols of the whole country, has also happened in Italy. The "Brothers of Italy" a far-righty political party you may have heard about if you follow European politics, is in Italian called "Fratelli d'Italia" after the incipit of the Italian anthem.

2: Unlike with Macedonia, North. In order for Greece to allow the former Vardar Banovina to join EU and NATO, an agreement had to signed by NM to distance itself from promoting their is continuity between Macedonians of antiquity and Macedonians of today and to insistently preprend "North" to every reference to the country.

3: The style guide of China Global Television Network prescribes calling the country the capital of which is Pyongyang, DPRK, but the one with the capital Seoul, South Korea. Strangely inconsistent.

I think if any country should change its name it’s Montenegro - “Black Mountain” would sound a lot cooler in English!

Montenegro's endonym is already Crna Gora.

Crna Gora doesn’t sound cool in English though lol

Another semi-relevant thought on country names: many are chosen halfheartedly. A few years ago I looked up why Israel isn't called Judea, and apparently this was indeed the expected name of the Jewish/Zionist state pretty much until a few days before it was announced:

As Clark Clifford, Harry Truman’s legal adviser, would later recall, “most of us assumed the new nation would be called Judaea.”

The reason why Israel couldn't be called Judea (or Judaea) was because Judaea wasn't actually going to be part of Israel:

But according to the partition plan, all of the traditional geographical area of Judea was slated either to be internationalized (in the case of Jerusalem and its environs) or to become part of the proposed Arab state. A Jewish state named Judea that didn’t include the geographical Judea would have been, to say the least, an anomaly. Moreover, even if it did wind up possessing some chunk of Judea, the Jewish state would also comprise a much larger area than that.

This didn't really stop 'North Macedonia', so perhaps times have changed.

The second choice was apparently 'Zion', but again:

With Judea ruled out, another suggestion, Sharef told Brilliant, was Zion—“but Zion is the name of a hill overlooking the Old City of Jerusalem” and therefore not intended by the UN’s partition plan to be within the borders of the proposed Jewish state. True, even the Bible refers to Jerusalem and sometimes to the entire Land of Israel as Zion, and in that sense the name had been adopted by the “Lovers of Zion” movement in the 19th century and then, obviously, by the Zionist movement itself. But for a sovereign Jewish state-to-be, actual geography mattered; how could such a state be called Zion when Mount Zion wasn’t going to be a part of it?

'Israel' was the only other option:

How was the name decided? By a vote in the People’s Administration, the cabinet-in-waiting, on May 12....the cabinet secretary Zeev Sharef would write that the decision was arrived at “in the absence of any other suggestion.”

Of course, within a few decades, Israel would come to control both 'Judea' and Mount Zion, but the country's name stuck.

how could such a state be called Zion when Mount Zion wasn’t going to be a part of it?

As the old quip goes, "you Turks protest against Armenia having Mount Ararat on their coat of arms, but look at your own flag, surely you aren't trying to lay claim to the moon itself?"

India, that is Bharat, shall be a Union of States.

The Hindi constitution begins with a "Bharat, as in India" to doubly drive home the order agnostic nature of those names.

"othering" non-Hindu groups

The original name is derived from the Indus = Sindhu = Hindi, and the the other option was Hindus-stan. Given that context, Bharat is easily the least Hindu of all 3 names.

Modi suggested - not calling them I.N.D.I.A but "Ghamandiya"; the Hindi word for arrogant.

Petty politics aside, that's a good comeback.

I don't know about other renamings, but India - Bharat - Hindustan have always been interchangeable to me. I avoid using Hindu-stan because it evokes analogies to our neighbor: Pakistan has used its name to erase all plurality within its borders.

Bharat is the natural name that comes out when speaking Hindi (or any Sanskrit derived language), and India is the one that comes naturally when speaking in English. That being said, when saying it out loud, 'Bharat' evokes a clearer sense of civilizational identity. 'India' on the other hand, feel untethered to the people it represents.

My prediction is that we continue using both terms as we always have. India will switch to calling itself Bharat in official events, but that's about it.

Interestingly the Irish did the inverse, it's considered offensive at worst and archaic at best to call the country Éire in English.

It's a weird one alright. Wikipedia goes into a surprising amount of length on why this is the case.

As far as I can tell "Éire" isn't offensive in itself, but can imply disrespect in the context of a long history of the British government using any term but 'Ireland' in official documents and treaties (Southern Ireland, the Irish Republic, the Republic of Ireland), and protesting when the country was addressed as 'Ireland' in EEC and UN meetings. Ireland's constitution used to claim the entire island so it makes sense why Unionists in Northern Ireland would push for the British government to avoid the unqualified name.

It's the Brits doing their subtly snobbish, disparaging thing again, and hiding it under "What? That's the name you lot picked!"

Imagine if they kept referring to "the thirteen united States of America" because that's what is in the Declaration of Independence.

As mentioned in the link above, it wasn't a subtle snobbish thing. The British insisted on disambiguating the country from the island by calling the country "Republic of Ireland" or "Eire" and the island "Ireland", because the country was promoting an irridentist claim on the British-ruled part of the island (i.e. Northern Ireland) that the British quite properly were not willing to play games with. De Valera didn't hide the fact that insisting on "Ireland" for both in international fora was part of a campaign to tar British rule in Northern Ireland as illegitimate. That the Irish objection to "Republic of Ireland" was made in bad faith is demonstrated by the Irish Government using "Republic of Ireland" on the rare occasions when they needed to disambiguate.

After the Good Friday Agreement, the Irish formally dropped their claim to Northern Ireland, and the British Government stopped trying to call the country anything other than "Ireland". As of the current year, British people calling Ireland "Eire" or (less so) "Republic of Ireland" is a dog whistle for opposition to to the GFA.

One is drawn to make comparisons with recent country renaming, the country of Cahit Arf.

For a moment I genuinely thought that some African country or whatever had named itself "Cahit Arf" and I somehow just hadn't noticed.

I hope this sort of things really takes off and we have to learn Chinese characters so we can correctly refer to China as 中国. Failing that, we should at least have the Basic Decency™ to refer to it by its rightful name: "The Middle Kingdom".

Another fun example of this is the Mormon Church, which gets persnickety when you fail to refer to it as the Jesus Christ Church of Latter Day Saints. As you see, they are a typical Christian denomination like any other.

I think Scott's strategy of surrendering when 70% of people use the new name is a decent way of going about things, but I'd personally fight a little longer, say to 90%. You may call it Myanmar, but it will always be Burma to me.

Now that you mention it, it is a bit odd that we still use the Roman slur for Deutschland. I guess when you lose two world wars to the almighty Anglo nobody cares about your culture.

It's not really a slur by modern understanding, though. "Germanisch" is widely used in german science as well to refer to just about everything descendant from germanic tribes.

My bigger gripe is that in german, the important "deutsch vs germanisch" distinction is very obvious linguistically, while the "german vs germanic" distinction is super awkward in english. "Deutschland/germany" is a specific country in middle europe, "germanisch/germanic" is an extremely large and diffuse group that can refer to the majority of the developed world depending on your criteria (for example, germanic languages includes the scandinavian group and english).

Another factor is that "Deutschland" not being the homeland of the Dutch would be incredibly confusing. Even more than it already is.

It's must less egregious then cases like Turkey or Thailand. At least the Dutch came from Deutschland and the Deutsch are still almost entirely descended from those original people.

Is it really any more confusing than Slovakia and Slovenia?

My general rule is to use the common English name of a place when speaking English, and to not agree to use a new name as long as there’s reason to dispute the neutrality of the name change. The first rule is about preventing confusion.

Not everyone is going to know what Bharat, Zhongguo or tlingan wo’ not everyone could identify those places. If I give the English names, then I’m communicating much better. Another benefit is that it avoids the fault of pretending at being sophisticated which a fair number of liberals especially love to do. It feels more knowledgeable to the speaker if they can say the name in a more native way, either by pronunciation or by using a native name. So saying México makes you sound more educated than the locals calling it Mexico. And it ends up, for me, coming off a bit snobbish like they’re to good to use normal standard names for things.

On the other hand, especially when it comes to politically charged territories, the names chosen and used can have pretty significant influence on the future direction of policy. Calling Taiwan by different names would have pretty serious implications in signaling your position on their status as an independent country. Taiwan, Formosa, Republic of China, and Chinese Taipei all refer to the same island, but if Joe Biden suddenly starts talking about Taiwan as The Republic of China, that’s pretty much saying that we recognize Taiwan as an independent nation. Likewise, if we suddenly start calling the island Chinese Taipei, we’re telling China we don’t recognize Taiwan as independent. It seems most reasonable to choose the most neutral term possible so that you don’t sneak in beliefs that you aren’t necessarily thinking about.

the fault of pretending at being sophisticated which a fair number of liberals especially love to do.

God forbid someone wants to look sophisticated. Next thing you know, they’ll be hanging around Internet forums, trying to explain how their outgroup is the real snobs.

I don’t care about just wanting to look sophisticated. But I think it’s a bit rich, especially when those same people haven’t ever learned anything about Bharat, for example, outside of what can be gleaned from travel videos, National Geographic, or the like.

It feels more knowledgeable to the speaker if they can say the name in a more native way, either by pronunciation or by using a native name.

That’s exactly the problem- literati get the pronunciation wrong with native names very frequently. Kyiv is pronounced ‘Ki-eev’ not ‘keev’. Bharat is pronounced with a sound that doesn’t even exist in English. Etc, etc.

If you can’t pronounce it just use the English name.

I do think the case of Taiwan is a pretty good example where using alternate terminology is just imprecise, and not more sophisticated.

Among the "main options" for positions to support:

  1. Status quo
  2. De facto separate self-governing
  3. Special administrative region
  4. De jure independence
  5. Unification under ROC (I would have thought implausible, but maybe people thought the same thing for Germany)
  6. Annexation under PRC

The term "Taiwan" is probably the most neutral term, though it could indicate support for options 1, 2, 3, or 4? The term "Formosa" alone could indicate support for options 1, 2, or 4?? Saying "A/The (New) Republic of Formosa" is probably unambiguously supportive of option 4. The term "Republic of China" could indicate support for options 1 or 5? Lastly, "Chinese Taipei" could indicate support for options 1, 3, or 6?

If my intent is not to signal support for any specific opinion, I think Taiwan is the best name to use. And the problem with choosing to use things that imply too much is that they can be used to undercut other positions. If I could somehow enforce on everyone that they must call Taiwan “Republic of China” and especially if I could silence anyone who disagreed, it then becomes hard to make the case that we shouldn’t back Republic of China because you lack the ability to outright deny the independence claim. Ukraine, early on, used this to their advantage by insisting on the proper spelling (Kyiv over the Russian version of Kiev) using Ukraine over The Ukraine, insisting that the only correct way to refer to the war was the Russian invasion of Ukraine over other variants like Russia-Ukraine war. By doing this, it’s a lot harder to point out things that go against the narrative set out.

This move to use Bharat in internationally visible context can be seen as normalizing and laying the ground work to a full-on name change. The motivation behind is by some commentators impugned to be Hindutva, the ideology of, in the opinion of these commentators, of "othering" non-Hindu groups. The logic being that India being an English word privileges English speaking-Indian, but since they lack an Asabiyyah, this isn't as dangerous affirming the Hindu name, empowring Hindus who do not lack it.

Instead of framing this as a Hindus vs Everyone Else kind of deal, in my eyes it's more emblematic of another major cultural divide in India, namely the North vs the South.

North India is majority Hindi speaking, whereas the southern states speak Tamil, Telegu and the like instead.

The latter have long been peeved about the BJP government's* tendency to name new projects/initiatives with Hindi terms, or outright rename the old commonly established English ones. This is seen as a form of cultural imperialism or at least chauvinism, since it alienates people from the south who might not be fluent or even conversant in Hindi.

*To be fair, the INC did plenty of Hindi-washing too, the BJP just leans into it more and unapologetically so.

English, while a foreign language, is still the lingua franca for educated Indians, and while Hindi has become far more common in the youth born of non-Hindi speaking parents, many prefer to use a "neutral" language instead of one that implicitly preferences one regional language, which despite what some might claim, is far from universal.

Of course there's a bit of the 'ol alienation of Muslims afoot, but this is a topic that pisses off even the orthodox Hindu majority down south.

As far as I'm concerned, Bharat just sounds way worse than India, and there's no real reason for a switch beyond inflating Modi's ego.

Isn't the name for India in most southern languages also Bharat or something close to it?

It is, but they usually don't refer to it as anything but India. Bharat is more common up north.

I am South Indian (from Karnataka to be specific).

India and Bharat are both equally palatable to me or anyone else I know, though Bharat (or in Kannada Bharata) is rarely used out of formal contexts.

I suspect that in the South Indian context the name will only cause indigestion for Periyarists from Tamil Nadu. Others won't really care.

Edit: In Karnataka, the few people who do care, namely Kannada activists in the Old Mysore region only have the issue that Bharata as it is written in Sanskrit is a more accurate name with Bharat being a bastardization of the name by Hindi.

I see, thanks for clearing that up!

I had a conversation over the weekend with a friend that is now compelled to write "Türkiye" in all formal documentation and I must confess that I'm absolutely baffled by why anyone is agreeing to play along with the petty power games of renaming the country. Many, many countries have different local names than what they're referred to as internationally or in other languages, and pretty much no one cares about these distinctions as anything other than petty provincialism. I will be very surprised if the residents of Deutschland start taking offense to being called Germany, or if the English decide to call the pasta homeland Italia. I have no intention of demanding that Mexicans who say "Estados Unidos" knock it off and learn some goddamned English. Nippon doesn't usually go by Nippon internationally, and if it did, that would still just be a weird Anglicization of the actual Japanese.

I know I'm going to look like a total boomer, and a low-class one at that, but I will still be writing Turkey and India for the foreseeable future, along with ordering Chicken Key-Ehv rather than Chicken Keeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeev.

People go along because it makes them feel less like a low-brow hick when they use the anti-colonial native language name for the place. It’s a mostly free virtue signal, and a way to look down on those bores who still insist on using the English names. Those going along with the name changes in Bharat or Türkiye don’t care what they call us.

I still call it Constantinople.

What's wrong with Byzantium?

Sailing to Byzantium BY WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

I

That is no country for old men. The young In one another's arms, birds in the trees, —Those dying generations—at their song, The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas, Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long Whatever is begotten, born, and dies. Caught in that sensual music all neglect Monuments of unageing intellect.

II

An aged man is but a paltry thing, A tattered coat upon a stick, unless Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing For every tatter in its mortal dress, Nor is there singing school but studying Monuments of its own magnificence; And therefore I have sailed the seas and come To the holy city of Byzantium.

III

O sages standing in God's holy fire As in the gold mosaic of a wall, Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre, And be the singing-masters of my soul. Consume my heart away; sick with desire And fastened to a dying animal It knows not what it is; and gather me Into the artifice of eternity.

IV

Once out of nature I shall never take My bodily form from any natural thing, But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make Of hammered gold and gold enamelling To keep a drowsy Emperor awake; Or set upon a golden bough to sing To lords and ladies of Byzantium Of what is past, or passing, or to come.

If you add two spaces at tend of a line, that will cause a line break in Markdown.

Very useful for poetry.

Thank you, I struggle with the formatting on here because I'm sure when I post that I've got it right, then it looks wonky once it's posted and not in preview.

Sailing to Constantinople is one off my favourite tracks from the Assassins Creed Revelations soundtrack.

No you can't go back

It’s like a password reset—you could do Constantinople1 though.

All I see is “***************”!

These kind of petty power games have a long long history, though. They’re also more appealing to countries that feel like they need to throw their weight around. Japan and the US and Germany don’t.

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