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Culture War Roundup for the week of September 11, 2023

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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.