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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:
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 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).
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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.
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Is it really any more confusing than Slovakia and Slovenia?
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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.
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.
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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.
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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:
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.
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