[gacgacgac]

Yes? The country is named Türkiye, we should use that name?

The etymology here is interesting and has a looooong history. The country has officially been named Türkiye for over a century.

[jnwatson]

And Germany's official name is "Bundesrepublik Deutschland". I get to call it Germany though.

[olalonde]

Germany's official English name is Germany[0].

[0] https://unterm.un.org/unterm2/en/view/745bbc2a-fc50-4b94-bb9...

[gacgacgac]

Has Germany said they should be called Deutschland by English speakers?

[IncreasePosts]

Is it a right of any nation to assert what other nations call it? Can America ask China to stop calling them 美国 (Měiguó) and call them the USA?

The problem with the turkey rebranding is that it was a mere orthographic update, but it is using orthography that is very non standard(whatever that means for English), including using a diacritic rarely seen in English.

I could get behind it more if they completely changed the name, like a when Swaziland switched to eswatini. But for now, you can pry turkey from my cold dead hands

[gacgacgac]

Yes? It's obviously the case that countries can ask this?

We can choose not to do it, I guess, but place names change all the time. Istanbul vs Constantinople. New York vs New Amsterdam. Myanmar vs Burma. Czechia vs Czech Republic. Swaziland vs Eswatini.

[triceratops]

> But for now, you can pry turkey from my cold dead hands

Big fan of Thanksgiving foods I see.

(Do you see the real problem? Lowercasing a proper noun that has another meaning when lowercased. Turkey/Türkiye is just the cherry on top)

[verve_rat]

Yes, compare Czech Republic-> Czechia. No problem typing that out, no problem updating my mental map of the world.

Frankly I dispute that Türkiye can be the English name given it contains a non-English letter.

[gacgacgac]

I was gearing up to suggest that diaeresis very absolute valid English, but dug in a bit. It's not just a u with a diacritic. Ü is a separate letter in Turkish, with a more "ooh" or "ouh" like sound. TIL.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diaeresis_(diacritic)

[SideburnsOfDoom]

> if they completely changed the name, like a when Swaziland switched to eswatini.

It's "Eswatini" with a capital letter and no, it's not a complete change. In both cases the word means the place of the Swazi/Swati people. If you're not aware that Southern African languages use prefixes such as "e-" as well as suffixes (like e.g. the suffix "-land" in English) then I guess it's harder to recognise the word stem. But they are related terms, not a "complete change".

1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swazi_people

[olalonde]

It's governed through the United Nations[0].

[0] https://unterm.un.org/unterm2/country

[patates]

If you need an example, look at the Peking->Beijing transition.

[suddenlybananas]

https://tr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pekin Turkish still uses the old term. Why should I change my language to suit them if they won't do it for others.

[gacgacgac]

That attitude is, frankly, pretty misanthropic. "Why should I do anything for anyone who doesn't do it for me first" is how you get nowhere.

So here's your why: because they asked you to and you are better at it than they are. If you need smug superiority, you could use that too, I guess.

People change their names and nick names all the time. I don't go and check every value of theirs before I use their new name. It's really not that complicated.

[triceratops]

But not germany.

[marky1991]

This sort of language policing is pointless.

[triceratops]

I mean it matters here. "turkey" and "Turkey" legitimately have different meanings.

[marky1991]

So does 'mark' and 'Mark', that doesn't mean I correct everyone (or myself) every time they/I type my name without using a capital letter.

[triceratops]

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48388057

[BigGreenJorts]

Ok but are there Wired articles about you?

[tracerbulletx]

Words come from the people who use them. The name for a place is in the context of the language and culture that is using the word to reference it.

[suddenlybananas]

I will call them Turkiye when they call Greece Hellas, Germany Deutschland and China Zhongguo in Turkish.

[gacgacgac]

Have those countries made those requests?

[suddenlybananas]

https://tr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pekin Turkish doesn't seem to respect the wishes of the Chinese government with regard to Beijing.

[suddenlybananas]

You and I both know that Turkey would never do such a thing.

[triceratops]

Regular Turkish people may not. The Turkish government, in official diplomatic communications, most certainly would if those countries requested it.

I don't think we are required to start calling it Turkey in the vernacular. Regular Turkish people don't have to change their names for countries in their language either. I only pointed out Turkey/Türkiye in my original post to head off smart-asses. Using proper casing for the name is much more important.