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Comment by mensetmanusman | Hacker News Reader

The name can still be Turkey in English, kind of like how we can say Germany and not Deutschland…

Please let's not go there here.

From https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html: "Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents."

Or we can respect the name they prefer, since it’s important enough that they requested international recognition. I’m pretty loosey goosey with my own name and don’t mind if other people are, but I respect when other people don’t feel the same way. I don’t see any reason to insist on disregarding it for a whole country.

Nobody will care about it after Erdoğan is gone. We've been called that for a long time and it never really bothered anybody. We call India "Hindistan" (land of turkeys) ourselves and nobody seems to see the irony there.

You have the cause and effect reversed. Hindustan doesn't mean land of turkeys, it is that the bird is named after the country (Hindustan is a semi official name for India, ultimately both names come from the Indus river) in some languages. In my understanding it is because the bird is actually from the new world, so the existing cultures made up / didn't know where the bird was supposed to be from, and called it "bird from India" in some cases.

I didn't mean it that way but if you look at the name and all the other -stans that's how it translates. It's quite fascinating how various countries name the bird. Another similar example in Turkish is the one for Egypt. I believe it's Misr in Arabic. In Turkish it's Mısır, which is the word for 'corn'. I am not aware of them complaining about Turks calling their country corn. :)

Czechia (formerly Czech Republic) is also trying to change their English-language name; in both cases seems like a reasonable request and worth respecting, at least when it comes at low cost (I wouldn't rush to reprint maps or anything just for this, but am happy to use the terms in new materials including typing it in comments.)

Language is too complicated to wrangle. I don’t care if they add their new names to urban dictionary, but surely it just causes confusion to change definitions under the feet of billions of speakers.

I guess you still say Ceylon in stead of Sri Lanka?

Or Greece and not Hellas (which in itself, is an anglicized version of the Greek name, Elláda)...

It's Ελλάς.

That's the older form. In modern Greek it's Ελλάδα, anglicized as Hellada.

Turkey has been standardizing its name in every language as Türkiye https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkey#Official_name_change

Kind of a hopeless endeavor, Chinese doesn’t even have the characters.

And we should ignore that because we speak English and they don’t.

The word isn't an English word... Do you call Beijing "Peking" as well? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_of_Beijing

Sure it is. When you take a French course they have you learn the name "Etats-Unis" (or "Angleterre" or "Australie" or wherever you're from) as a French word along with all the others.

Yes. The name “Beijing” is for people writing in pinyin, which is not a transliteration designed for English speakers. English speakers should use Yale romanization or the traditional postal romanization for well known places.

I called it Pékin for years and as far as I know the pronunciation is closer to the Chinese name than Beijing

It’s not. Beijing is pretty accurate as most English speakers say it (except for the tones), although I often hear people do really weird things with the j. The b and j sounds in Mandarin are not the same as in English, but they are closer than p or k to my ear.

Youtube link: https://youtu.be/_GE4dkpOdPw?t=80

Basically, say it in the most naïve way (for an American English speaker). Trying to pronounce the 'j' like it's a French word is wrong.

Only when I’m ordering their local style duck!

Ironically, Turks call it "pekin".

Yes! People in other countries can have their own ideas about their country’s name should be in English, but if they don’t have a large English speaking population (eg India), they don’t get a vote on what we say in English.

It's my understanding that the .gov requests that name in English, and usa.gov is respecting it.

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