Comment by jones89176 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jones89176 | Hacker News Reader

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"Following an official letter submitted to the United Nations by the Republic of Türkiye, the country's name has been officially changed to Türkiye at the UN.

UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said that a letter had been received on June 1 from the Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Cavuşoğlu addressed to Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, requesting the use of “Türkiye” instead of “Turkey” for all affairs." [1]

"Foreign Minister Cavuşoğlu said in a tweet that the move would "increase our country's brand value".

The country’s English language public broadcaster TRT World said, the move would help to disassociate the country’s image from the large bird of the same name."[2]

[1] https://turkiye.un.org/en/184798-turkeys-name-changed-t%C3%B... [2] https://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/turkey-or-turkiye-why-th...

> help to disassociate the country’s image from the large bird of the same name.

So easily done - what? You are going to roast a whole country? You are going on holiday in huge bird?

So what? The UN does not have the power to redefine what words mean in the English language, and neither does the Republic of Turkey. If Germany submitted an official letter somewhere purporting to change its English name to Deutschland, you should also not listen to them.

Why the hostility? It's not like they changed the name of the Black Sea to the Sea of Turkey. It's not a "fuck you" move. Just keep spelling it the old way if you care for some reason.

> Why the hostility?

Because the attempted name change is being done purely to stroke the ego of a right-wing authoritarian nationalist strongman. Attempts by such people to remake language according to their whims should be resisted whenever possible.

> It's not like they changed the name of the Black Sea to the Sea of Turkey.

I'm sure Erdogan would do just that if there were any realistic possibility that anybody would actually follow it. The "Türkiye" name change is as much as he thinks he can get away with.

You are free to use their old name, and others are free to use their new name.

You could even make up a name if you want.

Exactly my point. And it doesn't apply only to English. There are 200+ languages and 8+ billion people in the world, and none of them is obliged to change the way they talk because someone doesn't like what a specific word means in one of those languages.

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