Comment by closewith
4 days ago
No, you're completely wrong. We - as an international society - generally accept the name that countries would like to be called, even in our own languages.
In English, we say: Sri Lanka, not Ceylon, Burkina Faso, not the Republic of Upper Volta, Botswana, not the Bechuanaland Protectorate, Bangladesh, not East Pakistan, The Netherlands, not Holland, Thailamd, not Siam, Etc
Colonialism perfectly sums up the arrogant attitude that you can decide for them what another country will be called.
So Americans/Irish/English/Scots/Welsh/Australians are all being "colonialist" when they refer to Wien as 'Vienna', Čechy as 'Bohemia', Abertawe as 'Swansea' and La Manche as 'The English Channel'?
Do you know how ridiculous you sound?
Sadly, this kind of illogical and undiscerning paranoia has invaded school curricula and universities as an overreaction to imperialism. It's part of the "hermeneutic of suspicion"; behind everything lurks an insidious evil intent, whether it is self-serving power and a will to dominate others, racism, colonialism, misogyny, or whatever. Those things exist, absolutely, but minds steeped in the hermeneutic of suspicion have one track minds. They read this threat into nearly everything.
Curiously, they don't seem to notice it in the workings of the very hermeneutic itself.
> Do you know how ridiculous you sound?
Do you? Has Vienna or Swansea asked you to change how you refer to them? If they did, would you? If not, why not?
According to your logic, the Germans should harangue the Azerbaijanis till they change "Almaniya" (the word for Germany in their language, which probably derives from the French "Allemagne") to "Deutschland".
The Finns call Germany "Saksa", those Finno-imperialists!
The Poles call it "Niemcy".
Exactly. And in the case of "Niemcy" above (which ultimately comes from the proto-Slavic "*němьcь", meaning "mute"), it would be ridiculous to claim that Poles have some kind of colonial relationship with the Germans. If anything, the reverse has been true in history: it was the Germans who engaged in colonial politics toward Poland, including the enactment of cultural policies that were designed to ethnically cleanse and germanize the country.
Yes, Germany could request that all of the above rename Germany in their respective languages and at least the EU nations would.
This has already happened quite recently as the Netherlands requested that countries moved to translations of Netherlands when referring to their country (as opposed to Holland and translations thereof) and all the EU nations did. This was in 2019.
So if Germany so desired, they could make those requests and they would be honoured. In a few decades, the old names would be as antiquated as Rhodesia, Burma, or Zaire are now.
Interesting. Do Brits (still) call the inhabitants of the Netherlands the Dutch like Americans do?
If so, what does the Netherlands think of that?
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