Comment by hollerith
4 days ago
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?
We don't give a damn. But the bureau of tourism does, that's how all the 'Holland' nonsense got started because they though 'the Netherlands' is too hard for the tourists. Ironically, 'Holland' only refers to a small fraction of 'The Netherlands'.