Why Countries Change Their Names (Endonyms vs Exonyms)

As of 2019, the 28-year name dispute between Greece and the country known as the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia was finally resolved. The dispute arose in 1991 after the breakup of Yugoslavia when the country declared its independence as the Republic of Macedonia. Greece disagreed with Since Macedonia was a historically Greek kingdom and in fact there is still a region of Greece today called Macedonia, an agreement was reached for the country to

change

its name despite many protests from locals towards the Republic of North Macedonia, the name

change

was made in part to maintain peace with its neighbor, which in turn would allow the country to begin as a session of the EU and NATO membership in both had always been blocked by Greece, It turns out that changing the country's name is actually not that uncommon.

As you might expect, a name is used for identification and this importance cannot be underestimated. That's why so many nations have spent so much time internally debating what

their

name should be and occasionally fighting externally over it, so what other reasons can a country have for changing? its name, an answer to this question can be seen in a name change that took place shortly before that of North Macedonia In 2018, the African nation formerly known as Swaziland changed its name to s WA tini, marking the 50th anniversary of the name of the country and its dependents. The change was made in part to avoid confusion with this somewhat similar sounding country of Switzerland, but more importantly it was made to bring the country's English name closer to the country's original Swasey name and that since the country went from a exonym to an ending in For him, an exonym is an external name for a geographical location, while a final name is internal.

This type of change from exonym to engineer has been especially common in

countries

trying to distance themselves from the colonial past, particularly in Africa where the process is known as Africanization, there are several examples of this, such as Northern and Southern Rhodesia, which is became Zambia and Zimbabwe, respectively, the French Sudan that became Mali, as well as the Gold Coast Colony that renamed itself after independence and moved to Asia, is another country that sought to get away from the remains of the colonialism Burma, sorry Myanmar or Burma, this is a changed name, it was a bit more controversial and is not universally recognized, the country gained its independence from the British in 1948 as the union of Burma. and in 1962 adopted an ideology known as the Burmese Way to Socialism after a coup d'état led by Nene when he was chief of staff of the Armed Forces.

This period of the country's history was marked by totalitarianism, military rule and isolationism and in the late 1980s, the country found itself in an economic crisis, this was further exacerbated by Knee still in charge when the decision of withdrawing most of the newly issued banknotes without prior notice or the possibility of exchanging them, leaving only 45 and 90 banknotes, wiping out the savings of millions of Burmese people, why did he do this because the name of the number was his number from the Lucky me and those were the only two bills that were divisible by name. Yes, I'm serious, this contributed to the 8888 uprising because it started on August 8, 1988 and ultimately led to my overthrow.

When it seems that 8 was a lucky number, the name of the military hunter led by Sol Mao, a sim control of the country, the following year, the government declared that the new name of the country would be the republic of the union of Myanmar, since that Burma was considered a persistent vestige. of colonialism, although Burma Myanmar actually both found the same ethological roots and in reality both refer to the same thing, the majority ethnic group in the country, the bomber people, the only difference between the two is the formality of the words; Burma is considered more colloquial while Myanmar is more official and formal, so the Long government promised free elections but rejected the results after they did not get the desired result.

This, coupled with the fact that it was heavily involved in a wide range of human rights abuses, resulted in very few

countries

and organizations watching the election. the name change is legitimate, of course, today the country has a new government and Burma and Myanmar are used somewhat interchangeably; in fact, the country's own state councilor has even stated that foreigners are free to use any of the

names

to move forward with the country and of course, it is not just Due to colonialism, a country may prefer others to refer to to him differently than they always have.

An example of this would be the country of Iran, which was historically known as Persia in the West. The name Persia first came to the West through Greek. ancient Persian word Parsa which refers to an area here which is known today as the FAR well. The main ethnic group of Iran came from this region, which is why it has been used as the most widely spoken language in Iran. Farsi. The name Iran has been used for the region of the country as a whole. for perhaps up to 2000 years by the local population in 1935 the Shah of Iran politely requested the other country to be fair to the country like Iran instead of Persia now some

names

don't necessarily change but the way we interpret the names of the original languages ​​enter ours.

This was the case with many Chinese place names and why we know that we refer to the country's capital as Beijing and not Peking as it was previously known in English. Other examples include Can Torn to Guan Dong and Nanking to Nanjing. The changes are due to the new romanization system for Chinese characters known as Hanyu pinyin. The oldest transliterations come from what is known as postal romanization, a system that was developed by the imperial post office of the Qing dynasty in the early 20th century into a related but related system. Slightly different scenario: the Czech Republic did not know that the official name changes, but was designated with the foreign short name Czechia.

This is because the country has always used its official title and has never had a common short name in English. This is quite unusual. since very few countries use

their

official title, take France for example, its official name as French Republic, but of course in all the most efficient circumstances it is simply called France, likewise there is Russia, the Russian Federation and esli, the Italian Republic, etc. While the Czech Republic remains the official name of the country, the government has been trying to encourage others to refer to it in everyday conversation as Czechia, which is a translation of the Czech name for the Czech country.

Similarly, there are cases where countries that are normally referred to by translating their name want to know if the official name in their own language is probably the most obvious example of this would be the country commonly known in English as Côte d'Ivoire. In 1986 they requested that the international community be the country's official French name Côte d'Ivoire and that the name not be translated into any other language, of course many people still do. There is also Cape Verde, which is now called Cape Verde, which is obviously a much minor change given that Verdi was already the language of the country. from the Portuguese meaning green, finally, the small Southeast Asian nation commonly known in English as East Timor also recently became a dentist and it is clear that it should be referred to by its official part-Portuguese name of Timor Leste in all languages, strangely enough as it may seem, although the word team derives from Indonesian.

The language also means East, so the country was actually known as a tautological name that literally means East East, of course there are many countries whose names come from different places in different languages ​​that have made no effort to change this. Germany is a good example of the country. is called Deutschland in Germany deutschland derives from an old High German word that originally meant "people", the word "really dead" came into English as Dutch, however this became associated with the Germanic peoples with whom the English had more contact. This is why the people of the Netherlands are called Dutch in English Germany, derived from the Latin Germania, which was used to refer to the tribes who lived on the other side of the reins in the days of Julius Caesar.

Variations of this are used in many other languages, including Italian, Russian and Romanian, in some other languages. Referring to Germany by variations of allamani, of course, there are many other etymologies for the country as well, but these are the three most common. The reason for this is that Germany as a region, whether ethnic or geographic, existed for thousands of years before Germany was unified. The state was born, the name used in a given place is, at least in part, a relaxation of when or from where the idea of ​​Germany entered a given language. Germany is by no means unique and the fact that it is in the name differs from the various excellences.

By what countries they refer to them, there are many other examples. Greece is called Hellas and Greek, actually in English also officially, at least the official title of the country is Hellenic Republic, but obviously it is almost always known as Greece, which comes from Latin, but this etymology is China is also a known exonym in Chinese as Zhang wall which literally means central state or metal kingdom, as it was first used in the time of the oriental jewel dynasty. The process of changing a country name is no small task with an almost unlimited number of things. that might need changes road signs official documents passports textbooks not to mention every map of the world of course at the end of the day the name of a country is important to the people who are represented by it if the name of our country is consistent with the identity of the citizens makes it much easier for them to feel like they belong Now stacked within the names of the edges and eggs, you may wonder how the continents got their names Bolivar, nor are most of them actually eggs in the hymns, but what if they weren't looking? to that same question as a channel I started watching a few months ago and who you should definitely start washing too if you're already doing atlas Proulx, these videos were made as a collaboration between the two of us and in fact, this very topic was His idea, so which go watch his related video and then Benj watch all those other videos too while you do it and as always, thanks for watching and I'll see you next time.