10 ms·
UN registers 'Türkiye' as new country name to replace 'Turkey'
- chottocharaii 4y agoI wonder if this will finally prompt a change in the name on Wikipedia
- jillesvangurp 4y agoOr in the relevant ISO standards. I remember when Eritrea gained its own iso code a few years ago. That required us to upgrade a few things to handle new iso codes showing up in data sets. It takes surprisingly long for this stuff to trickle through to all the relevant systems.
- Freak_NL 4y agoWikipedia will be the absolute last to change the name due to their policies on names and a cohort of Wikipedians who really hate it when peoples/institutes/nations insist on deciding on their own names. Beijing got through back in 2008 or so (and Mumbai and Kolkata in 2003), because editors were apparently more inclined to be reasonable back then. The smaller the place, the more likely old, nearly unused names persist. Dutch Wikipedia is the last place on the internet where a local village is called by a name no longer used for over thirty years. The article name cannot be changed (any change will be reverted within hours). The village, like most in the bilingual province of Frisia, has a Frisian and a Dutch name, but in the nineties the Dutch one was amended to match the Frisian one by dropping a 'w' at the end. Since then signage and use (Dutch language newspapers and other media, local websites, official use as well as local use) have followed and the name is decidedly, and verifiably, just that one name. But the article name on the Dutch Wikipedia cannot be changed no matter what references you bring (because these get discarded because 'government sources don't count', and 'local use just means they use the Frisian name in Dutch'), and even on the English Wikipedia where at least the article name is correct, the old name is listed as its 'Dutch' name. Wikipedia has policies about names set in stone, and on the Dutch version those policies refer to a list published by an official Dutch language institute. That single reference lists the old name in a table listing Dutch and Frisian names for places, and so Wikipedia refuses to bend (which is convenient if you are a Wikipedian who dislikes our provincial minority language). Wikipedia has, unfortunately, quite a few examples of such cognitive dissonance.
- coderdd 4y agoA turn-key solution to avoid confusing turkey and Türkiye.
- thematrixturtle 4y agoSo many puns to gobble up!
- mjevans 4y agoWell, OK, but will the accept the old version as an alias forever?
- mateo1 4y agoAre there any other countries with diacritics in their official latin name?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- asveikau 4y agoCôte d'Ivoire? What do you mean "official latin name"? Seems to me the only Latin alphabet language without diacritics is English, but then we do use them in English for certain borrowed words (façade, piñata) or fringe uses (coöperate). I wonder how these are handled in a context like the UN where multiple languages are used.
- teekert 4y agoHmm we Dutch call that Ivoorkust.
- faho 4y agoAnd in english it's "Ivory Coast", in german it's "Elfenbeinküste". None of those is an official name tho, they are quite insistent that's exclusively the french one: >Therefore, in April 1986, the government declared that Côte d'Ivoire (or, more fully, République de Côte d'Ivoire) would be its formal name for the purposes of diplomatic protocol, and has since officially refused to recognize any translations from French to other languages in its international dealings. (from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivory_Coast#Etymology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivory_Coast#Etymology)
- yread 4y agoAt least the coast-kuste and elefant hints are there. Other names are a complete mystery Pobřeží slonoviny Pantai Gading Norsunluurannikko
- nonamesleft 4y ago
- egeozcan 4y agoWell, turkey (the bird) is called hindi (Indian) in Turkish, maybe change that too? But seriously, I'm from T... Türkiye (?) and I don't think the name confusion is a big deal, but I'm not impartial as I really love turkeys :) This will create a lot of confusion in bureaucracy for no reason I'm afraid.
- netsharc 4y agoAnd kalkun in several languages, from "Calicut", a city in India. I always thought it was Calcutta, but Wikipedia says otherwise..
- Freak_NL 4y ago> Calcutta Kolkata, just as Bombay is now Mumbai (since 1995), and similarly, how Peking is now Beijing. In that light the name change for Türkiye is not really novel or unreasonable. A growing number of countries are of the opinion that they should have some say on the exonyms used in English, especially when that language is used as the lingua franca at bodies like the UN.
- 908B64B197 4y agoIt just makes sense in the airplane and internet age to revisit these names. I knew the names "Pekin" and "Pondicherry" were (bad) attempts at Romanizing the local pronunciation. Since this was done in the 1600's, there was no way to have a local native speaker record himself saying the correct name and replay it back for Europeans ears.
- Zach_the_Lizard 4y ago"Peking" approximates how it may have been pronounced at one point, but the pronunciation has changed, making that approximation even worse than it started with. For the record, not all languages use "Beijing" either: pekín is common in Spanish. Speakers of non tonal languages are not about to learn the tone system for a truly authentic pronunciation of Beijing. And if they did, should they also learn the Cantonese place names and tone system where it is common, in addition to the Mandarin ones? And the Chinese, for that matter, have a rather...interesting approach to spelling and pronouncing foreign place names. Different languages have different sounds. There are some English place names that are hard for someone from Japan to pronounce and vice versa. Layer in multi lingual countries and regions, regional accents, different writing systems, . multiple local place names, and political concerns and the problem becomes even harder. Until we all speak the One True Language, we will forever have those impedence mismatches, and harmonizing place names will be doomed to fail.
- isodev 4y agoBut the dictator leading Türkiye remains unchanged.
- Guthur 4y agoI suppose on the plus side it's easy to know who it is, in some countries it's impossible to know who is actually in charge.
- rob74 4y agoI'm waiting for the requests from Hungary to be henceforth only called "Magyarország" and from China to be called "Zhōnghuá Rénmín Gònghéguó".
- nikanj 4y agoI'm very surprised if the request from China comes with a western alphabet. PS: In Vancouver, they've been experimenting with a return to historic place names. For example, šxʷƛ̓ənəq Xwtl’e7énk Square (aka the art gallery plaza) https://vancouver.ca/people-programs/plaza-naming-project.aspx https://vancouver.ca/people-programs/plaza-naming-project.as...
- sshine 4y agoIt'd be funny if it was considered rude to not refer to China in writing as 中华人民共和国. > PS: In Vancouver, they've been experimenting with a return to historic place names. For example, šxʷƛ̓ənəq Xwtl’e7énk Square (aka the art gallery plaza) For those who are curious about the "7", this is the ASCII-fication of the modifier letter called glottal stop (Unicode: ˀ): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glottal_stop_(letter) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glottal_stop_(letter) used by the Squamish people: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squamish_language https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squamish_language The effort to revitalize the Squamish language has been ongoing since the 1980s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squamish_language#Use_and_language_revitalization_efforts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squamish_language#Use_and_lang... (Also, I'm not Canadian, but I found this character looking for some weird exception to "What is a letter?" when answering a StackOverflow question: https://stackoverflow.com/a/52644458/235908 https://stackoverflow.com/a/52644458/235908)
- 908B64B197 4y ago> For those who are curious about the "7", this is the ASCII-fication of the modifier letter called glottal stop (Unicode: ˀ): Why not just use the apostrophe "ʻ" as they do in Hawaii?
- cardiffspaceman 4y ago
- emmelaich 4y ago"Ain't nobody's business but the Turks" I suppose.[0] Not sure what to compare it to, but it'd be weird to have to refer to Germany / Allemagne / ... as Deutschland everywhere. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Istanbul_(Not_Constantinople) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Istanbul_(Not_Constantinople)
- hrrsn 4y agoWhy is it weird to use the correct name of a country?
- golemotron 4y agoBecause there is no correct name.
- graeme 4y agoWould you believe some countries have more than one name? Switzerland has four official languages and four different names. Even Turkey has multiples languages which presumably refer to the country in different ways.
- ilikehurdles 4y agoHave you always referred to Japan as Nihon, Croatia as Hrvatska, Austria as Österreich, and generally avoided the translated forms of country names of every country[1]? Every language has its own approach to writing and pronouncing the names of other parts of the world. English is no exception. "Correct" is whatever the speakers of the language use in reality, not what an authority prescribes. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_country_names_in_various_languages https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_country_names_in_vario...
- eternalban 4y agoThis is simply about what the United Nations (not you, not me) calls a member state. For example "Germany" is the official name of that sovereign entity as far as UN is concerned. Previously there were 2 of them, one officially named as "The Federal Republic of Germany", and the other "German Democratic Republic". Also see: "On 17 May 2016 the Permanent Mission of the Czech Republic to the United Nations informed the UN that the short name to be used for the country is Czechia." https://www.un.org/en/about-us/member-states/czechoslovakia https://www.un.org/en/about-us/member-states/czechoslovakia
- azifali 4y agoThe Ottoman traders brought the "turkey" bird from the Americas to trade.. ultimately embarrassing the modern day Turkey enough to force change its name.
- egeozcan 4y agoOttomans took it as an insult when called Turks and avoided Turks in their upper echelons particularly after 14th century. Funny how they scored one last point like this. Disclaimer: I'm of Turkish origin and I still find it very funny.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- afroisalreadyin 4y agoAm I supposed to tell people I'm from Türkiye from now on? Will be fun explaining to them it's not a silly joke, but the new official name of the country. Although you know what, it might lead to some good party banter.
- Freak_NL 4y agoYou're not supposed to do anything (well, strictly speaking, I guess that depends on the whim of your autocratic government), because language is use. You can call it Turkey if that works for you (and most will for a long time). Depending on the context you can choose to be correct (or pedantic), or just casual. If you are talking to some tourists who struggle with English, you would use 'Turkey' to avoid making the communication harder than it needs to be; if you are in charge of making those neat desktop country name signs at a diplomatic meating though… In five years time it may well be accepted to write 'Türkiye' in a table of countries with some values in some paper or article, or may be not. Such are the vagueries of applied language.
- afroisalreadyin 4y agoJust kidding, I'm not changing the way I call the country, only maybe as a joke. What the Erdogan foreign ministry is doing is a silly diversion from the general shitshow, not even Turks themselves (or a large majority of them) take this seriously.
- Andrew_nenakhov 4y agoI always found it silly when countries insist to be called differently in foreign languages. Imagine Germans doing that!
- Ekaros 4y agoI always find it even more silly and matronising and insulting that other countries don't adopt the way country calls itself. If that one would be relatively simple and easy to do.
- Andrew_nenakhov 4y agoYeah, right. Why stop at insisting on calling China "Zhōnghuá Rénmín Gònghéguó" [0]? Clearly, all foreigners should properly call it 中国! [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31591852 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31591852
- jhgb 4y agoYou find it "silly" that other languages with their own rules don't adopt phrases which may be impossible to use within those languages? For example in the Czech language there's nothing "relatively simple and easy to do" about using "Turkey" or "Türkiye" in Czech sentences since it's impossible to inflect these words using Czech case suffixes, so the official name of the country in Czech is "Turecko" simply so that you could actually use it in sentences without getting a brain aneurysm.
- dotancohen 4y agoUN priorities are all wrong. The UN is concerned with renaming Turkey, but they have yet to address the Hungary.
- aorth 4y agoCurious how long it will take the iso-codes project https://salsa.debian.org/iso-codes-team/iso-codes https://salsa.debian.org/iso-codes-team/iso-codes to get updated. This package is used by country libraries in many programming languages and systems because it provides XML and JSON versions of relevant standards like ISO 3166-1 (countries and territories), ISO 3166-2 (subdivisions), etc. For systems that rely on country data it is better to use ISO 3166-1 Alpha2 or Alpha3 codes because those don't change as often and don't have pesky issues with articles, diacritics, and cumbersome official names.
- mojuba 4y agoThere's one inconvenience with country names with non ASCII-7 characters: country drop-down lists. They are so long you almost always start typing the name first. If you are looking for, say, a hotel in Turkey (now Turkiye) you don't necessarily have the keyboard layout to readily type ü. In fact country lists are probably one of the most annoying unsolved problems in UI to date. Especially where you are asked for your phone number and the country code is a drop-down. Seriously, how is finding an item in a 200+ list easier than typing 1-3 digits? And especially if the web site is in a foreign language and you don't even know what your country is called in that language? (Been in this situation in France once, had to urgently sign up on a web site with my UK phone number that I had at the time, ended up googling what the UK is called in French just because the web site required my phone number!)
- Fatnino 4y agoCountry drop downs have many low hanging improvements possible but nobody seems to do them. For example: put the 4-5 most populous countries at the top of the list. Or: make an effort to guess what country the user is from and float that to the top. Instead I'm usually left to scroll down to the 'U's and I always overshoot.
- mojuba 4y agoHere is another: just a text box where you start typing in any language, whatever character set/keyboard Latin or not, and it brings you the closest matches. You don't need to see the full list of countries just to select one of them. A menu with 200+ items (let alone localization problems) is just so anti-UI, how come we accepted this as a norm?
- Tagbert 4y agoMost of those lists do jump to the matching names as you type.
- bmn__ 4y ago> If you are looking for, say, a hotel in Turkey (oops, Turkiye) you don't necessarily have the keyboard layout to readily type ü. This falls into the realm of imagined problems. One can simply type `u` and skip backward 3 items (Uganda → Tuvalu → Turkmenistan).
- ilikehurdles 4y agoThis is beyond weird. Where does this convention apply? Maps? Casual language? International diplomacy only? Should the Deutsch refer to Griechenland as the Ελληνική Δημοκρατία, or Frankreich as France? Does this mean they can demand the rest of the English world to stop calling München as Munich and Köln as Cologne?
- mojuba 4y agoI tend to use the original German, Italian, Spanish, French place names even when speaking English in fact. I don't know why, I like it that way. Aren't Köln, Munich [edit München], Zürich, Venezia, Firenze beautiful names?
- graeme 4y agoMunich is the English word. The Germans say München
- mojuba 4y agoOops, you are right!
- ilikehurdles 4y agoDon't you mean the original Deutsch, Italiano, Español, and Française names?
- mojuba 4y agoI get the joke but no. Place names are funny because some of them sound the same in foreign languages, while others are close but not quite the same.
- ilikehurdles 4y agoIt’s not a joke. I’m trying to make sense of your logic and whether there is any consistency in it. I won’t fault you for preferring one name over its translation but clearly we do this for aesthetic reasons only, not some drive to be correct or authentic because we certainly don’t apply that consistently.
- rich_sasha 4y agoWhat about the adjective? If someone is from Türkiye, does that make then... Türkiyesh? Also, if you don't like the change, careful of the Slander Law! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_301_(Turkish_Penal_Code) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_301_(Turkish_Penal_C...
- rurban 4y agoBy the slander law (i.e you may not call Atatürk a fascist anymore) you may not insult Türkiye and Türkiyesh. So with the name change you might now slander Turkey, as Turkey is not the official name anymore.
- voldacar 4y agoHonestly, this is very aesthetically ugly and visually jarring to read.
- docdeek 4y agoThe first thing that came to mind here was the relatively recent shift in the spelling of the Ukrainian capital: what was once Kiev is now Kyiv. Very quickly, Western media and consumer-focused brands changed their spelling to the Ukrainian national preference, obviously in the wake of the Russian invasion. I wonder if a similar rapid shift will take place with regards to Turkey/Türkiye, or whether it will be more of a Czech Republic/Czechia thing where, despite being the official name since 2016 at the UN, the name Czech Republic remains largely in use.
- raxxorraxor 4y agoOr still having Czechoslovakia...
- Markoff 4y agowell they keep using Czechoslovak flag (the blue triangle represents Slovakia) despite agreement they signed that they won't do it, so it's only fair to ignore the new name as well - Czechia with Czechoslovak flag = Czechoslovakia, Slovakia with Slovak flag = Slovakia
- troon-lover 4y ago
- karmakaze 4y agoWe've also had Peking -> Beijing
- akvadrako 4y ago? It's been Kyiv since well before the Crimea invasion.
- docdeek 4y agoIt's likely been Kyiv in Ukraine even longer than that. I was referring to the wave of mainstream media stories around renaming things like Chicken Kiev to Chicken Kyiv as a result of the war. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10551661/Change-chicken-kiev-chicken-KYIV-Shoppers-call-UK-supermarkets-stand-Ukraine.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10551661/Change-chi...
- seydor 4y agoFirst Facebook, now Turkey. At least Erdogan can claim that he literally expanded Turkey, and added diacritics
- jillesvangurp 4y agoThe question is for what language code that is. Geo name translations are a fascinating topic. Here are all the translations that geonames.org has for Turkey: https://www.geonames.org/TR/other-names-for-turkey.html https://www.geonames.org/TR/other-names-for-turkey.html
- Markoff 4y agoThis doesn't make any sense unless they used Turkey in Turkish language, which I doubt. Otherwise now Germany will change into Deutschland in English, Poland to Polska, etc.? Good luck figuring differences between 日本 and 中国 or even better figure out what are these countries - ราชอาณาจักรไทย, ព្រះរាជាណាចក្រកម្ពុជា and ပြည်ထောင်စု သမ္မတ မြန်မာနိုင်ငံတော် .
- Freak_NL 4y agoCountries can still opt to use an exonym if it pleases them, and when the local name is not in written in the Latin script a romanization is used, so Japan in your example would not be 日本, but Nihon or Nippon. As it stands, the Japanese prefer Japan, so it will remain Japan for the foreseeable future. Türkiye chooses otherwise, and that is fine too (although whether the change is just for diplomatic use or broader depends on how it is promoted in the decades to come).
- jl6 4y agoSeems reasonable that a country should get to decide what its name is, but a step too far if this implies an insistence on how other languages refer to it. ü isn’t a letter in a lot of languages, which creates practical problems like trying to type it on their local keyboard layouts. Türkiye might be the official name in Turkish but we’re still going to need translations of it into other languages and alphabets. IMHO we should try to capture the sound of the country’s native name using English rules of orthography. I think this would give us something like “Tooakeay”.
- Ekaros 4y agoI wonder if it would make sense to make some simplified latin alphabet for use in international communication. Basically remove every letter that isn't very commonly used in some country. Let's start with bcdqwxz I think there is likely some more.
- wrp 4y agoIf I went to Japan (okay, 日本国) and got offended when they wrote and pronounced ニューヨーク (that's New York to you) in a written form not mine and a pronunciation not mine, I'm sure most Westerners would regard that as bigotry and boorishness on my part.
- ThrowMeAway1526 4y ago
- Markoff 4y agoThere is even country called China. Like the ceramic material.
- wizwit999 4y agoMaybe Turkistan wouldve been better ;).
- euroderf 4y agoSo what will this look like when character set errors mangle it ?