5 ms·

>Practically, yes, but Turkey is a sovereign country and it can ask the UN to call it in English whatever it likes. Can China ask for it to be called 中国?

by Hamuko 4y ago

vesinisa 4y ago
I presume that might be rejected on the grounds that it is a completely different writing system. But my point is that even if it was accepted, the true common name of China in practical English would still not change. Or did you know there already officially exists countries such as Czechia and The Holy See - much better known in English as The Czech Republic and The Vatican respectively?
- jasomill 4y ago
  Pedantically, the Holy See[1] is the Pope's jurisdiction, which includes his universal ecclesiastical jurisdiction in addition to territorial control of a sovereign state. This state[2], per the treaty establishing it[3], is properly referred to as "Vatican City State" (Stato della Città del Vaticano). This is understandably confused by the fact that it is the Holy See, not Vatican City State, that maintains foreign relations and participates in international organizations like the UN. This, I assume, is why the official ISO name associated with country code VA was at some point changed from "Vatican City State (Holy See)" to "Holy See (the)"[4]. Interestingly, both entities issue passports[5]. [1] https://www.vatican.va/ https://www.vatican.va/ [2] https://www.vaticanstate.va/ https://www.vaticanstate.va/ [3] https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/secretariat_state/archivio/documents/rc_seg-st_19290211_patti-lateranensi_it.html https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/secretariat_state/archivi... [4] https://www.iso.org/obp/ui/#iso:code:3166:VA https://www.iso.org/obp/ui/#iso:code:3166:VA [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vatican_and_Holy_See_passports https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vatican_and_Holy_See_passports
em500 4y ago
The UN maintains a list of official country names in six languages (English, French, Spanish, Russian, Chinese, Arabic) [1], and UN representatives of the countries can request how they want their country to be written in any of those. I guess China could request to be called 中国 in English communication in the UN and/or ISO (if I understand your question correctly). The main issue is that if you put up to much friction for other language speakers, they're just going to ignore you/the official standards and do whatever they want, so it becomes a bit self-defeating. I expect this to happen to Turkey as well: English speakers will probably mostly keep using "Turkey" rather than "Türkiye" indefinitely, except in cases where ISO/UN standard are really required. [1] https://unstats.un.org/unsd/geoinfo/ungegn/docs/11th-uncsgn-docs/E_Conf.105_13_CRP.13_15_UNGEGN%20WG%20Country%20Names%20Document.pdf https://unstats.un.org/unsd/geoinfo/ungegn/docs/11th-uncsgn-...
- vesinisa 4y ago
  Most people will likely see this only on online forms that lazily just populate their country dropdowns from (pirated copies) of the official ISO database.
  - jonatron 4y ago
    https://www.iso.org/iso-3166-country-codes.html https://www.iso.org/iso-3166-country-codes.html "ISO allows free-of-charge use of its country, currency and language codes from ISO 3166, ISO 4217 and ISO 639, respectively." Doesn't sound like piracy to me.
    - vesinisa 4y ago
      Yes, but if you actually try to download the collection (link right above that text), you are presented with a form to pay CHF 300 for this data. Now I am not a copyright lawyer but this is how I understand it: this entire database is a copyrighted work owned by ISO. If you pay them CHF 300 you can download the database and then use use it freely. But when you gather that entire dataset (transformed or not) back to a full database format, it is still a derived work - the copyright of which is owned by ISO. This is of course completely hair splitting as you will not see ISO coming after anyone spreading the database in any format (it would be a PR disaster). But if you asked the opinion of a corporate lawyer, they might say you technically need to pay ISO before you can use a copy of the entire database in your app. And I bet that's why they have the form to pay the CHF 300 if someone somewhere has a compliance department telling them to be 100% sure they are not breaching any copyrights.. Maybe someone who actually knows anything about copyright law can comment.. EDIT: The situation is indeed unclear as I predicted, probably on purpose. See here https://datahub.io/core/country-list#license https://datahub.io/core/country-list#license : > It should be noted that this material is ultimately sourced from ISO and their rights and licensing policy is somewhat unclear. As this is a short, simple database of facts there is a strong argument that no rights can subsist in this collection. However, ISO state on their site: >> ISO makes the list of alpha-2 country codes available for internal use and non-commercial purposes free of charge. > This carries the implication (though not spelled out) that other uses are not permitted and that, therefore, there may be rights preventing further general use and reuse. Likewise, if ISO says they allow "free-of-charge use" of the database, it implies their permission and allowance is required to use it in the first place. This implies that if you embed the database to your app, it contains proprietary material by ISO. This limits your rights for example re-licensing it, as you can not re-license without consent from ISO, the copyright holder. Again - this is only a theoretical problem, yet the ambiguity is rather annoying to a pedant.
spc476 4y ago
And a literal translation of that would be "Middle Kingdom." So if the Middle Kingdom wants to call itself "Middle Kingdom," why not?

>Practically, yes, but Turkey is a sovereign country and it can ask the UN to call it in English whatever it likes. Can China ask for it to be called 中国?

by Hamuko 4y ago

>Practically, yes, but Turkey is a sovereign country and it can ask the UN to call it in English whatever it likes. Can China ask for it to be called 中国?

vesinisa 4y ago

I presume that might be rejected on the grounds that it is a completely different writing system. But my point is that even if it was accepted, the true common name of China in practical English would still not change. Or did you know there already officially exists countries such as Czechia and The Holy See - much better known in English as The Czech Republic and The Vatican respectively?

jasomill 4y ago
Pedantically, the Holy See[1] is the Pope's jurisdiction, which includes his universal ecclesiastical jurisdiction in addition to territorial control of a sovereign state. This state[2], per the treaty establishing it[3], is properly referred to as "Vatican City State" (Stato della Città del Vaticano). This is understandably confused by the fact that it is the Holy See, not Vatican City State, that maintains foreign relations and participates in international organizations like the UN. This, I assume, is why the official ISO name associated with country code VA was at some point changed from "Vatican City State (Holy See)" to "Holy See (the)"[4]. Interestingly, both entities issue passports[5]. [1] https://www.vatican.va/ https://www.vatican.va/ [2] https://www.vaticanstate.va/ https://www.vaticanstate.va/ [3] https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/secretariat_state/archivio/documents/rc_seg-st_19290211_patti-lateranensi_it.html https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/secretariat_state/archivi... [4] https://www.iso.org/obp/ui/#iso:code:3166:VA https://www.iso.org/obp/ui/#iso:code:3166:VA [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vatican_and_Holy_See_passports https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vatican_and_Holy_See_passports

em500 4y ago

The UN maintains a list of official country names in six languages (English, French, Spanish, Russian, Chinese, Arabic) [1], and UN representatives of the countries can request how they want their country to be written in any of those. I guess China could request to be called 中国 in English communication in the UN and/or ISO (if I understand your question correctly). The main issue is that if you put up to much friction for other language speakers, they're just going to ignore you/the official standards and do whatever they want, so it becomes a bit self-defeating. I expect this to happen to Turkey as well: English speakers will probably mostly keep using "Turkey" rather than "Türkiye" indefinitely, except in cases where ISO/UN standard are really required. [1] https://unstats.un.org/unsd/geoinfo/ungegn/docs/11th-uncsgn-docs/E_Conf.105_13_CRP.13_15_UNGEGN%20WG%20Country%20Names%20Document.pdf https://unstats.un.org/unsd/geoinfo/ungegn/docs/11th-uncsgn-...

vesinisa 4y ago
Most people will likely see this only on online forms that lazily just populate their country dropdowns from (pirated copies) of the official ISO database.
- jonatron 4y ago
  https://www.iso.org/iso-3166-country-codes.html https://www.iso.org/iso-3166-country-codes.html "ISO allows free-of-charge use of its country, currency and language codes from ISO 3166, ISO 4217 and ISO 639, respectively." Doesn't sound like piracy to me.
  - vesinisa 4y ago
    Yes, but if you actually try to download the collection (link right above that text), you are presented with a form to pay CHF 300 for this data. Now I am not a copyright lawyer but this is how I understand it: this entire database is a copyrighted work owned by ISO. If you pay them CHF 300 you can download the database and then use use it freely. But when you gather that entire dataset (transformed or not) back to a full database format, it is still a derived work - the copyright of which is owned by ISO. This is of course completely hair splitting as you will not see ISO coming after anyone spreading the database in any format (it would be a PR disaster). But if you asked the opinion of a corporate lawyer, they might say you technically need to pay ISO before you can use a copy of the entire database in your app. And I bet that's why they have the form to pay the CHF 300 if someone somewhere has a compliance department telling them to be 100% sure they are not breaching any copyrights.. Maybe someone who actually knows anything about copyright law can comment.. EDIT: The situation is indeed unclear as I predicted, probably on purpose. See here https://datahub.io/core/country-list#license https://datahub.io/core/country-list#license : > It should be noted that this material is ultimately sourced from ISO and their rights and licensing policy is somewhat unclear. As this is a short, simple database of facts there is a strong argument that no rights can subsist in this collection. However, ISO state on their site: >> ISO makes the list of alpha-2 country codes available for internal use and non-commercial purposes free of charge. > This carries the implication (though not spelled out) that other uses are not permitted and that, therefore, there may be rights preventing further general use and reuse. Likewise, if ISO says they allow "free-of-charge use" of the database, it implies their permission and allowance is required to use it in the first place. This implies that if you embed the database to your app, it contains proprietary material by ISO. This limits your rights for example re-licensing it, as you can not re-license without consent from ISO, the copyright holder. Again - this is only a theoretical problem, yet the ambiguity is rather annoying to a pedant.

spc476 4y ago

And a literal translation of that would be "Middle Kingdom." So if the Middle Kingdom wants to call itself "Middle Kingdom," why not?