Yeah, it's strange and short-sighted (to me) that this kind of reasoning drives language changes. You really should want and treasure having an ages-weathered o

Yeah, it's strange and short-sighted (to me) that this kind of reasoning drives language changes. You really should want and treasure having an ages-weathered or weird exonym in the target language, preferably going back to Middle Ages or something. This suggests (on the perception level, that's what we're talking about) that you are a serious and established entity and your relations with the world go way, way back. Look up England, Germany (and maybe Holy See) here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_country_names_in_various_languages_(D%E2%80%93I) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_country_names_in_vario... At least Slavic names for Germany even have negative undertones (something like 'mute people'). With changing the name you are trashing all that, and it's doubtful that it really changes much in the perception by itself.