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Comment by mateo1 | Hacker News Reader

Are there any other countries with diacritics in their official latin name?

Côte 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.

Hmm we Dutch call that Ivoorkust.

And 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)

At least the coast-kuste and elefant hints are there. Other names are a complete mystery

Pobřeží slonoviny

Pantai Gading

Norsunluurannikko

Norsunluurannikko = elephants bone coast in finnish, likely direct translation from swedish or german.

Funny to note is that this sometimes goes wrong, i.e., in Dutch we have a Witte Neushoorn (White Rhino, or, White Nosehorn if you will), however, this Rhino is not white but it has a wide mouth and English people call (or called) it Wide Rhino... Somewhere someone misunderstood and now we have a White Rhino that is grey.

What names are "a complete mystery"? They're all literally the same name in different languages -- at least the ones you've listed.

There are places where latin names are used systematically for countries, e.g. passports or postage stamps. Are diacritics kept intact on those?

(Possibly the answer is inconsistent, but it seems like a common enough issue that there should be some standardization)

Most countries that use more than the standard latin script have at least one version of their name in latin so that everyone else can use it. საქართველო, Ελλάδα, Россия etc aren't very usable written like that. I would understand if Turkey applied for the romanized version of their name but using diacritics in it makes it a pain in the ass for everyone else.

> I would understand if Turkey applied for the romanized version of their name

This I just don't understand. Turkish is written in a Latin script with a few diacritics (and the extra character of the i without the dot.) It's hard to call any modification of their existing script a "romanization".

As for some of your examples, eg. Россия, I don't think they use a romanization of that word like Rossija or Rossiya at the UN, I think they use English or French translations of Russian Federation.

Côte d'Ivoire

São Tomé and Príncipe

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Member_states_of_the_United_Na...

Not sure what you mean: "Türkiye" is the (official) Turkish name, "Turkey" is the English name. The Romans did not have a name for it, as it didn't exist at that time - and for most of its history, it was called the "Ottoman Empire"...

Woah there... Türkiye could very well become the English name as well. Language is fluid. It really depends on if they ask English speakers to change, and if they do.

Czechia has had a fairly successful transition.

It's unlikely that English speakers will use diacritics except as a point of trivia. Cafe, naive and even resume have lost their diacritics in practice (ime).

What prevents Turkiye without the accent?

“Czech Republic” was always a mouthful so it’s unsurprising that Czechia caught on. But if they had made it Česká then I doubt it would have been adopted so easily.

It didn't really caught on, still way too many English media use Czech Republic instead Czechia, honestly I've never used Czech Republic, it was always Czechia even before they officially applied for UN change.

It would be also nice, if they finally stopped using Czechoslovak flag and uphold dissolution agreement that no successor country can use Czechoslovak flag, becayse you know that blue triangle in flag represents Slovakia, so it's quite funny they keep using it. The solution is obvious, use previous "Polish" style flag and just slap on it the emblem with lion to distinguish from Poland.

> “Czech Republic” was always a mouthful so it’s unsurprising that Czechia caught on.

Four syllables are "a mouthful" but three are not? Is "United States" also "a mouthful"?

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