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Comment by rob74 | Hacker News Reader

I'm waiting for the requests from Hungary to be henceforth only called "Magyarország" and from China to be called "Zhōnghuá Rénmín Gònghéguó".

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I'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.as...

It'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)

used by the Squamish people:

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_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)

> 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?

No big deal, but another entry in falsehoods that programmers believe about languages: Words never use Arabic numerals.

I wonder how they decided to ASCII-fy the glottal stop, but still included symbols like ʷƛ̓. Not sure why not use ˀ when you're flexing unicode anyway

Oh gosh, how unnecessary.

> šxʷƛ̓ənəq Xwtl’e7énk Square

Oh my, I don't even know the names of those letters.

Edit: Found more info about this:

> The area previously known as Queen Elizabeth Theatre Plaza has been renamed šxʷƛ̓exən Xwtl’a7shn, and the Vancouver Art Gallery's north plaza has been dubbed šxʷƛ̓ənəq Xwtl’e7énk Square.

According to the city, šxʷƛ̓exən Xwtl’a7shn means "a place one is invited to, and a place one is invited to celebrate" [..]. The other name, šxʷƛ̓ənəq Xwtl’e7énk Square, refers to a place where cultural gatherings such as weddings and funerals are held.

The names were chosen by a committee of city staff and representatives of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh nations.

Each uses words from both the hən̓q̓əmin̓əm̓ language used by the Musqueam and Tsleil-Waututh peoples, and the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh language of the Squamish Nation.

I am puzzled how the people of Vancouver (nevermind visitors) are meant to use "šxʷƛ̓exən Xwtl’a7shn" or "šxʷƛ̓ənəq Xwtl’e7énk". I mean, if you see things like "Musqueam", "Squamish" and "Tsleil-Waututh", you can muddle through as you learn the sounds. But if you see (the equivalent) "xʷməθkʷəy̓əm", "Sḵwx̱wú7mesh" or "sə̓lílwətaʔɬ", where do you even begin? Yet the official link above, while it helpfully gives both representations of the names of the peoples, makes no effort to do so for the new place names. That strongly suggests any signage will only use the unapproachable version.

Everyone just copy-pastes the name and calls it the art gallery plaza. A mild prank could be played by copy-pasting a completely different place name, and seeing if people pay any attention - or if they just assume "š**** ****" to mean "that place right downtown"

I see that most online references use some variation of "šxʷƛ̓exən Xwtl'a7shn (formerly QET Plaza)". They seem to be very diligent about never providing any transliteration, even in their pronunciation guide. Which means that in effect, rather than giving it an indigenous name, they have instead effectively made it unnamed. What a completely wasted effort.

Finally Thailand can drop it’s anglicized name and be known by it’s true name of “Krung Thep Mahanakhon Amon Rattanakosin Mahinthara Ayuthaya Mahadilok Phop Noppharat Ratchathani Burirom Udomratchaniwet Mahasathan Amon Piman Awatan Sathit Sakkathattiya Witsanukam Prasit”

https://theculturetrip.com/asia/thailand/articles/bangkoks-f...

Not sure what point is being made here.

Countries (and cities) have initiated all kinds of formal name changes over the years -- some of them have managed stick (Beijing, Kyiv, Burkina Fasso, Myanmar, Timor-Leste, North Macedonia, Eswatini, the Democratic Republic of Congo; and Ukraine dropping the definite article), others not so well (Czechia).

But there's nothing intrinsically weird about the concept as such.

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