Hacker News Reader

Comment by emmelaich | Hacker News Reader

"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)

View on HN

I always wondered how it came about that there are so many names for Germany that don't sound like what they call their own country.

http://enwp.org/Names_of_Germany

It's a confluence of factors, but not a full explanation: many neighbours, central position in the continent, long history with numerous ethnic groups

Why is it weird to use the correct name of a country?

Have 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_vario...

This 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

>"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."

which are both CORRECT English name for same country, completely different as replacing corect English name of the country with local name of the country

Thanks. This seems like an answer to my topmost question in my other thread.

Would 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.

It's not correct name, it's Turkish name which should be used in Turkish and internationally everyone use English name for respective countries.

Because there is no correct name.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com