> The border between Panama and Columbia is where the dream faltered.
Spelling Colombia as Columbia is a very infuriating error to many (not all, but many) people who speak Spanish, particularly Colombians, obviously. It's as jarring to read as "Englend" or "Onited States". I urge the author, if around, to fix it, and any readers who are around to be very mindful of not making it as it can be disrespectful.
I agree that this didn't happen in the case of the English name of Colombia, and that the English name of Colombia is "Colombia", not "Columbia", but again I wonder why this didn't end up being regarded as a "translation" of the country's name.
The insistence of the leadership of the “Ivory Coast” that the country be called “Côte d’Ivoire” even in English, does seem to have been broadly successful. I rarely see “Ivory Coast” in English-language scholarship or in travel resources these days. I’m a bit surprised that Wikipedia still uses the English version throughout its article on the country.
Same goes for Türkiye/Turkey - those umlauts and the "toor-kee-ye" pronunciation will scare off most users of English, who will fall back to the more familiar "Turkey".
"Czechia" doesn't even have the problem of diacritics and it's still not that widespread. I find it a bit awkward and don't use it even though I live here.
Old habits die hard and, whether they like it or not, Ivory Coast, Turkey, Czechia etc are gonna be around for a while.
Not too long ago a British politician was unironically suggesting a post-Brexit trade deal with "Czechoslovakia".
I don't know how much of that was mere incompetence in his case, but in general at least some of it will be old habits dying hard.
I do a bit of work in music engraving software and you run into needing to type things like dètaché.
goturkiye.com
www.mfa.gov.tr/turkiye-and-eu-info.en.mfa
It took years of living in Berlin to realise that "Warschau" was the German for Warsaw.
As such, progress should mean even historical names are reverted to what current inhabitants call them, i.e. we should all visit Firenze, not Florence.
It's still called Peking in many other languages.
Hence, in English-speaking usage, "Columbia" (with a u) is more common, as in the Columbia River or District of Columbia. But the (Spanish-speaking) South American country uses the 'o' spelling.