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Comment by dash2 | Hacker News Reader

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Just like every other part of life, I'll generally call people what they ask to be called. Türkiye has requested internationally to be known under this name.

The government requested that, but not its people. Apparently it was a branding exercise: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-61671913

Yes, it’s a rebranding, that’s what the word means.

One doesn't get to dictate how their name gets rendered in a foreign language. The government of Turkey can feel free to ask, but the collective answer from the English speaking world should be "no".

> The government of Turkey can feel free to ask, but the collective answer from the English speaking world should be "no".

Why? This just seems like dick behavior for no benefit to anyone.

I disagree. Again, if the German government demanded everybody call Germany "Deutschland", I'd say "we've been calling Germany 'Germany' for hundreds of years. The English word for Deutschland is 'Germany'. People are entitled to use the language they like, nobody is stopping you promoting 'Deutschland' and seeing if that takes off." It is not analogous with an individual person's name.

> The English word for Deutschland is 'Germany'.

Sure, right up until people start using Deutschland. Prescriptivist attempts to control language will always fail.

Then English would be using a German word, much like the rest of the english language. It doesn't magically make it English

> It doesn't magically make it English

It does if people use it enough.

It sounds like we don't disagree!

Updating everything, teaching everyone, no benefit to English speakers besides being nice. What happens next year if they wanna switch it back? And then the year after that if it changes again?

How many countries go through some sort of rebrand in a year? Who gets respected and who doesn't? Why?

Or we could just keep calling it what we call it.

We'll take it under advisement. In the meantime we'll see if they start writing Sverige instead of İsveç.

When speaking in english, Sweden renders its own name as Sweden. They are free to request people spell it Sverige and I would respect that, too.

My keyboard doesn't have a Ü

A decent compromise could be to spell it Turkiye on an English keyboard. The article's url does that already.

Well, there are no umlauts in English.

In fact there are https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_terms_with_diacritical...

That's not an umlaut, that's a Ü. It's just a normal letter in Turkish, unlike in German where the umlaut is a vowel modifier.

also keep using Peking, Bombay, etc.?

I don't see why you'd spend time writing this; if the country wants to be called something by us, it's not too hard to honor the wish.

ok but because of the special characters, the request has something in common with 北京市 or मुम्बई also

I think it's मम्बई not मुम्बई, but check with a real Hindi speaker...

https://hi.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%A4%AE%E0%A5%81%E0%A4%AE%E0...

Just like corporations aren’t people, countries aren’t people! And yes, I will keep using Bombay since I don’t kowtow to Hindu nationalists: “Shiv Sena, the Hindu nationalist party in power in Bombay, decided to change the city's name to Mumbai”

Same here. I don't see how the government in Angora has any legitimate claim to make decisions on a foreign language.

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