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Comment by thih9 | Hacker News Reader

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thih9·

Or you just accept that country names in English can change - and Turkey / Türkiye would not be the first to do so.

> Both the "ü" and the "iy" are very uncommon (and thus hard to pronounce) sounds for most of the world.

Then what about Liechtenstein? Kyrgyzstan? Côte d’Ivoire? Colombia-not-columbia? The list goes on.

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But that's the point: the name hasn't actually changed. It has always been called "Türkiye" by the people living there. What has changed is that they now want everyone else to call them by that name...

> Côte d’Ivoire

Nobody except french speaking countries call it that. It's called "Ivory Coast" in English, for example

Yes, they want that; why not do that then? Like with Czechia[1], Sri Lanka, the Netherlands and others?

Côte d’Ivoire is indeed also known as "Ivory Coast"; still, you can write a sentence in English with "Côte d’Ivoire" and it doesn't raise an eyebrow[2]. If that's not enough, there's Curaçao too.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Name_of_the_Czech_Republic#Ado...

[2]: https://www.state.gov/countries-areas/cote-divoire

A substantial part of the US population isn't going to know where the Ivory coast is, even less so if you call it Côte d’Ivoire, or why you're saying it in French.

Would they be better with a different country though? To be fair, a substantial part of the US population couldn’t point Iran or Ukraine[1] on the map.

[1]: https://assets.morningconsult.com/wp-uploads/2022/02/0815180...

No they wouldn't. So why would you make it even harder for them by addressing it in a name/language other then the primary target audience

Maybe because we call another country Greece and not Grease?

I could do more food puns but I’m already getting Hungary.

You mean the Ivory Coast?

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