Day 39: Democratic Republic of the Congo

[Rob]

Incidentally, the CIA page is slightly out of date.

They also insist on calling Kampuchea "Cambodia", and Myanmar "Burma" (the latter is particularly irking, as no one else uses the old name anymore). Oh, well.

The Congo... it was home to a particularly repugnant brand of colonialism. Other than that, I have nothing to say.

[Rob]

You are, what, quarter century out of date?

Heh. There's no need to get all hot and bothered. In my defense, that is the local name for the country.

[Rob]

So, do you insist on calling Germany - Deutschland, Russia - Rossiya, Finland - Suomi, Albania - Shquiperia, Egypt - Mysr, India - Bharat, etc.?

Touché. Of course not; it was merely to illustrate that it's not entirely ridiculous to decry the use of "Cambodia", although it is inaccurate. I freely admit my error, in any case.

My point on Myanmar stands, though.

[Rob]

Are you sure everyone else calls Burma Myanmar? From what I recall that horrible military government there changed the name on their own but the actual Burmese people still consider their country to be named Burma, even if they have to use Myanmar or get arrested, tortured, and killed...

I don't know about that- Myanmar is derived from the Burmese name for the country, and they've always called it that. In any case, it's true that I exaggerated; many countries don't recognize the current government, so they still call it "Burma". It's certainly controversial, but it's technically more accurate to call it Myanmar.

[Rob]

Hmm, I don't recall an official name change until sometime in the 1990s, and it was clearly from the top-down, not agreed to by the population. That muddies things a bit...

Well, yes, the official change to Myanmar was made fairly recently. But it has always been (part of) the Burmese name for the country. It was also the name of the kingdom destroyed by the British in the 19th century, according to this Wikipedia article. It wasn't an artifical name chosen arbitrarily.

This is what you meant by popular discontent, I think (also from the article):

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So it's ethnocentric. But so is "Burma", as it derives from the Burmese bama.

The UN recognizes "Myanmar" over "Burma", by the way

[Rob]

And the U.N. is, eh, sorry, way too easy a target to attack.

It was a bad example.

[Rob]

Hugh no one has called Cambodia "Kampuchea" since the 1980's.

I'm not Hugh, and I admitted defeat on Cambodia on the last page