Erdogan wants people to call Turkey "Türkiye" even in English and other languages

[It's not just that you are a crook senator]

As a citizen of Turkey, I have only heard this news from international sources lol it is not even news in Turkey. I don't see any reason as to why there is a need to change the name of the country except for some empty ego-stroking.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

One of the great unresolved challenges of human language will always be translating proper nouns. 

If the current fashion of preferring local spelling/pronunciation is taken to its logical conclusion, then there is no reason "Beijing" won't be printed as 北京 in the English-language newspapers of tomorrow.   

Actually, that's how you spell an old name for the former capital of Japan. Get it right, smh.

[FT-02 Senator A.F.E. 🇵🇸🤝🇺🇸🤝🇺🇦]

Good for him

[rc18]

One of the great unresolved challenges of human language will always be translating proper nouns.  

If the current fashion of preferring local spelling/pronunciation is taken to its logical conclusion, then there is no reason "Beijing" won't be printed as 北京 in the English-language newspapers of tomorrow.  

No, that is what Pinyin is for.

But the Pinyin equivalent of this already happened, after all you call the city by its modern standard Mandarin 'Beijing' rather than the archaic 'Peking'.

[Silent Hunter]

Unless you're ordering duck.

[Mopsus]

Although Swaziland -> Eswatini has gained ground so much that Wikipedia now uses the latter as the primary name.

Why? You don't call Istanbul Constantinople anymore.

Those are both different words from the previous, not less-familiar and less-phonetically-intuitive versions of the same word. Heck, in Eswatini's case, it's arguably easier to read and pronounce than Swaziland. Your parallels make no sense.

You think so? I think “Swaziland” is remarkably intuitive to read and pronounce. But that’s probably because “land” is an English word to begin with.

[rc18]

To be fair I think the duck has more important things to worry about than what you call it.

[Aurelius]

English does not have the phoneme that corresponds with Turkish ü, and the vast majority of us are not going to go out of our way to type that umlaut. If Erdogan had half a brain he'd tell us to call it "Turkia". That's what "Türkiye" turns into with English phonology rules anyway.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Although Swaziland -> Eswatini has gained ground so much that Wikipedia now uses the latter as the primary name.

Why? You don't call Istanbul Constantinople anymore.

Those are both different words from the previous, not less-familiar and less-phonetically-intuitive versions of the same word. Heck, in Eswatini's case, it's arguably easier to read and pronounce than Swaziland. Your parallels make no sense.

You think so? I think “Swaziland” is remarkably intuitive to read and pronounce. But that’s probably because “land” is an English word to begin with.

The "land" part is fairly straightforward, sure, but "swazi" strikes me as a rather disharmonious combination of phonemes, and the two pieces don't mesh well together at all. "Eswatini" rolls off the tongue much more naturally to me. Maybe I'm thinking of it more from the perspective of a Romance language speaker than an English one though.

[PSOL]

Like the king of Swaziland, this is a product of someone who is bored and has poor sense of the time management to think about this issue or something more pressing.

This may be a sign of what is to come, as the name change preceded great turbulence to the ruling regime.

[Astatine]

No news yet on whether the Turks will reciprocate by calling Germany "Deutschland", Greece "Ελλάδα" or China "中国".

How about Georgia "საქართველო".

[President Johnson]

Yeah, because Turkey has no other problems at the moment.

[Tintrlvr]

Unless you're ordering duck.

For what it's worth, it's also still pronounced ペキン ("Pekin") in Japanese.

[Storr]

Hey, it worked for Kiev.

Meanwhile in Byelorussia....

[CumbrianLefty]

Well Ivory Coast no longer exists and it's now Cote d'Ivoire. Ditto East Timor/Timor-Leste. It's hardly particular to Turks.

No one in Finland calls the country Cote d'Ivoire. It's still "Norsunluurannikko", which means "Ivory Coast".

Good for the Finns. But the country's name has become Cote d'Ivoire, even for English speakers.

Lol, no. Everyone still says Ivory Coast.

This is true, though on the other hand almost nobody says Upper Volta these days.

[Nutmeg]

Well Ivory Coast no longer exists and it's now Cote d'Ivoire. Ditto East Timor/Timor-Leste. It's hardly particular to Turks.

No one in Finland calls the country Cote d'Ivoire. It's still "Norsunluurannikko", which means "Ivory Coast".

Good for the Finns. But the country's name has become Cote d'Ivoire, even for English speakers.

Lol, no. Everyone still says Ivory Coast.

You're confusing colloquialism for officialdom. Officially, Turkey can do whatever they want, part of being a sovereign state is you can choose your name. Swaziland, Czech Republic, Macedonia have all done this pretty recently. Supposedly before Nazerbayev left power he was going to change Kazakhstan's name to Kazak Yeli because "-stan" is associated with Afghanistan/Pakistan and other areas that have wars. Colloquially is another style that means casual. Colloquially, Latin Americans believe that Americans refers to anyone living in the Americas. So a Chilean is an americano because he resides in South America, the (proper) Spanish word for American is estadounidense, literally unitedstatesian. Colloquially around the world, "American" refers to people living in the United States of America. Myself I rarely use the term America to refer to my country, I typically use U.S. instead.

This is an issue I actually deal with frequently in my day job. We now are calling it Cabo Verde rather than Cape Verde, and Cote d'Ivoire rather than Ivory Coast on the demarche of those countries, which I think is kind of funny that these countries ask us to call them something in one colonial language as opposed to another, but who am I to yuck their yum. We do refuse to call Burma by the name the junta has demanded, though.

On the U.S. demonym issue, I had the opposite experience when I was living in Colombia and called the Embassy/myself "estadounidense." People gave me odd looks and said they think of the U.S. as "americano." So that took some re-adjusting.

[Sol]

No news yet on whether the Turks will reciprocate by calling Germany "Deutschland", Greece "Ελλάδα" or China "中国".

How about Georgia "საქართველო".

Though of course Georgia has actually been pushing countries to call them by their western exonym Georgia rather than their Russian exonym Gruziya. You'd think Sakartvelo would be even more attractive, given the whole U.S. state issue, but who am I to say?

[Damocles]

Ah yes. Your currency is collapsing, basically all of your neighbors hate you, you’re losing a war in northern Syria, your army is reduced to basically being Hessians for the Emir of Qatar, and this is what you decide to focus on?

[ingemann]

I'm of the view that whether a name change will go through will depend on several factors

1: The importance of your country, ironic the less people give a f**k about you, the easier it is to get a name change through.
2: How easy is the new name to say.
3: How legitimate is your government, no one will care about the name change if they expect you to be gone in the new future.
4: Is it a return to an earlier name?
5: How big a a** is you about the name change?

As for the name change to Tyrkije (y can be used instead of ü and j can be used a consonant version of y). I doubt anyone will adopt the new name; at most it will be a name used in official papers, but I doubt even public owned medias will make use of it. The name change is seen as idiocy by increasing deranged and illegitimate Turkish leader.

[Vaccinated Russian Bear]

Ah yes. Your currency is collapsing, basically all of your neighbors hate you, you’re losing a war in northern Syria, your army is reduced to basically being Hessians for the Emir of Qatar, and this is what you decide to focus on?

This secular blog put more efforts/focus on this issue than Turkey.

[Sol]

As for the name change to Tyrkije (y can be used instead of ü and j can be used a consonant version of y).

Not in Turkish! That would be read as [tjɾkiʒe] or something which isn't even a valid sequence of sounds in Turkish. Or in the vast majority of the word's languages, including English, though you could maybe anglicize it to [tjɚkiʒeɪ] "tjerk-eezhay" or something, which would be much further away from the Turkish pronunciation than an anglicized Türkiye or the original English Turkey.

[afleitch]

Story Czechias out.

[StateBoiler]

I'm of the view that whether a name change will go through will depend on several factors

1: The importance of your country, ironic the less people give a f**k about you, the easier it is to get a name change through.
2: How easy is the new name to say.
3: How legitimate is your government, no one will care about the name change if they expect you to be gone in the new future.
4: Is it a return to an earlier name?
5: How big a a** is you about the name change?

As for the name change to Tyrkije (y can be used instead of ü and j can be used a consonant version of y). I doubt anyone will adopt the new name; at most it will be a name used in official papers, but I doubt even public owned medias will make use of it. The name change is seen as idiocy by increasing deranged and illegitimate Turkish leader.

When Czechoslovakia was no more, I was sad. Such an awesome name.

[PSOL]

Story Czechias out.

Reported

[Conservatopia]

Alright fine we'll call Erdogan's country Türkiye if he says so.  But the bird is also being renamed Türkiye.