Why Don’t We Use Native Names For Other Countries?

Anything ending in “land” or “ia” is typically an exonym

(Public domain)

Recently, the nation of Turkey politely asked the rest of the world if they would refer to them from now on as the Republic of Türkiye. Türkiye, they said, is more natural and closer to their native name for their homeland. When the request came in, most people agreed to go along with it. Why not? It seemed like a reasonable request. This recent change raises an obvious question. Why don’t we use native names for countries more often? Not only do English speakers often completely ignore the native tongue of other countries, but English also has a bad habit of completely changing or butchering national names.

A native name for a country is known as an endonym, while a foreign name for a country that differs from the native one is called an exonym.

Some of the biggest differences between English names for countries and the native names for countries include:

• Japan → Nippon
• India → Bharat
• Finland → Suomi
• China → Zhōngguó
• Germany → Deutschland
• Austria → Österreich

So why do we use these names rather than the native names? How difficult would it be to refer to India as Bharat? Or Japan as Nippon? In many cases, these names are rooted in a history of colonialism and exploitation. Wouldn’t it be more respectful to refer to the countries in their native tongues? Wouldn’t that also help to homogenize the names of nations across all languages?

These are all excellent questions with no easy answers. This issue is actually trickier than most people realize. The biggest obstacle to changing the names of nations in English is familiarity. First, English is the most prominent language in the world, with 1.5 billion speakers. That means that any attempted change would have to be communicated to billions of individuals. Second, changing the names would lead to no end to confusion. Imagine a hockey announcer saying that the star on the ice was from Suomi. That would leave many Americans and Canadians scratching their heads.