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An endonym /'endənɪm/ (also known as autonym /ˈɔːtənɪm/) is a common, native name for a group of people, individual person, geographical place, language, or dialect, meaning that it is used inside a particular group or linguistic community to identify or designate themselves, their place of origin, or their language.
![image](https://www.english.nina.az/wikipedia/image/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZW5nbGlzaC5uaW5hLmF6L3dpa2lwZWRpYS9pbWFnZS9hSFIwY0hNNkx5OTFjR3h2WVdRdWQybHJhVzFsWkdsaExtOXlaeTkzYVd0cGNHVmthV0V2WTI5dGJXOXVjeTkwYUhWdFlpODNMemMwTDBkbGNtMWhibmxmVG1GdFpWOUZkWEp2Y0dWaGJsOU1ZVzVuZFdGblpYTXVjRzVuTHpJMk1IQjRMVWRsY20xaGJubGZUbUZ0WlY5RmRYSnZjR1ZoYmw5TVlXNW5kV0ZuWlhNdWNHNW4ucG5n.png)
An exonym /ˈɛɡzənɪm/ (also known as xenonym /ˈzɛnənɪm/) is an established, non-native name for a group of people, individual person, geographical place, language, or dialect, meaning that it is used primarily outside the particular place inhabited by the group or linguistic community. Exonyms exist not only for historico-geographical reasons but also in consideration of difficulties when pronouncing foreign words, or from non-systematic attempts at transcribing into a different writing system.
For instance, Deutschland is the endonym for the country that is also known by the exonyms Germany and Germania in English and Italian, respectively, Alemania and Allemagne in Spanish and French, respectively, Niemcy in Polish, Saksa and Saksamaa in Finnish and Estonian.
Naming and etymology
The terms autonym, endonym, exonym and xenonym are formed by adding specific prefixes to the Greek root word ὄνομα (ónoma) 'name', from Proto-Indo-European *h₃nómn̥.
The prefixes added to these terms are also derived from Greek:
- endonym: ἔνδον (éndon) 'within';
- exonym: ἔξω (éxō) 'outside';
- autonym: αὐτός (autós) 'self'; and
- xenonym: ξένος (xénos) 'foreign'.
The terms autonym and xenonym also have different applications, thus leaving endonym and exonym as the preferred forms.
Marcel Aurousseau, an Australian geographer, first used the term exonym in his work The Rendering of Geographical Names (1957).
Typology
Endonyms and exonyms can be divided in three main categories:[citation needed]
- endonyms and exonyms of place names (toponyms),
- endonyms and exonyms of human names (anthroponyms), including names of ethnic groups (ethnonyms), localised populations (demonyms), and individuals (personal names),
- endonyms and exonyms of language names (glossonyms).
Endonyms and exonyms of toponyms
As it pertains to geographical features, the United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names defines:
- Endonym: "Name of a geographical feature in an official or well-established language occurring in that area where the feature is located."
- Exonym: "Name used in a specific language for a geographical feature situated outside the area where that language is spoken, and differing in its form from the name used in an official or well-established language of that area where the geographical feature is located."
For example, India, China, Egypt, and Germany are the English-language exonyms corresponding to the endonyms Bhārat (भारत), Zhōngguó (中国), Masr (مَصر), and Deutschland, respectively. There are also typonyms of specific features, for example hydronyms for bodies of water.
Endonyms and exonyms of glossonyms
In the case of endonyms and exonyms of language names (glossonyms), Chinese, German, and Dutch, for example, are English-language exonyms for the languages that are endonymously known as Zhōngwén (中文), Deutsch, and Nederlands, respectively.
Exonyms in relation to endonyms
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By their relation to endonyms, all exonyms can be divided into three main categories:
- those that are cognate words, diverged only in pronunciation or orthography;
- those that are fully or partially translated (a calque) from the native language;
- those derived from different roots, as in the case of Germany for Deutschland.
Sometimes, a place name may be unable to use many of the letters when transliterated into an exonym because of the corresponding language's lack of common sounds. Māori, having only one liquid consonant, is an example of this here.
Cognate exonyms
London (originally Latin: Londinium), for example, is known by the cognate exonyms:
- Londres in Catalan, Filipino, French, Galician, Portuguese, and Spanish;
- Londino (Λονδίνο) in Greek;
- Londen in Dutch and Afrikaans;
- Londra in Italian, Maltese, Romanian, Romansh, Sardinian and Turkish;
- Londër in Albanian;
- Londýn in Czech and Slovak;
- Londyn in Polish;
- Rānana in Māori;
- Lundúnir in Icelandic;
- Londain in Irish;
- Lunnainn in Scottish Gaelic;
- Llundain in Welsh;
- Lontoo in Finnish;
- Luân Đôn in Vietnamese;
- Landan (لندن) in Persian, and Urdu;
- London (Լոնդոն) in Armenian;
- Lúndūn (伦敦) in Chinese.
Translated exonyms
An example of a translated exonym is the name for the Netherlands (Nederland in Dutch) used, respectively, in German (Niederlande), French (Pays-Bas), Italian (Paesi Bassi), Spanish (Países Bajos), Irish (An Ísiltír), Portuguese (Países Baixos) and Romanian (Țările de Jos), all of which mean "Low Countries". However, the endonym Nederland is singular, while all the aforementioned translations except Irish are plural.
Native and borrowed exonyms
Exonyms can also be divided into native and borrowed, e.g., from a third language. For example, the Slovene exonyms Dunaj (Vienna) and Benetke (Venice) are native, but the Avar name of Paris, Париж (Parizh) is borrowed from Russian Париж (Parizh), which comes from Polish Paryż, which comes from Italian Parigi.
A substantial proportion of English-language exonyms for places in continental Europe are borrowed (or adapted) from French; for example:
- Belgrade (Serbian: Београд, romanized: Beograd);
- Bucharest (Romanian: București);
- Cologne (German: Köln / Kölsch: Kölle);
- Florence (Italian: Firenze);
- Milan (Italian: Milano);
- Munich (German: München / Bavarian: Minga);
- Naples (Italian: Napoli / Neapolitan: Napule);
- Navarre (Spanish: Navarra / Basque: Nafarroa);
- Prague (Czech: Praha);
- Rome (Italian: Roma); and
- Seville (Spanish: Sevilla).
Typical development of exonyms
Many exonyms result from adaptations of an endonym into another language, mediated by differences in phonetics, while others may result from translation of the endonym, or as a reflection of the specific relationship an outsider group has with a local place or geographical feature.
According to James Matisoff, who introduced the term autonym into linguistics, exonyms can also arise from the "egocentric" tendency of in-groups to identify themselves with "mankind in general", producing an endonym that out groups would not use, while another source is the human tendency towards neighbours to "be pejorative rather than complimentary, especially where there is a real or fancied difference in cultural level between the ingroup and the outgroup." For example, Matisoff notes, Khang "an opprobrious term indicating mixed race or parentage" is the Palaung name for Jingpo people and the Jingpo name for Chin people; both the Jingpo and Burmese use the Chinese word yeren (野人; 'wild men', 'savage', 'rustic people') as the name for Lisu people.
As exonyms develop for places of significance for speakers of the language of the exonym, consequently, many European capitals have English exonyms, for example:
- Athens (Greek: Αθήνα, romanized: Athína);
- Belgrade (Serbian: Београд, romanized: Beograd);
- Bucharest (Romanian: București);
- Brussels (French: Bruxelles, Dutch: Brussel);
- Copenhagen (Danish: København);
- Lisbon (Portuguese: Lisboa);
- Moscow (Russian: Москва, romanized: Moskva);
- Prague (Czech: Praha);
- Rome (Italian: Roma);
- Vienna (German: Wien); and
- Warsaw (Polish: Warszawa).
In contrast, historically less-prominent capitals such as Ljubljana and Zagreb do not have English exonyms, but do have exonyms in languages spoken nearby, e.g. German: Laibach and Agram (the latter being obsolete); Italian: Lubiana and Zagabria. Madrid, Berlin, Oslo, and Amsterdam, with identical names in most major European languages, are exceptions.
Some European cities might be considered partial exceptions, in that whilst the spelling is the same across languages, the pronunciation can differ. For example, the city of Paris is spelled the same way in French and English, but the French pronunciation [paʁi] is different from the English pronunciation [ˈpærɪs].
For places considered to be of lesser significance, attempts to reproduce local names have been made in English since the time of the Crusades. Livorno, for instance, was Leghorn because it was an Italian port essential to English merchants and, by the 18th century, to the British Navy; not far away, Rapallo, a minor port on the same sea, never received an exonym.[citation needed]
In earlier times, the name of the first tribe or village encountered became the exonym for the whole people beyond. Thus, the Romans used the tribal names Graecus (Greek) and Germanus (Germanic), the Russians used the village name of Chechen, medieval Europeans took the tribal name Tatar as emblematic for the whole Mongolic confederation (and then confused it with Tartarus, a word for Hell, to produce Tartar), and the Magyar invaders were equated with the 500-years-earlier Hunnish invaders in the same territory, and were called Hungarians.
The Germanic invaders of the Roman Empire applied the word "Walha" to foreigners they encountered and this evolved in West Germanic languages as a generic name for speakers of Celtic and later (as Celts became increasingly romanised) Romance languages; thence:
- Wallachia, the historic name of Romania inhabited by the Vlachs
- the Slavic term Vlah for "Romanian", dialectally "Italian, Latin"
- Wallonia, the french-speaking region of Belgium
- Cornwall and Wales, the Celtic-speaking regions located West of the Anglo-Saxon-dominated England
- Wallis, a mostly French-speaking canton in Switzerland
- Welschland, the German name for the french-speaking Switzerland
- the Polish and Hungarian names for Italy, Włochy and Olaszország respectively
Usage
In avoiding exonyms
During the late 20th century, the use of exonyms often became controversial. Groups often prefer that outsiders avoid exonyms where they have come to be used in a pejorative way. For example, Romani people often prefer that term to exonyms such as Gypsy (from the name of Egypt), and the French term bohémien, bohème (from the name of Bohemia). People may also avoid exonyms for reasons of historical sensitivity, as in the case of German names for Polish and Czech places that, at one time, had been ethnically or politically German (e.g. Danzig/Gdańsk, Auschwitz/Oświęcim and Karlsbad/Karlovy Vary); and Russian names for non-Russian locations that were subsequently renamed or had their spelling changed (e.g. Kiev/Kyiv).
In recent years, geographers have sought to reduce the use of exonyms to avoid this kind of problem. For example, it is now common for Spanish speakers to refer to the Turkish capital as Ankara rather than use the Spanish exonym Angora. Another example, it is now common for Italian speakers to refer to some African states as Mauritius and Seychelles rather than use the Italian exonyms Maurizio and Seicelle. According to the United Nations Statistics Division:
Time has, however, shown that initial ambitious attempts to rapidly decrease the number of exonyms were over-optimistic and not possible to realise in an intended way. The reason would appear to be that many exonyms have become common words in a language and can be seen as part of the language's cultural heritage.
In preference of exonyms
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In some situations, the use of exonyms can be preferred. For instance, in multilingual cities such as Brussels, which is known for its linguistic tensions between Dutch- and French-speakers, a neutral name may be preferred so as to not offend anyone. Thus, an exonym such as Brussels in English could be used instead of favoring either one of the local names (Dutch/Flemish: Brussel; French: Bruxelles).
Other difficulties with endonyms have to do with pronunciation, spelling, and word category. The endonym may include sounds and spellings that are highly unfamiliar to speakers of other languages, making appropriate usage difficult if not impossible for an outsider. Over the years, the endonym may have undergone phonetic changes, either in the original language or the borrowing language, thus changing an endonym into an exonym, as in the case of Paris, where the s was formerly pronounced in French. Another example is the endonym for the German city of Cologne, where the Latin original of Colonia has evolved into Köln in German, while the Italian and Spanish exonym Colonia or the Portuguese Colónia closely reflects the Latin original.
In some cases, no standardised spelling is available, either because the language itself is unwritten (even unanalysed) or because there are competing non-standard spellings. Use of a misspelled endonym is perhaps more problematic than the respectful use of an existing exonym.[citation needed] Finally, an endonym may be a plural noun and may not naturally extend itself to adjectival usage in another language like English, which has the propensity to use the adjectives for describing culture and language.[citation needed]
Official preferences
Sometimes the government of a country tries to endorse the use of an endonym instead of traditional exonyms outside the country:
- In 1782, King Yotfa Chulalok of Siam moved the government seat from Thon Buri Province to Phra Nakhon Province. In 1972 the Thai government merged Thon Buri and Phra Nakhon, forming the new capital, Krungthep Mahanakhon. However, outside of Thailand, the capital retained the old name and is still called Bangkok.
- In 1935, Reza Shah requested that foreign nations use the name Iran rather than Persia in official correspondence. The name of the country had internally been Iran since the time of the Sassanid Empire (224–651), whereas the name Persia is descended from Greek Persis (Περσίς), referring to a single province which is officially known as Fars province.
- In 1949, the government of Siam changed the name to Thailand, although the former name's adjective in English (Siamese) was retained as the name for the fish, cat and conjoined twins.
- In 1972, the government of Ceylon (the word is the anglicized form of Portuguese Ceilão) changed the name to Sri Lanka, although the name Ceylon was retained as the name for that type of tea.
- In 1985, the government of Côte d'Ivoire requested that the country's French name be used in all languages instead of exonyms such as Ivory Coast, so that Côte d'Ivoire is now the official English name of that country in the United Nations and the International Olympic Committee (see name of Côte d'Ivoire). In most non-Francophone countries, however, the French version has not entered common parlance. For example, in German, the country is known as die Elfenbeinküste, in Spanish as Costa de Marfil and in Italian as Costa d'Avorio.
- In 1989, the government of Burma requested that the English name of the country be Myanmar, with Myanma as the adjective of the country and Bamar as the name of the inhabitants (see names of Burma).
- The Government of India officially changed the English name of Bombay to Mumbai in November 1995, following a trend of renaming of cities and states in India that has occurred since independence.
- The Ukrainian government maintains that the capital of Ukraine should be spelled Kyiv in English because the traditional English exonym Kiev was derived from the Russian name Kiyev (Киев) (see Name of Kyiv).
- The Belarusian government argues that the endonym Belarus should be used in all languages. The result has been rather successful in English, where the former exonym Byelorussia/Belorussia, still used with reference to the Soviet Republic, has virtually died out; in other languages, exonyms are still much more common than Belarus, for instance in Danish Hviderusland, Dutch Wit-Rusland, Estonian Valgevene, Faroese Hvítarussland, Finnish Valko-Venäjä, German Weißrussland, Greek Lefkorosía (Λευκορωσία), Hungarian Fehéroroszország, Icelandic Hvíta-Rússland, Swedish Vitryssland, Turkish Beyaz Rusya, Chinese Bái'èluósī (白俄罗斯), Arabic rusia albayda' (روسيا البيضاء) (all literally 'White Russia'), or French Biélorussie, Italian Bielorussia, Portuguese Bielorrússia, Spanish Bielorrusia, and Serbian Belorusija (Белорусија).
- The government of Georgia has been working to have the country renamed from the Russian-derived exonym of Gruzia in foreign languages to Georgia. Most countries have adopted this change, except for Lithuania, which adopted Sakartvelas (a Lithuanianised version of the country's endonym). As a response, Georgia changed the name of Lithuania in Georgian from the Russian-derived Lit’va (ლიტვა) to the endonym Liet’uva (ლიეტუვა). Ukrainian politicians have also suggested that Ukraine change the Ukrainian name of Georgia from Hruzia (Грузія) to Sakartvelo (Сакартвело).
- In 2006, the South Korean national government officially changed the Chinese name of its capital, Seoul, from the exonym 漢城/汉城 (Hànchéng) derived from the Joseon era Hanja name (Korean: 한성; Hanja: 漢城; RR: Hanseong) to Shŏu'ér (首爾/首尔). This use has now been made official within China.
- In December 2021, a circular was issued by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan of Turkey ordering the use of Türkiye (also rendered Turkiye in English) instead of exonyms in official communications, no matter the language.
Hanyu Pinyin
Following the 1979 declaration of Hanyu Pinyin spelling as the standard romanisation of Chinese, many Chinese endonyms have successfully replaced English exonyms, especially city and most provincial names in mainland China, for example: Beijing (北京; Běijīng), Qingdao (青岛; Qīngdǎo), and the province of Guangdong (广东; Guǎngdōng). However, older English exonyms are sometimes used in certain contexts, for example: Peking (Beijing; duck, opera, etc.), Tsingtao (Qingdao), and Canton (Guangdong). In some cases the traditional English exonym is based on a local Chinese variety instead of Mandarin, in the case of Xiamen, where the name Amoy is closer to the Hokkien pronunciation.
In the case of Beijing, the adoption of the exonym by media outlets quickly gave rise to a hyperforeignised pronunciation, with the result that many English speakers actualize the j in Beijing as /ʒ/. One exception of Pinyin standardization in mainland China is the spelling of the province Shaanxi, which is the mixed Gwoyeu Romatzyh–Pinyin spelling of the province. That is because if Pinyin were used to spell the province, it would be indistinguishable from its neighboring province Shanxi, where the pronunciations of the two provinces only differ by tones, which are usually not written down when used in English.
In Taiwan, however, the standardization of Hanyu Pinyin has only seen mixed results. In Taipei, most (but not all) street and district names shifted to Hanyu Pinyin. For example, the Sinyi District is now spelled Xinyi. However, districts like Tamsui and even Taipei itself are not spelled according to Hanyu Pinyin spelling rules. As a matter of fact, most names of Taiwanese cities are still spelled using Chinese postal romanization, including Taipei, Taichung, Taitung, Keelung, and Kaohsiung.
During the 1980s, the Singapore Government encouraged the use of Hanyu Pinyin spelling for place names, especially those with Teochew, Hokkien or Cantonese names, as part of the Speak Mandarin Campaign to promote Mandarin and discourage the use of dialects. For example, the area of Nee Soon, named after Teochew-Peranakan businessman Lim Nee Soon (Hanyu Pinyin: Lín Yìshùn) became Yishun and the neighbourhood schools and places established following the change used the Hanyu Pinyin spelling. In contrast, Hougang is the Hanyu Pinyin spelling but the Hokkien pronunciation au-kang is most commonly used. The changes to Hanyu Pinyin were not only financially costly but were unpopular with the locals, who opined that the Hanyu Pinyin versions were too difficult for non-Chinese or non-Mandarin speakers to pronounce. The government eventually stopped the changes by the 1990s, which has led to some place names within a locality having differing spellings. For example, Nee Soon Road and the Singapore Armed Forces base Nee Soon Camp are both located in Yishun but retained the old spelling.
Exonyms as pejoratives
This section needs additional citations for verification.(July 2020) |
Matisoff wrote, "A group's autonym is often egocentric, equating the name of the people with 'mankind in general,' or the name of the language with 'human speech'.": 5
In Basque, the term erdara/erdera is used for speakers of any language other than Basque (usually Spanish or French).
Many millennia earlier, the Greeks thought that all non-Greeks were uncultured and so called them "barbarians", which eventually gave rise to the exonym "Berber".
Slavic people
Exonyms often describe others as "foreign-speaking", "non-speaking", or "nonsense-speaking". One example is the Slavic term for the Germans, nemtsi, possibly deriving from plural of nemy ("mute"); standard etymology has it that the Slavic peoples referred to their Germanic neighbors as "mutes" because they could not speak the "language". The term survives to this day in the Slavic languages (e.g. Ukrainian німці (nimtsi); Russian немцы (nemtsy), Slovene Nemčija), and was borrowed into Hungarian, Romanian, and Ottoman Turkish (in which case it referred specifically to Austria).
One of the more prominent theories regarding the origin of the term "Slav" suggests that it comes from the Slavic root slovo (hence "Slovakia" and "Slovenia" for example), meaning 'word' or 'speech'. In this context, the Slavs are describing Germanic people as "mutes"—in contrast to themselves, "the speaking ones".[citation needed]
Native Americans
The most common names of several Indigenous American tribes derive from pejorative exonyms. The name "Apache" most likely derives from a Zuni word meaning "enemy". The name "Sioux", an abbreviated form of Nadouessioux, most likely derived from a Proto-Algonquian term, *-a·towe· ('foreign-speaking). The name "Comanche" comes from the Ute word kɨmantsi meaning "enemy, stranger". The Ancestral Puebloans are also known as the "Anasazi", a Navajo word meaning "ancient enemies", and contemporary Puebloans discourage the use of the exonym.
Various Native-American autonyms are sometimes explained to English readers as having literal translations of "original people" or "normal people", with implicit contrast to other first nations as not original or not normal.: 5
Confusion with renaming
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In East Asia
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Although the pronunciation for several names of Chinese cities such as Beijing and Nanjing has not changed for quite some time while in Mandarin Chinese (although the prestige dialect shifted from Nanjing dialect to Beijing dialect during the 19th century), they were called Peking and Nanking in English due to the older Chinese postal romanization convention, based largely on the Nanjing dialect. Pinyin, based largely on the Beijing dialect, became the official romanization method for Mandarin in the 1970s.
As the Mandarin pronunciation does not perfectly map to an English phoneme, English speakers using either romanization will not pronounce the names correctly if standard English pronunciation is used. Nonetheless, many older English speakers still refer to the cities by their older English names, and even today they are often used in their traditional associations, such as Peking duck, Peking opera, and Peking University. As for Nanjing, the historical event called the Nanking Massacre (1937) uses the city's older name because that was the name of the city at the time of occurrence.
Likewise, many Korean cities like Busan and Incheon (formerly Pusan and Inchǒn respectively) also underwent changes in spelling due to changes in romanization, even though the Korean pronunciations have largely stayed the same.
In Eurasia
Exonyms and endonyms must not be confused with the results of geographical renaming as in the case of Saint Petersburg, which became Petrograd (Петроград) in 1914, Leningrad (Ленинград) in 1924, and again Saint Petersburg (Санкт-Петербург, Sankt-Peterbúrg) in 1991. In this case, although Saint Petersburg has a Dutch etymology, it was never a Dutch exonym for the city between 1914 and 1991, just as Nieuw Amsterdam, the Dutch name of New York City until 1664, is not its Dutch exonym.
Old place names that have become outdated after renaming may afterward still be used as historicisms. For example, even today one would talk about the Siege of Leningrad, not the Siege of St. Petersburg because at that time (1941–1944) the city was called Leningrad. Likewise, one would say that Immanuel Kant was born in Königsberg in 1724, not in Kaliningrad (Калининград), as it has been called since 1946.
Likewise, Istanbul (Turkish: İstanbul) is still called Constantinople (Κωνσταντινούπολη) in Greek, although the name was changed in Turkish to dissociate the city from its Greek past between 1923 and 1930 (the name Istanbul itself derives from a Medieval Greek phrase). Prior to Constantinople, the city was known in Greek as Byzantion (Greek: Βυζάντιον, Latin: Byzantium), named after its mythical founder, Byzas.
In India
Following independence from the UK in 1947, many regions and cities have been renamed in accordance with local languages, or to change the English spelling to more closely match the indigenous local name. The name Madras, now Chennai, may be a special case. When the city was first settled by English people, in the early 17th century, both names were in use. They possibly referred to different villages which were fused into the new settlement. In any case, Madras became the exonym, while more recently, Chennai became the endonym. Madrasi, a term for a native of the city, has often been used derogatorily to refer to the people of Dravidian origin from the southern states of India.
Lists of exonyms
- Latin exonyms
- List of English exonyms
- English exonyms for German toponyms
- English-translated personal names
- List of German exonyms
- German names for Central European towns
- German exonyms for places in Belgium
- German exonyms for places in Croatia
- German exonyms for places in Denmark
- German exonyms for places in Estonia
- German exonyms for places in Hungary
- German exonyms for places in Latvia
- German exonyms for places in Slovakia
- German exonyms for places in Switzerland
- List of European exonyms
- Names of European cities in different languages
- Finnish exonyms
- Greek exonyms
- Italian exonyms
- Portuguese exonyms
- Icelandic exonyms
- Russian exonyms
- Slavic toponyms for Greek places
- Welsh names for other places in Britain and Ireland
- African/Asian/Middle-Eastern/Eurasian exonyms
- Arabic exonyms
- Azerbaijani exonyms
- Chinese exonyms
- Japanese exonyms
- Vietnamese exonyms
See also
- -onym
- Emic and etic
- Shibboleth
- Metonymy
- Linguistic imperialism
Other lists
- List of countries and dependencies and their capitals in native languages
- List of adjectival and demonymic forms of place names
- List of language names
- List of alternative country names
- List of country names in various languages
- List of Latin place names in Europe
- List of European regions with alternative names
- List of European rivers with alternative names
- List of traditional Greek place names
- List of Coptic placenames
- Place names in Irish
- Names of places in Finland in Finnish and in Swedish
- List of renamed Indian cities and states
References
Citations
- "Exonym and Endonym". ThoughtCo. Retrieved 2022-11-16.
- Ormeling, Ferjan. "Exonyms in Cartography" (PDF). United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names. Retrieved 27 February 2023.
- Room 1996, p. 14.
- Harder, Kelsey B. (1996). "156. Names in Language Contact: Exonyms (Namen im Sprachaustausch: Exonyme I Les noms dans des echanges de /angues: exonymes)". In Eichler, Ernst (ed.). Namenforschung/Name Studies/Les noms propres. 2/11 in the series Handbücher zur Sprach- und Kommunikationswissenschaft / Handbooks of Linguistics and Communication Science (HSK) (in German). Vol. 2. Halbband+Registerband. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. p. 1012. doi:10.1515/9783110203431. ISBN 9783110148794. (TOC)
- Aurousseau, Marcel (1957). The Rendering of Geographical Names. London: Hutchinson university library. p. 17.
- UNESCO (1984). African ethnonyms and toponyms. France: UNESCO. p. 67. ISBN 978-92-3-101944-9.
- Edelman, Loulou. 2009. "What's in a Name? Classification of proper names by language". Pp. 141–53 in Linguistic landscape: expanding the scenery, edited by E. Shohamy and D. Gorter. London: Routledge. Goh, CL.: "The names of monarchs, popes, and non-contemporary authors as well as place names are commonly translated. Foreign names for geographic proper names are called exonyms. Fourment-Berni Canani (1994) discusses the (im)possibility of translating proper names. He gives examples of the place names Venice and London. The Italian city Venezia has been renamed Venice in English and Venise in French. A city in the American state California is also called Venice, but this name is not changed into Venezia in Italian and Venise in French. Similarly, the English city London has been renamed Londres in French and Londra in Italian. However, the Canadian city called London is not translated into French and Italian in this way. Thus, as Fourment-Berni Canani concludes, a place name can be translated if the place, as a unique referent, has already been renamed in the target language."
- Geršič, M., ed. (2020). "Introduction". UNGEGN Working Group on Exonyms. Slovenia: United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names. ISSN 2536-1732..
- Jordan, Peter (3–7 May 2021). Exonyms as part of the cultural heritage (Provisional agenda item 13 – submission by Austria). New York: United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names, Second session.
- Matisoff, James (1986). "The languages and dialects of Tibeto-Burman: an alphabetic/genetic listing, with some prefatory remarks on ethnonymic and glossonymic complications". In McCoy, John; Light, Timothy (eds.). Contributions to Sino-Tibetan studies. Leiden: E.J. Brill. p. 6. ISBN 90-04-07850-9. OCLC 15093829.
- ""UNGEGN-ICA webcourse on Toponymy"". United Nations Statistics Division. Archived from the original on 11 March 2024.
- Challa, Janaki. "Why Being 'Gypped' Hurts The Roma More Than It Hurts You". NPR. Retrieved 18 September 2023.
"Hancock tells me the word "gypsy" itself is an "exonym" – a term imposed upon an ethnic group by outsiders. When the Roma people moved westward from India towards the European continent, they were mistaken to be Egyptian because of their features and dark skin. We see the same phenomenon across several languages, not only English. Victor Hugo, in his epic Hunchback of Notre Dame, noted that the Medieval French term for the Roma was egyptiens. In Spanish, the word for gypsy is "gitano," which comes from the word egipcio, meaning Egyptian – in Romanian: tigan, in Bulgarian: tsiganin, in Turkish: cingene – all of which are variations of slang words for "Egyptian" in those languages."
- Van der Meulen, Martin (19 April 2022). "Why I Will Never Again Refer to the Ukrainian Capital City as Kiev". The Low Countries. Retrieved 18 September 2023.
- Luxán, Marga Azcárate; Tagle, Bárbara Alonso. "EXONYMS IN SPANISH Criteria and usage in cartography" (PDF). NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC INSTITUTE OF SPAIN (IGN). Retrieved 18 September 2023.
- Sandro Toniolo, I perché e i nomi della geografia, Istituto Geografico Militare, Florence 2005, p. 88–89, n. 170-171.
- Press, Stanford University. "Start reading The Discovery of Iran". sup.org. Retrieved 2024-03-11.
- "Ninth United Nations Conference on the Standardization of Geographical Names" (PDF). United Nations Statistics Division. Retrieved 11 March 2024.
- "Myanmar, Burma and why the different names matter". Associated Press. 2021-02-02. Retrieved 2024-03-11.
- Beam, Christopher (2006-07-12). "Mumbai? What About Bombay?". Slate. ISSN 1091-2339. Retrieved 2024-03-11.
- "Turkiye – The latest news from TRT World". Turkiye – The latest news from TRT World. Retrieved 2022-01-02.
- "Why Turkey is now 'Turkiye', and why that matters". Why Turkey is now 'Turkiye', and why that matters. Archived from the original on 2023-02-09. Retrieved 2022-01-02.
- Eighth United Nations Conference on the Standardization of Geographical Names Berlin, 27 August-5 September 2002. New York: United Nations. 2003. ISBN 92-1-100915-4. OCLC 52095159.
- Lima, Susan D. (1994). Corrigan, Roberta; Iverson, Gregory K. (eds.). The Reality of Linguistic Rules. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Pub. Co. p. 80. ISBN 978-90-272-8203-3. OCLC 746747262.
- Savage, Victor R.; Yeoh, Brenda S. (2013). Toponymics: A Study of Singapore Street Names (3rd ed.). Marshall Cavendish. ISBN 9789814408356.
- Yeh, Yun-Tsui. (2013) "Erased Place Names" and Nation-building: A Case Study of Singaporean Toponyms". Sociology.
- Townson (1992). Mother-tongue and Fatherland: Language and Politics in German. Manchester University Press. p. 78. ISBN 9780719034398.
- d'Errico, Peter (2005). "Native American Indian Studies – A Note on Names". University of Massachusetts. Retrieved 2020-10-07.
- Sapir, Edward (1992). "Southern Paiute Dictionary". In Bright, William (ed.). The Collected Works of Edward Sapir. Berlin: Mouton deGruyter.
- Cordell, Linda; McBrinn, Maxine (2012). Archaeology of the Southwest (3 ed.).
- "Puebloan Culture". University of Northern Colorado. Archived from the original on 2010-07-09.
- "The Names of Kōnstantinoúpolis". Dünden bugüne İstanbul ansiklopedisi. 5. Ciltli. 1994.
- Bag, Ahana (October 19, 2021). "It's time to end the 'Madrasi' stereotype". Madras Courier. Retrieved 25 July 2024.
General and cited sources
- Jordan, Peter, Hubert Bergmann, Caroline Burgess, and Catherine Cheetham, eds. 2010 & 2011. "Trends in Exonym Use." Proceedings of the 10th UNGEGN Working Group on Exonyms Meeting. Tainach (28–30 April 2010). Hamburg (2011). Name & Place 1.
- Jordan, Peter, Milan Orožen Adamič, and Paul Woodman, eds. 2007. "Exonyms and the International Standardisation of Geographical Names." Approaches towards the Resolution of an Apparent Contradiction. Wien and Berlin. Wiener Osteuropastudien 24.
- Room, Adrian (1996). An Alphabetical Guide to the Language of Name Studies. Lanham and London: The Scarecrow Press. p. 14. ISBN 9780810831698.
External links
![image](https://www.english.nina.az/wikipedia/image/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZW5nbGlzaC5uaW5hLmF6L3dpa2lwZWRpYS9pbWFnZS9hSFIwY0hNNkx5OTFjR3h2WVdRdWQybHJhVzFsWkdsaExtOXlaeTkzYVd0cGNHVmthV0V2WTI5dGJXOXVjeTkwYUhWdFlpODVMems1TDFkcGEzUnBiMjVoY25rdGJHOW5ieTFsYmkxMk1pNXpkbWN2TkRCd2VDMVhhV3QwYVc5dVlYSjVMV3h2WjI4dFpXNHRkakl1YzNabkxuQnVadz09LnBuZw==.png)
- 2006 UN document discussing exonyms (PDF)
- Jacek Wesołowski's Place Names in Europe, featuring endonyms and exonyms for many cities (archived 23 August 2000)
- "Does Juliet's Rose, by Any Other Name, Smell as Sweet?" by Verónica Albin.
- Looking up in exonym database
- European geographical names infrastructure and services on EuroGeoNames (archived 15 January 2009)
- UN document describing EuroGeoNames (PDF)
- World map of country endonyms
This article has multiple issues Please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page Learn how and when to remove these messages This article possibly contains original research Please improve it by verifying the claims made and adding inline citations Statements consisting only of original research should be removed December 2022 Learn how and when to remove this message This article needs additional citations for verification Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources Unsourced material may be challenged and removed Find sources Endonym and exonym news newspapers books scholar JSTOR December 2022 Learn how and when to remove this message Learn how and when to remove this message An endonym endenɪm also known as autonym ˈɔːtenɪm is a common native name for a group of people individual person geographical place language or dialect meaning that it is used inside a particular group or linguistic community to identify or designate themselves their place of origin or their language A map demonstrating the wide diversity of exonyms for Germany compared to the German language endonym of Deutschland An exonym ˈɛɡzenɪm also known as xenonym ˈzɛnenɪm is an established non native name for a group of people individual person geographical place language or dialect meaning that it is used primarily outside the particular place inhabited by the group or linguistic community Exonyms exist not only for historico geographical reasons but also in consideration of difficulties when pronouncing foreign words or from non systematic attempts at transcribing into a different writing system For instance Deutschland is the endonym for the country that is also known by the exonyms Germany and Germania in English and Italian respectively Alemania and Allemagne in Spanish and French respectively Niemcy in Polish Saksa and Saksamaa in Finnish and Estonian Naming and etymologyThe terms autonym endonym exonym and xenonym are formed by adding specific prefixes to the Greek root word ὄnoma onoma name from Proto Indo European h nomn The prefixes added to these terms are also derived from Greek endonym ἔndon endon within exonym ἔ3w exō outside autonym aὐtos autos self and xenonym 3enos xenos foreign The terms autonym and xenonym also have different applications thus leaving endonym and exonym as the preferred forms Marcel Aurousseau an Australian geographer first used the term exonym in his work The Rendering of Geographical Names 1957 TypologyEndonyms and exonyms can be divided in three main categories citation needed endonyms and exonyms of place names toponyms endonyms and exonyms of human names anthroponyms including names of ethnic groups ethnonyms localised populations demonyms and individuals personal names endonyms and exonyms of language names glossonyms Endonyms and exonyms of toponyms As it pertains to geographical features the United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names defines Endonym Name of a geographical feature in an official or well established language occurring in that area where the feature is located Exonym Name used in a specific language for a geographical feature situated outside the area where that language is spoken and differing in its form from the name used in an official or well established language of that area where the geographical feature is located For example India China Egypt and Germany are the English language exonyms corresponding to the endonyms Bharat भ रत Zhōngguo 中国 Masr م صر and Deutschland respectively There are also typonyms of specific features for example hydronyms for bodies of water Endonyms and exonyms of glossonyms In the case of endonyms and exonyms of language names glossonyms Chinese German and Dutch for example are English language exonyms for the languages that are endonymously known as Zhōngwen 中文 Deutsch and Nederlands respectively Exonyms in relation to endonymsThis section does not cite any sources Please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources Unsourced material may be challenged and removed November 2023 Learn how and when to remove this message By their relation to endonyms all exonyms can be divided into three main categories those that are cognate words diverged only in pronunciation or orthography those that are fully or partially translated a calque from the native language those derived from different roots as in the case of Germany for Deutschland Sometimes a place name may be unable to use many of the letters when transliterated into an exonym because of the corresponding language s lack of common sounds Maori having only one liquid consonant is an example of this here Cognate exonyms London originally Latin Londinium for example is known by the cognate exonyms Londres in Catalan Filipino French Galician Portuguese and Spanish Londino Londino in Greek Londen in Dutch and Afrikaans Londra in Italian Maltese Romanian Romansh Sardinian and Turkish Londer in Albanian Londyn in Czech and Slovak Londyn in Polish Ranana in Maori Lundunir in Icelandic Londain in Irish Lunnainn in Scottish Gaelic Llundain in Welsh Lontoo in Finnish Luan Đon in Vietnamese Landan لندن in Persian and Urdu London Լոնդոն in Armenian Lundun 伦敦 in Chinese Translated exonyms An example of a translated exonym is the name for the Netherlands Nederland in Dutch used respectively in German Niederlande French Pays Bas Italian Paesi Bassi Spanish Paises Bajos Irish An Isiltir Portuguese Paises Baixos and Romanian Țările de Jos all of which mean Low Countries However the endonym Nederland is singular while all the aforementioned translations except Irish are plural Native and borrowed exonyms Exonyms can also be divided into native and borrowed e g from a third language For example the Slovene exonyms Dunaj Vienna and Benetke Venice are native but the Avar name of Paris Parizh Parizh is borrowed from Russian Parizh Parizh which comes from Polish Paryz which comes from Italian Parigi A substantial proportion of English language exonyms for places in continental Europe are borrowed or adapted from French for example Belgrade Serbian Beograd romanized Beograd Bucharest Romanian București Cologne German Koln Kolsch Kolle Florence Italian Firenze Milan Italian Milano Munich German Munchen Bavarian Minga Naples Italian Napoli Neapolitan Napule Navarre Spanish Navarra Basque Nafarroa Prague Czech Praha Rome Italian Roma and Seville Spanish Sevilla Typical development of exonymsMany exonyms result from adaptations of an endonym into another language mediated by differences in phonetics while others may result from translation of the endonym or as a reflection of the specific relationship an outsider group has with a local place or geographical feature According to James Matisoff who introduced the term autonym into linguistics exonyms can also arise from the egocentric tendency of in groups to identify themselves with mankind in general producing an endonym that out groups would not use while another source is the human tendency towards neighbours to be pejorative rather than complimentary especially where there is a real or fancied difference in cultural level between the ingroup and the outgroup For example Matisoff notes Khang an opprobrious term indicating mixed race or parentage is the Palaung name for Jingpo people and the Jingpo name for Chin people both the Jingpo and Burmese use the Chinese word yeren 野人 wild men savage rustic people as the name for Lisu people As exonyms develop for places of significance for speakers of the language of the exonym consequently many European capitals have English exonyms for example Athens Greek A8hna romanized Athina Belgrade Serbian Beograd romanized Beograd Bucharest Romanian București Brussels French Bruxelles Dutch Brussel Copenhagen Danish Kobenhavn Lisbon Portuguese Lisboa Moscow Russian Moskva romanized Moskva Prague Czech Praha Rome Italian Roma Vienna German Wien and Warsaw Polish Warszawa In contrast historically less prominent capitals such as Ljubljana and Zagreb do not have English exonyms but do have exonyms in languages spoken nearby e g German Laibach and Agram the latter being obsolete Italian Lubiana and Zagabria Madrid Berlin Oslo and Amsterdam with identical names in most major European languages are exceptions Some European cities might be considered partial exceptions in that whilst the spelling is the same across languages the pronunciation can differ For example the city of Paris is spelled the same way in French and English but the French pronunciation paʁi is different from the English pronunciation ˈpaerɪs For places considered to be of lesser significance attempts to reproduce local names have been made in English since the time of the Crusades Livorno for instance was Leghorn because it was an Italian port essential to English merchants and by the 18th century to the British Navy not far away Rapallo a minor port on the same sea never received an exonym citation needed In earlier times the name of the first tribe or village encountered became the exonym for the whole people beyond Thus the Romans used the tribal names Graecus Greek and Germanus Germanic the Russians used the village name of Chechen medieval Europeans took the tribal name Tatar as emblematic for the whole Mongolic confederation and then confused it with Tartarus a word for Hell to produce Tartar and the Magyar invaders were equated with the 500 years earlier Hunnish invaders in the same territory and were called Hungarians The Germanic invaders of the Roman Empire applied the word Walha to foreigners they encountered and this evolved in West Germanic languages as a generic name for speakers of Celtic and later as Celts became increasingly romanised Romance languages thence Wallachia the historic name of Romania inhabited by the Vlachs the Slavic term Vlah for Romanian dialectally Italian Latin Wallonia the french speaking region of Belgium Cornwall and Wales the Celtic speaking regions located West of the Anglo Saxon dominated England Wallis a mostly French speaking canton in Switzerland Welschland the German name for the french speaking Switzerland the Polish and Hungarian names for Italy Wlochy and Olaszorszag respectivelyUsageIn avoiding exonyms During the late 20th century the use of exonyms often became controversial Groups often prefer that outsiders avoid exonyms where they have come to be used in a pejorative way For example Romani people often prefer that term to exonyms such as Gypsy from the name of Egypt and the French term bohemien boheme from the name of Bohemia People may also avoid exonyms for reasons of historical sensitivity as in the case of German names for Polish and Czech places that at one time had been ethnically or politically German e g Danzig Gdansk Auschwitz Oswiecim and Karlsbad Karlovy Vary and Russian names for non Russian locations that were subsequently renamed or had their spelling changed e g Kiev Kyiv In recent years geographers have sought to reduce the use of exonyms to avoid this kind of problem For example it is now common for Spanish speakers to refer to the Turkish capital as Ankara rather than use the Spanish exonym Angora Another example it is now common for Italian speakers to refer to some African states as Mauritius and Seychelles rather than use the Italian exonyms Maurizio and Seicelle According to the United Nations Statistics Division Time has however shown that initial ambitious attempts to rapidly decrease the number of exonyms were over optimistic and not possible to realise in an intended way The reason would appear to be that many exonyms have become common words in a language and can be seen as part of the language s cultural heritage In preference of exonyms This section does not cite any sources Please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources Unsourced material may be challenged and removed July 2020 Learn how and when to remove this message In some situations the use of exonyms can be preferred For instance in multilingual cities such as Brussels which is known for its linguistic tensions between Dutch and French speakers a neutral name may be preferred so as to not offend anyone Thus an exonym such as Brussels in English could be used instead of favoring either one of the local names Dutch Flemish Brussel French Bruxelles Other difficulties with endonyms have to do with pronunciation spelling and word category The endonym may include sounds and spellings that are highly unfamiliar to speakers of other languages making appropriate usage difficult if not impossible for an outsider Over the years the endonym may have undergone phonetic changes either in the original language or the borrowing language thus changing an endonym into an exonym as in the case of Paris where the s was formerly pronounced in French Another example is the endonym for the German city of Cologne where the Latin original of Colonia has evolved into Koln in German while the Italian and Spanish exonym Colonia or the Portuguese Colonia closely reflects the Latin original In some cases no standardised spelling is available either because the language itself is unwritten even unanalysed or because there are competing non standard spellings Use of a misspelled endonym is perhaps more problematic than the respectful use of an existing exonym citation needed Finally an endonym may be a plural noun and may not naturally extend itself to adjectival usage in another language like English which has the propensity to use the adjectives for describing culture and language citation needed Official preferences Sometimes the government of a country tries to endorse the use of an endonym instead of traditional exonyms outside the country In 1782 King Yotfa Chulalok of Siam moved the government seat from Thon Buri Province to Phra Nakhon Province In 1972 the Thai government merged Thon Buri and Phra Nakhon forming the new capital Krungthep Mahanakhon However outside of Thailand the capital retained the old name and is still called Bangkok In 1935 Reza Shah requested that foreign nations use the name Iran rather than Persia in official correspondence The name of the country had internally been Iran since the time of the Sassanid Empire 224 651 whereas the name Persia is descended from Greek Persis Persis referring to a single province which is officially known as Fars province In 1949 the government of Siam changed the name to Thailand although the former name s adjective in English Siamese was retained as the name for the fish cat and conjoined twins In 1972 the government of Ceylon the word is the anglicized form of Portuguese Ceilao changed the name to Sri Lanka although the name Ceylon was retained as the name for that type of tea In 1985 the government of Cote d Ivoire requested that the country s French name be used in all languages instead of exonyms such as Ivory Coast so that Cote d Ivoire is now the official English name of that country in the United Nations and the International Olympic Committee see name of Cote d Ivoire In most non Francophone countries however the French version has not entered common parlance For example in German the country is known as die Elfenbeinkuste in Spanish as Costa de Marfil and in Italian as Costa d Avorio In 1989 the government of Burma requested that the English name of the country be Myanmar with Myanma as the adjective of the country and Bamar as the name of the inhabitants see names of Burma The Government of India officially changed the English name of Bombay to Mumbai in November 1995 following a trend of renaming of cities and states in India that has occurred since independence The Ukrainian government maintains that the capital of Ukraine should be spelled Kyiv in English because the traditional English exonym Kiev was derived from the Russian name Kiyev Kiev see Name of Kyiv The Belarusian government argues that the endonym Belarus should be used in all languages The result has been rather successful in English where the former exonym Byelorussia Belorussia still used with reference to the Soviet Republic has virtually died out in other languages exonyms are still much more common than Belarus for instance in Danish Hviderusland Dutch Wit Rusland Estonian Valgevene Faroese Hvitarussland Finnish Valko Venaja German Weissrussland Greek Lefkorosia Leykorwsia Hungarian Feheroroszorszag Icelandic Hvita Russland Swedish Vitryssland Turkish Beyaz Rusya Chinese Bai eluosi 白俄罗斯 Arabic rusia albayda روسيا البيضاء all literally White Russia or French Bielorussie Italian Bielorussia Portuguese Bielorrussia Spanish Bielorrusia and Serbian Belorusija Belorusiјa The government of Georgia has been working to have the country renamed from the Russian derived exonym of Gruzia in foreign languages to Georgia Most countries have adopted this change except for Lithuania which adopted Sakartvelas a Lithuanianised version of the country s endonym As a response Georgia changed the name of Lithuania in Georgian from the Russian derived Lit va ლიტვა to the endonym Liet uva ლიეტუვა Ukrainian politicians have also suggested that Ukraine change the Ukrainian name of Georgia from Hruzia Gruziya to Sakartvelo Sakartvelo In 2006 the South Korean national government officially changed the Chinese name of its capital Seoul from the exonym 漢城 汉城 Hancheng derived from the Joseon era Hanja name Korean 한성 Hanja 漢城 RR Hanseong to Shŏu er 首爾 首尔 This use has now been made official within China In December 2021 a circular was issued by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey ordering the use of Turkiye also rendered Turkiye in English instead of exonyms in official communications no matter the language Hanyu Pinyin Following the 1979 declaration of Hanyu Pinyin spelling as the standard romanisation of Chinese many Chinese endonyms have successfully replaced English exonyms especially city and most provincial names in mainland China for example Beijing 北京 Beijing Qingdao 青岛 Qingdǎo and the province of Guangdong 广东 Guǎngdōng However older English exonyms are sometimes used in certain contexts for example Peking Beijing duck opera etc Tsingtao Qingdao and Canton Guangdong In some cases the traditional English exonym is based on a local Chinese variety instead of Mandarin in the case of Xiamen where the name Amoy is closer to the Hokkien pronunciation In the case of Beijing the adoption of the exonym by media outlets quickly gave rise to a hyperforeignised pronunciation with the result that many English speakers actualize the j in Beijing as ʒ One exception of Pinyin standardization in mainland China is the spelling of the province Shaanxi which is the mixed Gwoyeu Romatzyh Pinyin spelling of the province That is because if Pinyin were used to spell the province it would be indistinguishable from its neighboring province Shanxi where the pronunciations of the two provinces only differ by tones which are usually not written down when used in English In Taiwan however the standardization of Hanyu Pinyin has only seen mixed results In Taipei most but not all street and district names shifted to Hanyu Pinyin For example the Sinyi District is now spelled Xinyi However districts like Tamsui and even Taipei itself are not spelled according to Hanyu Pinyin spelling rules As a matter of fact most names of Taiwanese cities are still spelled using Chinese postal romanization including Taipei Taichung Taitung Keelung and Kaohsiung During the 1980s the Singapore Government encouraged the use of Hanyu Pinyin spelling for place names especially those with Teochew Hokkien or Cantonese names as part of the Speak Mandarin Campaign to promote Mandarin and discourage the use of dialects For example the area of Nee Soon named after Teochew Peranakan businessman Lim Nee Soon Hanyu Pinyin Lin Yishun became Yishun and the neighbourhood schools and places established following the change used the Hanyu Pinyin spelling In contrast Hougang is the Hanyu Pinyin spelling but the Hokkien pronunciation au kang is most commonly used The changes to Hanyu Pinyin were not only financially costly but were unpopular with the locals who opined that the Hanyu Pinyin versions were too difficult for non Chinese or non Mandarin speakers to pronounce The government eventually stopped the changes by the 1990s which has led to some place names within a locality having differing spellings For example Nee Soon Road and the Singapore Armed Forces base Nee Soon Camp are both located in Yishun but retained the old spelling Exonyms as pejorativesThis section needs additional citations for verification Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources in this section Unsourced material may be challenged and removed July 2020 Learn how and when to remove this message Matisoff wrote A group s autonym is often egocentric equating the name of the people with mankind in general or the name of the language with human speech 5 In Basque the term erdara erdera is used for speakers of any language other than Basque usually Spanish or French Many millennia earlier the Greeks thought that all non Greeks were uncultured and so called them barbarians which eventually gave rise to the exonym Berber Slavic people Exonyms often describe others as foreign speaking non speaking or nonsense speaking One example is the Slavic term for the Germans nemtsi possibly deriving from plural of nemy mute standard etymology has it that the Slavic peoples referred to their Germanic neighbors as mutes because they could not speak the language The term survives to this day in the Slavic languages e g Ukrainian nimci nimtsi Russian nemcy nemtsy Slovene Nemcija and was borrowed into Hungarian Romanian and Ottoman Turkish in which case it referred specifically to Austria One of the more prominent theories regarding the origin of the term Slav suggests that it comes from the Slavic root slovo hence Slovakia and Slovenia for example meaning word or speech In this context the Slavs are describing Germanic people as mutes in contrast to themselves the speaking ones citation needed Native Americans The most common names of several Indigenous American tribes derive from pejorative exonyms The name Apache most likely derives from a Zuni word meaning enemy The name Sioux an abbreviated form of Nadouessioux most likely derived from a Proto Algonquian term a towe foreign speaking The name Comanche comes from the Ute word kɨmantsi meaning enemy stranger The Ancestral Puebloans are also known as the Anasazi a Navajo word meaning ancient enemies and contemporary Puebloans discourage the use of the exonym Various Native American autonyms are sometimes explained to English readers as having literal translations of original people or normal people with implicit contrast to other first nations as not original or not normal 5 Confusion with renamingThis section possibly contains original research Please improve it by verifying the claims made and adding inline citations Statements consisting only of original research should be removed December 2022 Learn how and when to remove this message In East Asia This section does not cite any sources Please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources Unsourced material may be challenged and removed October 2024 Learn how and when to remove this message Although the pronunciation for several names of Chinese cities such as Beijing and Nanjing has not changed for quite some time while in Mandarin Chinese although the prestige dialect shifted from Nanjing dialect to Beijing dialect during the 19th century they were called Peking and Nanking in English due to the older Chinese postal romanization convention based largely on the Nanjing dialect Pinyin based largely on the Beijing dialect became the official romanization method for Mandarin in the 1970s As the Mandarin pronunciation does not perfectly map to an English phoneme English speakers using either romanization will not pronounce the names correctly if standard English pronunciation is used Nonetheless many older English speakers still refer to the cities by their older English names and even today they are often used in their traditional associations such as Peking duck Peking opera and Peking University As for Nanjing the historical event called the Nanking Massacre 1937 uses the city s older name because that was the name of the city at the time of occurrence Likewise many Korean cities like Busan and Incheon formerly Pusan and Inchǒn respectively also underwent changes in spelling due to changes in romanization even though the Korean pronunciations have largely stayed the same In Eurasia Exonyms and endonyms must not be confused with the results of geographical renaming as in the case of Saint Petersburg which became Petrograd Petrograd in 1914 Leningrad Leningrad in 1924 and again Saint Petersburg Sankt Peterburg Sankt Peterburg in 1991 In this case although Saint Petersburg has a Dutch etymology it was never a Dutch exonym for the city between 1914 and 1991 just as Nieuw Amsterdam the Dutch name of New York City until 1664 is not its Dutch exonym Old place names that have become outdated after renaming may afterward still be used as historicisms For example even today one would talk about the Siege of Leningrad not the Siege of St Petersburg because at that time 1941 1944 the city was called Leningrad Likewise one would say that Immanuel Kant was born in Konigsberg in 1724 not in Kaliningrad Kaliningrad as it has been called since 1946 Likewise Istanbul Turkish Istanbul is still called Constantinople Kwnstantinoypolh in Greek although the name was changed in Turkish to dissociate the city from its Greek past between 1923 and 1930 the name Istanbul itself derives from a Medieval Greek phrase Prior to Constantinople the city was known in Greek as Byzantion Greek Byzantion Latin Byzantium named after its mythical founder Byzas In India Following independence from the UK in 1947 many regions and cities have been renamed in accordance with local languages or to change the English spelling to more closely match the indigenous local name The name Madras now Chennai may be a special case When the city was first settled by English people in the early 17th century both names were in use They possibly referred to different villages which were fused into the new settlement In any case Madras became the exonym while more recently Chennai became the endonym Madrasi a term for a native of the city has often been used derogatorily to refer to the people of Dravidian origin from the southern states of India Lists of exonymsLatin exonyms List of English exonyms English exonyms for German toponyms English translated personal names List of German exonyms German names for Central European towns German exonyms for places in Belgium German exonyms for places in Croatia German exonyms for places in Denmark German exonyms for places in Estonia German exonyms for places in Hungary German exonyms for places in Latvia German exonyms for places in Slovakia German exonyms for places in Switzerland List of European exonyms Names of European cities in different languages Finnish exonyms Greek exonyms Italian exonyms Portuguese exonyms Icelandic exonyms Russian exonyms Slavic toponyms for Greek places Welsh names for other places in Britain and Ireland African Asian Middle Eastern Eurasian exonyms Arabic exonyms Azerbaijani exonyms Chinese exonyms Japanese exonyms Vietnamese exonymsSee also onym Emic and etic Shibboleth Metonymy Linguistic imperialismOther lists List of countries and dependencies and their capitals in native languages List of adjectival and demonymic forms of place names List of language names List of alternative country names List of country names in various languages List of Latin place names in Europe List of European regions with alternative names List of European rivers with alternative names List of traditional Greek place names List of Coptic placenames Place names in Irish Names of places in Finland in Finnish and in Swedish List of renamed Indian cities and statesReferencesCitations Exonym and Endonym ThoughtCo Retrieved 2022 11 16 Ormeling Ferjan Exonyms in Cartography PDF United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names Retrieved 27 February 2023 Room 1996 p 14 Harder Kelsey B 1996 156 Names in Language Contact Exonyms Namen im Sprachaustausch Exonyme I Les noms dans des echanges de angues exonymes In Eichler Ernst ed Namenforschung Name Studies Les noms propres 2 11 in the series Handbucher zur Sprach und Kommunikationswissenschaft Handbooks of Linguistics and Communication Science HSK in German Vol 2 Halbband Registerband Berlin De Gruyter Mouton p 1012 doi 10 1515 9783110203431 ISBN 9783110148794 TOC Aurousseau Marcel 1957 The Rendering of Geographical Names London Hutchinson university library p 17 UNESCO 1984 African ethnonyms and toponyms France UNESCO p 67 ISBN 978 92 3 101944 9 Edelman Loulou 2009 What s in a Name Classification of proper names by language Pp 141 53 in Linguistic landscape expanding the scenery edited by E Shohamy and D Gorter London Routledge Goh CL The names of monarchs popes and non contemporary authors as well as place names are commonly translated Foreign names for geographic proper names are called exonyms Fourment Berni Canani 1994 discusses the im possibility of translating proper names He gives examples of the place names Venice and London The Italian city Venezia has been renamed Venice in English and Venise in French A city in the American state California is also called Venice but this name is not changed into Venezia in Italian and Venise in French Similarly the English city London has been renamed Londres in French and Londra in Italian However the Canadian city called London is not translated into French and Italian in this way Thus as Fourment Berni Canani concludes a place name can be translated if the place as a unique referent has already been renamed in the target language Gersic M ed 2020 Introduction UNGEGN Working Group on Exonyms Slovenia United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names ISSN 2536 1732 Jordan Peter 3 7 May 2021 Exonyms as part of the cultural heritage Provisional agenda item 13 submission by Austria New York United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names Second session Matisoff James 1986 The languages and dialects of Tibeto Burman an alphabetic genetic listing with some prefatory remarks on ethnonymic and glossonymic complications In McCoy John Light Timothy eds Contributions to Sino Tibetan studies Leiden E J Brill p 6 ISBN 90 04 07850 9 OCLC 15093829 UNGEGN ICA webcourse on Toponymy United Nations Statistics Division Archived from the original on 11 March 2024 Challa Janaki Why Being Gypped Hurts The Roma More Than It Hurts You NPR Retrieved 18 September 2023 Hancock tells me the word gypsy itself is an exonym a term imposed upon an ethnic group by outsiders When the Roma people moved westward from India towards the European continent they were mistaken to be Egyptian because of their features and dark skin We see the same phenomenon across several languages not only English Victor Hugo in his epic Hunchback of Notre Dame noted that the Medieval French term for the Roma was egyptiens In Spanish the word for gypsy is gitano which comes from the word egipcio meaning Egyptian in Romanian tigan in Bulgarian tsiganin in Turkish cingene all of which are variations of slang words for Egyptian in those languages Van der Meulen Martin 19 April 2022 Why I Will Never Again Refer to the Ukrainian Capital City as Kiev The Low Countries Retrieved 18 September 2023 Luxan Marga Azcarate Tagle Barbara Alonso EXONYMS IN SPANISH Criteria and usage in cartography PDF NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC INSTITUTE OF SPAIN IGN Retrieved 18 September 2023 Sandro Toniolo I perche e i nomi della geografia Istituto Geografico Militare Florence 2005 p 88 89 n 170 171 Press Stanford University Start reading The Discovery of Iran sup org Retrieved 2024 03 11 Ninth United Nations Conference on the Standardization of Geographical Names PDF United Nations Statistics Division Retrieved 11 March 2024 Myanmar Burma and why the different names matter Associated Press 2021 02 02 Retrieved 2024 03 11 Beam Christopher 2006 07 12 Mumbai What About Bombay Slate ISSN 1091 2339 Retrieved 2024 03 11 Turkiye The latest news from TRT World Turkiye The latest news from TRT World Retrieved 2022 01 02 Why Turkey is now Turkiye and why that matters Why Turkey is now Turkiye and why that matters Archived from the original on 2023 02 09 Retrieved 2022 01 02 Eighth United Nations Conference on the Standardization of Geographical Names Berlin 27 August 5 September 2002 New York United Nations 2003 ISBN 92 1 100915 4 OCLC 52095159 Lima Susan D 1994 Corrigan Roberta Iverson Gregory K eds The Reality of Linguistic Rules Amsterdam Philadelphia John Benjamins Pub Co p 80 ISBN 978 90 272 8203 3 OCLC 746747262 Savage Victor R Yeoh Brenda S 2013 Toponymics A Study of Singapore Street Names 3rd ed Marshall Cavendish ISBN 9789814408356 Yeh Yun Tsui 2013 Erased Place Names and Nation building A Case Study of Singaporean Toponyms Sociology Townson 1992 Mother tongue and Fatherland Language and Politics in German Manchester University Press p 78 ISBN 9780719034398 d Errico Peter 2005 Native American Indian Studies A Note on Names University of Massachusetts Retrieved 2020 10 07 Sapir Edward 1992 Southern Paiute Dictionary In Bright William ed The Collected Works of Edward Sapir Berlin Mouton deGruyter Cordell Linda McBrinn Maxine 2012 Archaeology of the Southwest 3 ed Puebloan Culture University of Northern Colorado Archived from the original on 2010 07 09 The Names of Kōnstantinoupolis Dunden bugune Istanbul ansiklopedisi 5 Ciltli 1994 Bag Ahana October 19 2021 It s time to end the Madrasi stereotype Madras Courier Retrieved 25 July 2024 General and cited sources Jordan Peter Hubert Bergmann Caroline Burgess and Catherine Cheetham eds 2010 amp 2011 Trends in Exonym Use Proceedings of the 10th UNGEGN Working Group on Exonyms Meeting Tainach 28 30 April 2010 Hamburg 2011 Name amp Place 1 Jordan Peter Milan Orozen Adamic and Paul Woodman eds 2007 Exonyms and the International Standardisation of Geographical Names Approaches towards the Resolution of an Apparent Contradiction Wien and Berlin Wiener Osteuropastudien 24 Room Adrian 1996 An Alphabetical Guide to the Language of Name Studies Lanham and London The Scarecrow Press p 14 ISBN 9780810831698 External linksLook up exonym or endonym in Wiktionary the free dictionary 2006 UN document discussing exonyms PDF Jacek Wesolowski s Place Names in Europe featuring endonyms and exonyms for many cities archived 23 August 2000 Does Juliet s Rose by Any Other Name Smell as Sweet by Veronica Albin Looking up in exonym database European geographical names infrastructure and services on EuroGeoNames archived 15 January 2009 UN document describing EuroGeoNames PDF World map of country endonyms